Blacks and Homophobia.

Enough is Enough. Normally, I take the route of neither confirming or denying any stereotypes about black people. Because I'm black, I figure we already have enough other folks giving us negative press. But i've gotta write this. This post was inspired by my weekly trips to the barbershop here in Philly.

Now.... I understand that people think the barbershop is a place where we talk about "everything", but sometimes.... I just want to get my damn hair cut without hearing the views of people who know ABSOLUTELY nothing. It's always the loudest person who is the most wrong. This morning (as well as most mornings recently) the topic of discussion was Marsha Ambrosius's Far Away video. See.... they play Centric in the mornings in my barbershop and the two videos that get them talking the most are Far Away and "Sure Thing". In case you haven't seen it, let me post the Far Away Video:

The video, which Marsha has stated is a true story about a homosexual friend of hers that committed suicide after facing opposition to his lifestyle from his family/friends/ and society, has a HUGE written message at the end of it that explains this situation. Everytime this video comes on someone pretends that it is their first time seeing it (mind you... the crowd in the barbershop at 8am on a saturday is pretty much the same every week...). This week, one of the barbers started the conversation and it was pretty much open season on the gays.

I'll admit it: I was quiet. Anyone who knows me knows that I am usually pretty outspoken and I let people know when they are wrong. But I was quiet. Mostly because I was scared of what would happen if I didn't have atleast one ally in the barbershop. There were my own selfish reasons too of course; simply put... it is hard to find a good barber. Luckily, however, the shampoo girl knows I'm gay and could see I was uncomfortable so she spoke up. There was a woman who asserted that in the song Marsha says "I don't want you around my son" and that somehow, this song is about a guy who she was in love with but turns gay and his gay lover kills him. -____-. She obviously didn't hear the same song or watch the same video as me... The shampoo girl, let her have it. She also let the guys in the shop have it who were talking about how gays SHOULD get beat up. Corrected, they were quiet until Miguel's "Sure Thing" came on. "These fuckin faggots are taking over" the same barber who started the first conversation stated. This conversation continued until they got onto another subject: immigration. Something else they didn't know SHIT about. I was so angry, I didn't even tip my barber (who hadn't been apart of the conversation...he knows im gay too).

I'm all for someone having an opinion, just have an EDUCATED opinion. Homosexuals aren't the only topic blacks are upset about. There's the mexicans (cause every latino person is mexican), and the chinese (cause every asian is chinese), and "habeeb" (because every person who looks middle-eastern is an arab including people clearly from INDIA) who are making life so much more difficult for the "black man" It's My biggest pet peeve when people present their misguided opinions as fact and people who don't know any better take their words for the gospel of truth...

I guess what bothers me the most is that there were kids in there. Kids, who will grow up thinking it's ok to talk about people for their differences. Kids who learn a culture of hate and misunderstanding. Someone once posed the question to me if I thought people were wrong for not wanting their kids to be gay. No. I don't think they're wrong for not wanting their kids to be gay. I think they're wrong for not showing their kids that they will love them despite their sexual orientation. I think they're wrong for not teaching their kids to respect people as humans. I think they're wrong for teaching their kids the gospel according to man and not according to Christ, whose message was simply that of love. I think they're wrong for being bad parents. We as a culture gotta start to raise our kids right. We gotta do better! I'm starting with my nephew. He's gonna be a musically eclectic, racially unbiased, lifestyle accepting young gentleman if it kills me because we teach him to be a person of this WORLD not a person of a small community. Yes, at 5 he knows his uncle Hershawn was a boyfriend. At 5 he likes Chris Brown (his idol), fall out boy, jay-z, beyonce and lil Wayne. You know what he hates? Peas, naps and needles. Hate is learned, not inherent, which means it's up to all of us to break the cycle of homophobia, racism, sexism and other prejudices...we just gotta do better.

-CJ. TheWayItShouldBeSaid