Hope Lost and Found

You may have noticed that for someone so political my blog has been quiet since the election of Barack Obama. It's something I've had to really wrap my head around and work through.

Here's why...


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President Elect Obama –

It’s been some time now since the election, soon November will have come and gone. I’m a writer and poet from Atlanta Georgia, so had often written about everything working up to the election. I’m very much a son of the South and have often written on race relations and growing up in a conservative, rural, southern Baptist family in North Carolina. A family where casual racism and bigotry were so ingrained in our history and upbringing as to be invisible in plain sight. No one saw or realized its impact, realized the lessening of humanity it inflicted on both sides.

In past months, I’d written a lot on hope and change. I wrote about standing in line for early voting for hours to make sure my vote counted, how everyone in line regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation had bonded in this hopefulness of a new day in the United States. I still pray now that that day is upon us.

However, after the election, I found that I could not bring myself to write about this hope, this new day. For with the news of your win, also came the news of the passing of Proposition Eight in California and the passage of other anti-gay laws across the country. So while election day delivered so poignantly on your promise of hope and change it also delivered a cold hard slap in the face to members of the LGBT community. In California a persecuted group won the civil right to marry, then had it taken away. They celebrated the wins, the vows, celebrated with family and friends, only to have their happiness come crashing down around them.

I’m sure you’ve seen the protests around the country, the anger, the commitment, the renewed resolve of our community. Forgive us if in your moment of glory and celebration, of needing to concentrate on so many dire crises and issues that plague our country, forgive us if you have a large constituency that is really, really pissed off. For some of us the honeymoon from this election was much too short lived, we were somehow left outside of the big reception.

Many in the LGBT community would like to blame the African-American community for voting in large numbers against our civil rights. We thought we would have more sympathy. It is more disappointment than anger that we feel, a disappointment that there is such a lack of understanding. I like to write letters to the editors here at our local Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and years ago when the great Hosea Williams had made some unfortunate off-handed casual comments about the gay rights movement, I wrote a letter to the AJC basically saying that he just “didn’t get it”. To his credit he actually called me at work the day after my letter appeared, called me at my office, I was as shocked as anyone when the president of our company who had just happened to have answered the phone handed it to me and said that “Hosea Williams wants to talk to you”. I think his intention was to call me to the carpet, he went right into his stock speech on his years in the service of civil rights, and how he’d worked tirelessly for civil rights, and done this and that. That some of his best friends were gay, but there was also a measure of condemnation. I think to him I was some privileged young white boy with a good job that had dared to question his credentials. I finally stopped him and had to ask him a simple question. “Mr. Williams, do you know where I’m having to talk to you from? I’ve had to pull the phone into our supply closet, I’m having to talk to you in whispers, my boss is going to ask me just what Hosea Williams was calling me for – and I’m going to have to lie to his face, so I don’t face losing my job.” That seemed to make an impression, and we actually had a serious and meaningful conversation after that, I’ll always remember that phone call.

There are differences between our communities. Blacks literally wear their minority status on their sleeves, there’s no way to hide from it, no way to escape it. LGBT people are often an invisible minority it’s easy for us to blend in, to disappear, to dance around the details – aren’t we lucky. That’s something we have to struggle with and work on within our own community. But though our minority statuses are based largely (but not totally) on how we look vs. who we love, we still share many of the same stigmas, the same discrimination, the same violence, the same dehumanization by the majority. Senator Obama, you’ve shared so much about your family and upbringing, what positive reinforcements you received, what encouragements, God bless you and your family. Now I ask you to imagine that you weren’t so lucky, that you were born white, in a “typical” American household. That there was always that tone and hint of disdain whenever your family talked about the black family down the street. That at school, it was much less subtle, friends beating up black kids, calling them names. You may have even thrown a punch just to show you were one of the guys. That you saw the stereotypes and prejudices even on TV and in the movies with no filters or explanations. Then imagine that you’d always felt different, always apart. Imagine that one day you’re careless and fall and scrape your knee to find a darker pigment underneath, that you were showering and found the white rubbing off. You’d be ashamed, wear long sleeves, because all you’ve ever been taught is that being black was wrong and shameful. Welcome Senator Obama to every gay and lesbian teen’s nightmare. We are taught by our own families to hate ourselves, and turned away for who we are. We are despised second class citizens even among our own families and communities. Thank god we have been able to form our own families in exile, our own communities for support, our own loves and commitments – This Senator Obama is why marriage is so important to us.

In thinking about why it’s taken so long for me to write about this past election. I finally realized after the Proposition 8 protests and vigils here in Atlanta, I had become afraid to hope. Hope is a wonderful, marvelous thing, but can be a sharp double-edged sword. It’s like love, when we give it freely and get burned we get gun shy, we become afraid to hope. So forgive us as you take on the daunting duties of the Presidency, if one of your key support groups seems a little reserved, a little less than forthcoming, with it’s dreams and hopes shining not so bright. You see we’ve been neglected, we’ve been ignored, and we had even gotten used to that. But then California laid this dazzling jewel of a dream in the palms of our hands and we held it all too briefly before it was snatched away. We have lived with dreams deferred and dreams denied so long we’re used to it. But we had dared to hope, dared to dream of change, held it in our hands and gotten slapped across the face. Nothing wounds so deep the heart as a soaring moment of fragile hope snuffed out as easy as a candle, where once there was light, now only darkness.

Senator Obama, we still hold hope in our hearts, if maybe a little closer more cautiously than before. We still hope that whatever slight ember is left will be awakened and blaze anew. That this jewel of marriage and commitment we so desire will be placed in our hand and shine even more brightly and sweetly for the struggle. That is a promise.

Cleo Creech
Atlanta, GA