In the wake of a grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown, there have naturally been massive amounts of highly justified unrest. This failing of the American justice system is an egregious affront to all U.S. citizens, but to black citizens in particular. It is this distinction that I want to discuss this week. While we all need to stand in solidarity with Ferguson in pursuing justice for Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and the unfortunately massive list of black people subjected to police brutality, I’ve noticed a distressing trend of appropriation within the (specifically white) LGBTQIA community.
White queer people, we don’t get it. Blanket statement. With our white privilege, we cannot sit and claim empathy for the way black people are treated in this country every day. Now, I’m not saying that white queer people don’t face our own sets of challenges, don’t get me wrong. But the kinds of issues that we face are categorically different from those of black people, not to mention queer black people.
As a white trans man, I belong to one of the most categorically privileged classes of people on the planet. When I pass as male, I’m in for smooth sailing. White men can enjoy the privileges of open carry laws, guns plastered prominently to their hips or even slung across their backs in the middle of a store. While I personally abhor guns, in theory, I could get away with carrying one nearly anywhere I wanted to. I don’t have to live in fear of being unjustly pulled over and assaulted by the police. My queerness, while maybe obvious if you talk to me, isn’t going to draw attention from across the street, and I know people wouldn’t try to justify my murder based on how I was dressed, or the way I was acting, or how I was speaking.
So for us white queers to say we understand the oppression black people face in this country is simply ludicrous. White queer people can certainly sympathize with the residents of Ferguson and the activists working all across the country. Yes, queer people need to worry about all kinds of things, like job discrimination and healthcare and housing. But these issues, while overlapping with racial components for queer people of color, are always mitigated by our whiteness, so to claim that white queers “understand” the oppression of people of color in this country is not only vastly incorrect, it’s highly offensive.
As a queer white person, I know the things I struggle with are different than the things that straight people of color or queer people of color deal with. It’s not a matter of who is “more” or “less” oppressed than someone else (although, let’s face it, if you’re a queer person of color in this country, the deck is seriously stacked against you). These differences are why intersectionality is so essential in activism.
Intersectionality is taking into account how factors such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and other various identity categories interact in multifaceted and complex fashions. It is not enough for all of us to claim oppression and say that we perfectly understand one another and are the same. Human experience is far too varied for that, and my understandings of the world as a white queer man are going to be very different from those of a queer woman of color.
So while the effort to stand with the residents of Ferguson is certainly something admirable we can all engage in, just keep this in mind, white queer people. This is not our territory. We are not all “equally oppressed,” and facing homophobia does not make you an expert on racism. We need to support people of color in this trying time in our country but make sure we don’t speak over them. It’s all about cooperation, not commandeering.
Morgan Philley is a junior English major from Clinton.
