Call me controversial (please, it would make me happy), but I honestly don't understand how I, as a Black person, could think otherwise. Well, okay, I don't understand how anyone as a human could feel otherwise, but that's beside the point.
Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and I didn't post anything mainly because it was the day before all final papers were do and I was writing my heart out about Awkward Black Girl, but also because my feelings on him and his day haven't really changed since last year's post.
So, even if it's a few days late, what I want to say is this: our people and our allies in other communities dedicated (and dedicate, present-tense) their lives to ensuring that we would not be classified as "second class citizens," as lesser than anyone else on the basis of something as artificial as race, and that we wouldn't be subjected to the oxymoronic (is that a word?) standard of "separate, but equal." We know that separate is inherently unequal. It's the basis for life as we know it today.
So how can we have the audacity to have demanded such rights and recognitions for ourselves and to work towards or even wish for the exact same rights and recognitions to be denied to others on the basis of their sexual orientation? Anyone who cries that race is a social construction must also recognize that normative conceptualizations of sexuality are just as socially constructed.
So if you want to live the words of King and other civil rights leaders this week, next month, and in your daily life, watch this video. Cry like I did. And do. the. right. thing. Support marriage equality. Support non-discriminatory citizenship. Support love and family and justice.
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