yeah, the lack of black people on Barbelith is also starting to make slightly uncomfortable right now, so I'll stop.
well, it's hard to say for certain that there aren't a lot of black people on Barbelith, since it's hard to determine the race of posters in an online forum. however, Barbelith does seem culturally similar to a lot of other predominantly-white institutions and groups i've been affiliated with. i went to an experimental private liberal arts college in Massachusetts full of people studying queer theory and the semiotics of pop culture and avant-garde art and so on and so forth, which overlaps a lot with the people drawn to the Barb, and our inability to attract racially-diverse students (most specifically, our inability to draw African-Americans and people of Caribbean descent) was an ongoing issue that caused a lot of consternation. i'm also involved with the Burning Man community, which also overlaps with Barbelith-type things and where green people seem to be more common than black people. Barbelith reminds me of both those cultures, and so i tend to assume, as you do in your post, that there aren't a lot of black people here, either.
i had a discussion with a Latina faculty member at my college discussing why we were so unable to attract students of color. she advanced the theory that the school's professed ethos of nonconformity, individualism, and resistance to tradition resonated more with middle-class and affluent white kids raised in a consumerist society which holds individual liberty and satisfaction in high regard than it did with many nonwhite communities, which in her opinion tended to place more importance on community and institutions like families, churches, etc.
i countered by saying that i thought it had more to do with risk assessment. in the US, people of color are disproportionately poor and disproportionately unlikely to be financially able to attend college, and so in the event that they are able to defy the odds and go to college, they are highly likely to play it safe with their choice of college. in other words, having gotten that far, a poor black kid from the ghetto isn't going to blow their one chance to escape poverty on some experimental hippie school, but will most likely go to a very normal, practical, mainstream school, to maximize their chances of making the most of the opportunity.
we came to the conclusion that our two positions may, in fact, be mutually supportive and interrelated. closer ties to traditional community institutions and extended family networks are often materially helpful for economically disadvantaged people, often to the point of necessity. this leads to a certain amount of cultural conservatism: the further you go from the values of your community, the less likely you are to have support from that community when you need it. as a result, individuals tend to subordinate individual expression to the mores of the community.
i think this can go a long way towards explaining attitudes like this:
He explained to us in no uncertain terms that homosexuality was "a trap,"
the word choice here is telling. conservatives in America consistently point to the "breakdown of the traditional family" as the root cause of poverty (especially inner-city black poverty), which i think puts the cart before the horse in a grotesque fashion. massively inequitable economic systems and a host of other systemic issues keep people poor, and poverty is certainly not primarily rooted in "moral decline."
however, a certain degree of upward mobility in terms of class and economic status does exist, however minimal, for a small number of people who have some sort of "out." and, well... i feel uncomfortable saying this, but those people who do have such paths out of poverty in front of them usually need to optimize their chances of turning that potential escape into a reality by adhering to tightly conservative personal behavior.
this is not to say that poverty is caused by "immorality," or, crucially, that people in general can escape poverty through conservative behavior. if you're born poor in the US, you can work hard and adhere to a positively Puritanical code of ethics without much luck. however, people on track to escape the cycle of poverty can be, and often are, derailed by things like unplanned pregancies, drug arrests, etc. if an affluent white suburban teenage boy gets busted with a bag of pot, he is more likely to know a good lawyer in who can help get him off, family members who can cover fines, etc, than a black teen from a disadvantaged background. also, a clean-cut white kid is more likely to receive lenient treatment from the criminal justice system in the first place than a black youth from the inner city.
along the same lines, people who escape from poverty usually need the support of a broad support network to do it. parents have to scrimp and save and make sacrifices to make sure that their kids can get out, and churches and youth groups have to offer scholarships, etc etc. moving one kid from poverty to the middle class is almost always a team effort. as such, anything that disrupts the cohesiveness and homogeneity of the community endangers the chance of individual success. if someone comes out as queer, they may (for instance) lose the support of their church, which may make the difference between going to college and not going to college.
on the other side of the coin, the more secure someone is in their socioeconomic status, the more they can afford to make waves. on one hand, the support network is likely to be broader, so you can afford to offend Uncle Joe because you still have other affluent relatives. also, the support demanded by a middle-class kid comes at less cost to middle-class parents. a single mother working a minimum wage job will have a hard time paying her own rent and bills, much less helping out someone else, whereas a successful accountant is unlikely to experience much hardship from offering support. as a result, they can do so more casually, and there's a lot more wiggle room in terms of emotional comfort. an affluent kid can push their parents farther emotionally because proportionately, they're asking for less.
as a result, the risks involved in publicly flouting social conventions or alienating friends and family are much, much higher for poor people than for middle-class or wealthier people. because black people are disproportionately poor, black culture has evolved to reflect that. accordingly, a lot of black activists and community leaders have come to look at risky or "deviant" behaviors as "trap," as things that will totally fuck up the chances of otherwise promising black youth trying to escape poverty, because, to no small extent, they can do so.
as much as it gives me hives to frame things in this way, and as shitty as it is, being openly queer bears social costs which are easier to bear for the affluent than they are for the poor, especially considering the myriad ways that social costs translate more readily into economic costs the further down the economic ladder you go. |
