Is Gay the New Black? - Michael Eric Dyson

[cash__whatiwant]

[dembotoz]

1. well worth the 7 minutes

mr dyson is so much brighter than i would ever hope 2 be

[marble falls]

2. I liked the video and while terrible things have happend to gays as a group and to huge numbers....

of individuals even if only perceived as gay, and gay marriages should come with all the benefits of straight marriages - gay is not the "new" black. Especially since people are still being mistreated under the "old" black. Gay rights are right because they happen to be the right thing to do without a false comparison to the dark history of the treatment given to black people.

[cash__whatiwant]

3. I think the point he was making is

people who become indignant when gay rights borrow language from the civil rights era of the 60s...Most social movements borrow from previous movements in some way without having to be a complete parallel. That doesn't mean there should be a comparison on which movement had it harder.

[Fearless]

4. I would only point out

That the gay rights movement started in the 1960's, it's only been successful per se since 2000.

[marble falls]

6. Legislatively, only since the nineties, but there's been a neccessary consciousness raising since ..

the sixties to get to a tipping point that got reached in the last decade that gets us all where we are today. And it doesn't require an amendment, it just requires equal access to the law.

[marble falls]

5. Exactly. There needs to be no comparison. Both movements are independently rightous.

[AtheistCrusader]

8. BUT

It can serve as a useful positive example. Since we are trying to overcome biases here, it is fair to use one as an example of where people made the leap, stepped OVER their biases (rather, climbed over them, one painful inch at a time in some cases) in one case, but not in another, and ask them to frame a justification why one case is valid and not the other.

'If you felt that was so important (and it was), why not this (which is also just as important)?'

[marble falls]

9. If gay is the new black, is black the old gay? Both good causes but not equal.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. That was remarkably informative. I got into an argument with a white co-worker (I am also white)

about this, as I drew a parallel between the two civil rights movements, and I think the parallels are obvious an endless, but she got incredibly incensed over it, like I was denigrating the black civil rights movement for daring to compare the two situations.

I wish I had seen this prior to that argument. He expresses some things that I couldn't put into words, or find the words for. When I used the comparison, it was never my intention to take something away from the black civil rights struggle, or diminish it, or even add an additional burden onto them.

Video was helpful, thank you.