Race

I�ve admit that I�ve always felt a disconnect in America. I was raised upper middle class. I lived in mostly predominant White areas until I moved here in 1990. I�ve always felt uncomfortable discussing race I guess because I felt that people would think that I was a stereotypical Black person that the Right always talks about who yells racism all the time. But this is in my heart and it�s my thing so if you don�t want to read I�m ok with it.

This story has been hitting the news in Atlanta for the past two days. I guess the thing that bothers me is that The Condo Store is always advertised and known to be very Gay friendly and they have many Gay agents. God this is 2005 and we�re still dealing with race issues.

I was pretty shocked when this article showed up on my yahoo news home page. Because I firmly believe that few people are really concerned about the �racial divide�. In fact I think that besides the AP it�s just me.

Now of course I admit that I have real reason to be concerned because I am a Black male in an interracial relationship living in a city where interracial is almost a bad word. I admit that it�s time like theses that I miss living in the pacific Northwest where in the early 1990�s I never really saw racism in the Gay community because the Gay community was fairly small. This is probably normal in small Gay areas.

When I was flying I layed over in Omaha. Back in the mid 90-s when I was based in NYC we had this god awful trip where we layed over 24 hours in Omaha. Now for you non-airline people to arrive in a city at 11am and not leave until the next day until 9am is a long layover. The interesting thing was that this trip was staffed with an all male crew which for Delta was unusual especially for domestic. Well to make a long story short the three of us went out to one of three Gay bars that we could find and we had a great time. I was especially impressed because the bars were extremely mixed. There were Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. That is something that is rarely seen in Atlanta.

Yesterday JAB and I went to Mary�s. Someone was having a conversation about Noah�s Arc which will be premiering on the LOGO channel the week after next. The discussion was whether the Gay community will be open to a Black �Queer as Folk� without the nudity. I don�t know the answer to the question. This lead to a conversation with someone on why there had to be a Black Gay Pride and a Gay Pride. As I told him; if you go to any Gay site, porn or no, people who look like me are pretty invisible. If I were an alien who landed on this planet, I would assume that 99.9% of the Gay community was White, built and 25 years old. Of course that�s not true; but look at what�s represented. I challenge anyone to go to 5 of the most popular Gay sites and find a Black person in the ads, articles or forums. Why is that?

I know that I�m asking uncomfortable questions but why can�t anyone address them. Ok here�s a challenge. I want someone on my favorites or someone who reads this and knows that I know that they read my stuff to please comment. Especially non-descript because I like the way he writes and he�s very happy right now and may do it. If they allow I will post it here.

I really think that unless we are able to talk about these issues then they will stay among us forever.

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