{"id":7979,"date":"2001-06-02T22:42:00","date_gmt":"2001-06-02T22:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/?p=7979"},"modified":"2021-06-30T20:30:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T20:30:47","slug":"being-your-true-self-affects-not-only-gays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2001\/06\/02\/being-your-true-self-affects-not-only-gays\/","title":{"rendered":"Being your true self affects not only gays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Date: Saturday, June 02, 2001 10:42 PM<br>From: A.D. Powell<br>Subject: Being your true self affects not only gays<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Being your true self affects not only gays<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.miami.com\/herald\/content\/features\/columnists\/pitts\/digdocs\/005615.htm\">http:\/\/www.miami.com\/herald\/content\/features\/columnists\/pitts\/digdocs\/005615.htm<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBlack\u201d columnist Leonard Pitts (<a href=\"mailto:leonardpitts@mindspring.com\">leonardpitts@mindspring.com<\/a>) is at it again \u2013 promoting the \u201cone drop\u201d myth (while carefully avoiding mentioning the \u201cblack blood\u201d in Latinos) and his crusade against self-identification. He starts out by denouncing \u201cpassing for white\u201d (an accusation usually made against people who ARE predominately European) and compares it with gay people who refuse to \u201cout\u201d themselves. Let\u2019s translate his ravings and show what he really means:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPut simply: Is a gay man obliged to publicly live as a gay man?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gay people, it should be noted, are not unique in having to confront that question. To the contrary, the issue of hiding one\u2019s cultural self has been around for as long as there\u2019s been an American mainstream and people who couldn\u2019t get into it. A legion of American immigrants changed their names, gave up old country practices or forswore their religion in order to be seen as \u201cwhite.\u201d In African-American neighborhoods, they used to talk of people \u201cpassing\u201d \u2014 light-skinned folk living as Caucasians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Translation: I (Pitts) wish I were white enough to blend into \u201cwhite\u201d communities. I can only express my frustration by claiming mixed-whites as \u201cAfrican American\u201d even though I know that there is nothing \u201cAfrican\u201d or \u201cblack\u201d about them. It is my cowardly way of expressing my hatred of \u201cwhites\u201d \u2013 claim some of them as \u201cblack.\u201d I do this even though I know that I am defining \u201cblack\u201d as simply a stigma placed on people who are too \u201cinferior\u201d to be anything else.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201d The issue that faced blacks and immigrants then is the same that faces gays now: whether those who disavow the group should be allowed to get away with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is, after all, something demeaning about being left behind by people \u201cpassing.\u201d Some sense of betrayal. How must it feel, if you\u2019re openly gay, to suffer workplace threats and insults while some gay man in the mail room ducks those difficulties by pretending to be what he isn\u2019t? It\u2019s not hard to imagine you might feel animosity toward him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Translation: Deep down, I (Pitts) believe I\u2019m racially inferior and desperately want to drag others down to share my psychological misery. People \u201ctainted\u201d with my \u201cinferior\u201d blood aren\u2019t worthy of the honor of being \u201cwhite.\u201d They should be forced to call themselves \u201cblack\u201d and marry \u201cblacks\u201d so my \u201crace\u201d can be \u201cimproved\u201d with the \u201csuperior\u201d blood of the hated yet adored \u201cenemy\u201d (\u201cwhites\u201d). I am so insecure that, despite my exalted position as a national columnist, I envy a lowly \u201cwhite\u201d employee in the mailroom. I imagine them as mortals who have scaled a \u201cwhite\u201d Olympus and are living like gods.<br><br>P.S. As a good \u201cracial\u201d inferior and in-house Negro for The Miami Herald, I will take pains to limit \u201cracial kidnapping\u201d to Anglos and Louisiana Creoles. I respect the fact that Latinos (especially the whie purity loving racist Cubans who rule Miami) disdain my \u201cinferior\u201d black blood and do not want to be pubicly recognized as having the \u201ctainted\u201d African descent I claim to champion.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Date: Saturday, June 02, 2001 10:42 PMFrom: A.D. PowellSubject: Being your true self affects not only gays Being your true self affects not only gays http:\/\/www.miami.com\/herald\/content\/features\/columnists\/pitts\/digdocs\/005615.htm \u201cBlack\u201d columnist Leonard Pitts (leonardpitts@mindspring.com) is at it&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-d-powells-view","category-news-clips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-24H","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/AD-Powell.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7980,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions\/7980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}