In Conclusion, White is Everything
In Chong-suk Han's, "They Don't Want to Cruise Your Type: Gay Men of Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion," Han speaks of the existing discrimination against any race that is not simply white in the gay community.
In the beginning of the article, I was a tad lost.. Not truly understanding the direction this article was going to take, until I stumbled upon this paragraph:
"Whiteness in the gay community is everyÂwhere, from what we see, what we experience, and more importantly, what we desire. The power of whiteness, of course, derives from appearing to be nothing in particular (Lipsitz, 1998). That is, whiteness is powerful precisely because it is every where but nowhere in particular. When we see whiteness, we process it as if it doesn't exist or that its existence is simply natural. We don't see it precisely because we see it constantly. It blends into the background and then becomes erased from scrutiny."
Hans went on to show examples of this theory through pop culture and the media.When he included the tv show "Will and Grace," it dawned on me. YES! It's true. By why?
I was also intrigued by Han's article when he wrote,
"Gay organizations themselves promote and reinforce the whiteness of gay life. The gay movement that once embodied the ideals of liberation, freedom, and social justice quickly turned to the causes of promoting gay pride through visibility and lobÂbying efforts that forced established institutions particularly media institutions-to re-examine mainstream heterosexist bias against gay men and women. Doing so, however, led to the unfortuÂnate consequence of ignoring non-gay issues such as 'homelessness, unemployment, welfare, uniÂversal health care, union organizing, affirmative action, and abortion rights'. Promoting gay issues meant promoting acceptance rather than liberation. To do so, gay activists adapted various whitening practices to sell gay America to the heartland of America by: mirroring the whiteness of men who run powÂerful institutions as a strategy for winning credÂibility, acceptance, and integration; excluding people of color from gay institutions; selling gay as white to raise money, make a profit, and gain economic power; and daily wearing the paleproÂtective coloring that camouflages the unquesÂtioned assumptions and unearned privileges of gay whiteness.
This is not some, "Oops, I didn't even notice," type of thing. They know. The gay community knows exactly what they are doing, with no care to stand up and equally fight for the minorities of their own groups. There is no such thing as a gay community. There are the more commonly known and accepted, "Gay Whites," "Gay Blacks," "Gay Latinos," "Gay Asians," and "Gay Native Americans." And consequently, not even those minorities fully accept each other. Han points this out in the following paragraph,Â
"Rather than less, race seems to matter more to gay men than to straight men when it comes to mate selection. Examining personal ads, Phua and Kaufman (2003) found that gay men were significantly more likely to prefer one race and suggest that they may be more likely to exclude certain races as well. According to their data, gay men of color were much more likely to explicitly exclude members of their own race and much more likely to request another race (overwhelmÂingly white) than even gay white men."
No one wants to be with the person No One else is attracted to. It is so commonly seen that these gay minorities are not what "White gay men" should be attracted to, that the members of hose minority gay communities start believing it themselves, about their own people.Â










