Crossing the Gay Color Lines

Isaiah Washington, an African American actor, uses the word "faggot" during an altercation on the set of ABC's Grey's Anatomy. Tim Hardaway, a black former NBA star, hears that another former NBA player is gay and responds: "I hate gay people. … I am homophobic. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

White gay men see these incidents as examples of a homophobic African American culture. Straight African Americans see a cynical media exploiting caricatures of the angry, ignorant black man. Neither appraisal reveals the more complex truths about why GLBT people and African Americans still eye each other suspiciously across the cultural divide.

Are the parallels that gays make between GLBT struggles and the civil-rights movement instructive or offensive? What is the deeper meaning behind the perceived homophobia in the African American community? And what about inclusiveness in the gay community? Do gays of all ethnicities live up to the ideal of the "rainbow" people?

AfterElton recently spoke to five gay African American men - artists who are fiercely active within their communities - to explore how white gay people and African Americans can better understand each other, and ultimately come together to promote the equality of all people. That journey may begin with uncovering some hard truths.

Controversies Spark Conversation

Out filmmaker Lee Daniels is the producer and director of last year's Shadowboxer, which starred recent Oscar-winner Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. He also produced Monster's Ball, which featured Halle Berry's Oscar-winning performance. During the Isaiah Washington controversy, some in the gay press compared the word "faggot" with the N-word, and as a gay African American, Daniels sees this as a fair analogy. "I think it's an absolute comparison," he said. Washington "should have been fired on the spot."

Daniels believes many gay men have been oppressed by the word "faggot," including himself. "To me, 'faggot' is an atrocity," Daniels said. "The word sends shivers down my back." While he acknowledged there are differences between the two struggles, Daniels believes that the comparisons gay people make between themselves and African Americans make sense. "Hitler f---ing burned the gay men with the Jews," he said. "I mean, certainly gay men were strung up and hung."

But Rod McCullom, a television producer (ABC News, NBC News), journalist and cultural commentator via his blog, Rod 2.0, sees those comparisons as simplistic at best. "The N-word — we're coming out of several hundred years of racist oppression, slavery, genocide," McCullom said. "I think that that word is extremely loaded in a different way."

Noah's Arc series creator Patrik-Ian Polk believes the correlations that gay people often draw to civil rights ends up alienating the black community. The civil-rights struggle "is still a very painful scar for the black community," Polk said. "So when the gay community continues to reference that, it just brings up all these painful issues and memories. And it doesn't necessarily help to encourage the black community to have these conversations."

He added that oversimplified comparisons display a lack of understanding that's off-putting: "They aren't acknowledging the tremendous pain of the civil-rights struggle, and they aren't acknowledging the differences."

Tori Fixx, a music producer, hip-hop artist (Pick up the Mic) and DJ, points to one of the most glaring of those differences — one that doesn't have to do with history. "Gay men can conceal their identity to get ahead," Fixx said. "But black men … you wear that every day you leave the front door. It's there on display whether you want it to be there or not."