http://www.bilerico.com/2009/04/hollywood_and_all_that_jazz.php..snip...
Dark Or White Meat?
Black-on-Black racism can have a powerful and driving influence on whom African-Americans (of any sexual orientation) pursue romantically and sexually. Last year, Chong-suk Han's "They Don't Want to Cruise Your Type: Gay Men of Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion" for the journal Social Identities examined this mindset.
"The primacy of white images in the gay community often leads to detrimental results for gay men of color, particularly manifested as internalized racism. In "No Blacks Allowed," Keith Boykin argues that "in a culture that devalues Black males and elevates white males," Black men deal with issues of self-hatred that white men do not. "After all," he notes, "white men have no reason to hate themselves in a society that reinforces their privilege."
Han continued. "Boykin argues that this racial self-hatred makes gay Black men see other gay Black men as unsuitable sexual partners. Obviously, such racial self-hatred rarely manifests itself as such. Instead, gay Black men who don't want to date other Black men simply rely on stereotypes to justify their behavior rather than confront their own self-hatred." For example, Boykin notes that most of these men justify excluding other Black men as potential partners by relying on old stereotypes of the uneducated, less intelligent Black male.
He went further. "Ironically, the same Black men who rely on these stereotypes to exclude members of their own race rarely enforce them on gay white men, as evidenced by Boykin's example of the gay Black man who has no problem with dating blue-collar white men, but excludes Black men on the assumption that they are 'uneducated and less successful than he is.'"
Han concluded, "What's worse is that not only do gay Black men fail to see each other as sexual partners, white men also ignore them. In such an environment, Black men compete with each other for the elusive white male partner."
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This is a long blog post that is both fascinating and a wake up call. I think its vital as a movement that we embrace all the diversity in the gay community - be it racial, religious or political differences we all must band together for a better world.