Two Black Teenage Boys Shot To Death In Toronto, Yet I Don’t Care.
On August 23rd 2013, two teenage boys O’She Doyles-Whyte 16, and Kwame Duodu, 15 where gunned down and brutally murdered in Jane and Finch. For people who don’t know Jane and Finch is a notorious crime infested neighbourhood in Toronto. Jane and Finch has a history of violence. Whyte and Duodu are black, and I must admit, when I first heard of their deaths I was ambivalent about it. I feel bad for saying this, but I just kind of shrugged my shoulders.
I guess I feel apathetic, if you live in Toronto you will know what I mean. There have been too many times over the years of sad news stories about young black males being shot to death in Jane and Finch. It is like a broken record. I am so exhausted hearing about these tragedies that I just tune out.
Of course, it is very sad that two teenage boys are dead but I feel conflicted about the violence in Jane and Finch. Am I supposed to care just because I am a black Canadian? I don’t live in Jane and Finch and I wouldn’t want anyone I love or care about to live there either. Should I feel sad, that there are too many tragic news stories about young black males being shot to death in Toronto?
Whenever, gun violence takes place in Toronto, the white media have this propensity to insist, that black Canadian people we are all supposed to care. Do white people care, when a white person dies in Toronto? Why should I as an individual, who just happens to be black, care about young black boys dying? Why should the actions of a few represent that of an entire race? It doesn’t make sense to me?
Why? Why should I care about black parents that are irresponsible, they don’t want to improve their lives, they raise their children in violent neighbourhoods?
Why don’t black parents teach their teenage sons to stay away from gang bangers and drug dealers? These two boys probably knew people who were involved in a gang. Why don’t black parents do more? One of the things my parents taught me when I was young is to NOT ASSOCIATE OR BE AROUND BAD PEOPLE! My mother always says, if you weren’t with the crows who have been found you would be ALL SAFE AND SOUND! If you don’t associate, talk to, hang around, gang bangers or drug dealers then you have a better chance of staying SAFE and ALIVE.
Now, people are saying the two teens were not a part of a gang. However, perhaps this is true both boys were not in a gang, but maybe they were associated with one or knew people in it? I just find it bizarre in the city of Toronto, that people would just randomly shoot and kill two teenage boys. Teenage boys need their fathers in their lives, because a father helps a boy to grow up to become a man.
I talked to my sister today about this tragedy, she said one of the reasons she lives in the suburbs with her son is to avoid these kinds of tragedies. My sister was blunt she said she would never raise her son around poor blacks.
Now, some might argue my sister is a hater, or a racist, or an elitist, but I see her cogent argument. In Jane and Finch, there is a cycle of violence, that seems to have no ending. My sister said she worries about her ten year old son, she doesn’t want him growing up in a dangerous environment. A violent place such as Jane and Finch has an aura of poverty and unhappiness.
I have to admit, if I had a child I wouldn’t want him growing up around poor blacks either.
My sister and I next we questioned, why would a black mother raise her son in Jane and Finch? Why? Everyone knows Jane and Finch is a dangerous neighbourhood filled with despair and violence.
I saw the family and friends on the news the other day crying about the two dead boys. Of course, these people are black and poor. Now I understand, due to circumstances, things happen in life. However, I wonder, where were the black fathers in this situation? Where are the fathers of these teenage boys?
The mainstream Canadian media, will report these tragedies of young black boys dying in the streets of Toronto. However, it is time for the black community to have some real talk. Why are black Canadians so afraid in Toronto to have a serious discussion about gun violence? I am serious. Why, are young black boys dying?
I am apathetic, to the deaths of these two teenage boys, I just feel like black parents need to be more accountable. Yes, violence can occur anywhere in Toronto. However, I just feel some black parents are not doing enough to raise their sons. Why would any black mother raise her children in Jane and Finch? It just seems shocking to me I am perplexed about it.
Global News: Violence In The City Of Toronto Is A Serious Problem Yet Strained Race Relations Between Black Community & Police Force Ignored.
Toronto’s black community has a serious problem with gang crime. There is no need to lie about it because the recent shootings in Scarborough this summer where two innocent young people died was pernicious. In addition, the shocking shooting at Eaton Centre in June is terrifying because violence can occur anywhere in the city of Toronto.
There too many young black who are so apathetic to the concerns of others. My question is, why are young black men getting involved with crime? What has happened to these young black men that they don’t value life or care about the well beings of others? Now, I know these young black males who get involved in crime have parents, families, siblings. So what happened to this generation? What went wrong?
Now, essentialists are going to make racist assumptions that it has to do with the “essence” within black males which causes some to commit crimes. The other possible explanations are poverty, unhappiness, despair, lack of education and employment opportunities leads young men to crime.
However, the white Canadian media never look beneath these surface explanations. Perhaps it is time for Toronto’s black community to not be so reticent and acknowledge there is a serious problem here?
There are programs for at risk youth, basketball camps, after school programs to assist children that are in danger of entering into crime. I believe these programs are important but are also band aid solutions to a deeper, more subliminal problem.
I can understand why some black people are irritated and annoyed by the media whenever gun violence occurs. Why should black people who are hard working and good citizens care about the bad behaviour of others? Why should the actions of a few tarnish the reputation of an entire race? It is ludicrous that people of colour are generalized in this manner.
Are white men generalized as psycho murderers like James Holmes shoots up a theatre in Aurora Colorado? Are young white men demonized in newspapers are psychopaths and killers?
Recently, a white supremacist murdered innocent people in Michigan at a Sikh temple. Are the media pathologizing young white men as being violent? Is there an essence to these young white males whiteness which causes them to go psycho and shoot and kill innocent people?
There questions are never asked in the mainstream white media because we live in a white society.
White privilege allows whites to generalize the actions of some in the black community yet the mirror image is never reflected at the majority.
Remember, white people control the Canadian media, the news which is broadcast on television, in the newspapers, and on the internet is based on white privilege. An editor decides in an editorial meeting what is the news. What sells more papers? What gets people talking? The media has a critical role in how race is shaped and constructed in Toronto.
In the classic 1988 essay, Peggy McIntosh a white feminist wrote an article called White Privilege The Invisible Knapsack. McIntosh’s article was groundbreaking because she is a white woman and she acknowledges the privileges she has simply because she was born white. According to McIntosh, whites are conditioned by the media and white society to ignore their privilege. Just like men ignore our male privilege and the freedom we have to walk freely in society, white people don’t have to think critically about race. A white person can live his or her’s own life in North America and not think about how race affects their lives.
People of colour we don’t have the luxury of not having to think about race. Race is in our face every single day of our lives whether we want to admit it or not.
It is understandable that some in the black community are angered that when crime occurs suddenly the entire race is to blame for some idiots dangerous actions.
Why are blacks generalized for the actions of a few? Why should I personally care if a black man shoots someone just because we are the same race? I don’t shoot anybody, I’m a citizen minding my own damn business.
The counter argument is, the white press in Toronto claim that black people need to become more vigilant and just trust the police force. The quandary is, a lot of black people in Toronto do not trust the police due to strained race relations.
Another point to consider is, some black people are terrified and afraid they don’t want to be the next statistic and get shot. It is a vicious circle that seems to be getting worse in the city of Toronto. There is a lot of bad feelings, anger, resentment.
It is disconcerting to see young black men shooting and killing innocent people. I think something has happened to the minds of these young black males who get involved in crimes.
Frantz Fanon the black psychiatrist and author of the book Black Skins, White Masks argues in chapter five called The Lived Experience of the Black man that the psyche of black males are shattered due to racism.
The black man sees himself in the third person he does not see himself as a three dimensional human being because the white man has the power to control the images and representations of the black man.
Now some people might argue that the city of Toronto is a multicultural paradise where racial harmony exists.
The danger of multiculturalism which the Toronto media engenders is it ignores racism and pushes it beneath the surface. Racism is a serious problem in Toronto yet Canadians like to pretend it does not exist.
The power structure in Toronto is still based on white privilege. For instance, Toronto has an idiot white mayor Rob Ford he’ is obnoxious, pathetic, unprofessional, and abhorrent. However, Ford is praised by the white right wing media in Toronto. The mayors of Toronto and all the police chiefs are white people. Even though, the city of Toronto has a very large non white population the people in power are still white.
The Toronto police force is also a problem there aren’t enough black officers on the force in positions of power. Real change needs to occur inside the police force in order for racism and barriers of indifference to break down. Why would a black person suddenly trust a white police officer in crime ridden neighbourhoods? The so called anti racism policies are a farce. The question still remains, why do people still not trust the police to inform them about criminal activity? Why are people so afraid to speak out?
The media is also to blame because the real subliminal problems that are not visible are not discussed in the public sphere. Serious and hard questions about inequality, racism, and discrimination, are not brought to the surface. Canadians still have an apathetic attitude towards race which is disconcerting.
In America, despite the race relation problems between blacks and whites they are more honest about racism. In the United States, people are not afraid to discuss race.
CNN, ABC, Fox News, NBC, and the major American media outlets constantly discuss racism in the public sphere. Americans are aware of racism in their country they don’t hide and pretend it doesn’t exist. By contrast, Canadians believe in the illusion of multiculturalism which is dangerous.
In order for Canada to progress, people need to stop being afraid to discuss race, inequality, white privilege, and other social problems in the public realm.
Feminist Writer Peggy McIntosh Incendiary 1988 Essay White Privilege Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group”
Peggy McIntosh
Through work to bring materials from women’s studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women’s statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.
Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women’s studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, “having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”
After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow “them” to be more like “us.”
Daily effects of white privilege
I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person’s voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.
12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.
19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my race.
25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.
26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.
27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.
30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.
37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a patter of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.
In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.
For this reason, the word “privilege” now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex.
Earned strength, unearned power
I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.
We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally say as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.
I have met very few men who truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.
Difficulties and angers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage that rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity that on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the members of the Combahee River Collective pointed out in their “Black Feminist Statement” of 1977.
One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.
Disapproving of the system won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a “white” skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.
Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.
Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $10.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.
This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.
Interesting News: New Study Finds One In Four Caribbean Men Are Bisexual!!
The MSM population is defined by the survey not only as openly gay men but also men who do not self-identify as gay or bisexual but participate in sexual activities with other men. (Photo: fenwayfocus.org)ST JOHN’S, Antigua, Friday August 17, 2012 – A new study has confounded popular opinion by suggesting that almost one in four Caribbean men today describe themselves as bisexual.
Preliminary findings of the regionwide Caribbean Men’s Internet Survey (CARIMIS) contrast dramatically with the Caribbean’s longstanding image of a macho society with low tolerance for homosexuality often verging on homophobia.
According to Ernest Massiah, facilitator of the CARIMIS project and director of UNAIDS Caribbean Regional Support Team, “We have a fair population in the Caribbean that identify as bisexual. Across the entire sample, about 20 to 23 per cent say they are bisexual”.
The study, which surveyed 2,560 men throughout 33 territories in the region, is said to be the “largest sample” of the Caribbean MSM (men who have sex with men) population of its kind, conducted via the Internet.
Massiah went on to reveal that 15 per cent of the men did not define themselves in any category. Although they engaged in sexual activity with other men, they “do not want a label,” he said.
The director indicated that the “most shocking” aspect of the study involves the amount of physical and verbal abuse and visual intimidation levelled against MSMs in their respective countries.
“What we are seeing across the region is that between five and 10 per cent of people have been assaulted because they were perceived to have a different sexual orientation,” he said.
In some nations half of the MSM population identified with being verbally abused and visually intimidated.
“What we are seeing is that as a society, if you have a sexual orientation that is perceived as different, you can be physically abused and in a lot of cases you receive verbal abuse,” Massiah noted.
The study also broke new ground by identifying a new group of men: the educated MSM man.
According to the director: “We are getting a population that we have not been able to get data from before, that is men with secondary and tertiary level education. We have a very educated sample here.”
In the past, face-to-face surveys were the norm, but only accessed “certain members” of the MSM population. Massiah said that the use of the Internet and redefining their target populations was the key to the survey’s success.
“It is a good way of doing research because you can get to people in a much quicker way than you would have if you tried to do an interview with an individual person,” he explained.
The study’s results will be given to governments of participating nations to help develop policies and initiatives that will protect and service the MSM community.
The UNAIDS-funded initiative was launched online last November and concluded in June.
The MSM population is defined by the survey not only as openly gay men but also men who do not self-identify as gay or bisexual but participate in sexual activities with other men. The survey is being implemented throughout the English, French, Spanish and Dutch speaking Caribbean countries. Click here to receive free news bulletins via email from Caribbean360. (View sample)
Read more: http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/antigua_news/607713.html#ixzz23wc9gkS0
BBC News: The Reality Is Regular Gay & Lesbians Still Have To Deal With Job Discrimination When Coming Out At Work.
By Kate DaileyBBC News Magazine
Should sexuality be water-cooler conversation?One of the biggest names in US TV journalism, Anderson Cooper, has confirmed that he is gay. But should regular professionals come out to those they work with?
Long before Anderson Cooper confirmed it, evidence of his sexuality was apparent for anyone who cared to look. He was photographed on holiday with the owner of a popular New York City gay bar. In 2007, a man in a Cooper mask was featured on the cover of Out Magazine, which named Cooper as the second-most powerful gay man in America.
Indeed, in an era when the US president endorses gay marriage and the most popular TV chat show hostess in the US, Ellen Degeneres, is a lesbian, there seems to be little reason to make an official declaration of sexuality in a public forum.
So why does it matter that Cooper is now “officially” out?
“In a perfect world he should be able to go about his business and it not be an issue,” says Canadian broadcaster Rick Mercer, host of CBC’s The Rick Mercer Report.
“But there’s no doubt about it: him acknowledging that he is a gay person who is successful and happy and loved means an awful lot.”
Mercer made waves last year when he released a YouTube video calling on gay adults to come out as a way to fight back against bullying and provide a positive example for gay children.
“If you have a life that’s a public life, whether you choose it or not, or a position of responsibility, it makes a difference to be out at that level, whether you’re Anderson Cooper or the chief of police,” he says.
But in 2012 how easy is it for that chief of police – or even the assistant manager of a FootLocker or a call-centre worker – to come out?
‘Permissible discrimination’
In a survey of gay employees conducted in 2011, the Center for Talent and Innovation found that about half of respondents were closeted at work.
“The sad reality is that it’s still perfectly legal in the US to be fired for your sexual orientation in 29 states; [the] same is true in 34 states for gender identity,” says Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).
“The laws give licence to discriminate and there are real risks for people’s careers and their livelihoods.”
Anderson Cooper’s reveal
The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.
I have always been very open and honest about this part of my life with my friends, my family, and my colleagues. In a perfect world, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business, but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted. I’m not an activist, but I am a human being and I don’t give that up by being a journalist.
In the UK, where employment discrimination based on sexual identity has been illegal since 2003, laws have not managed to eliminate homophobic behaviour in the workplace.
“Our survey found that 800,000 people in the workplace witnessed physical homophobic violence, and 6% of the UK workforce have witnessed homophobic bullying. It may be a comment like ‘I hope you go to hell and your children too’,” says Colleen Humphrey, director of workplace for Stonewall, a gay-rights organisation in the UK.
“People who work in fields with safety equipment tell me that the safety equipment has been tampered with.”
There are other hazards in the professional world: -a spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently resigned once his sexuality was made public, drawing vicious online taunts, and a lawyer in Virginia was denied a judicial position because legislatures worried he could not be impartial on issues like gay marriage.
But those were political casualties. Both Humphrey and Cole-Schwartz say that the corporate culture is shifting rapidly.
“Huge majorities of Fortune 500 companies forbid discrimination outside of what the laws require. On one hand you have permissible discrimination from a legal standpoint, but increasingly that kind of discrimination is not tolerated,” says Cole-Schwartz.
Some corporate fields are shifting faster than others.
“Anecdotally, the fields you think of that are not perhaps as accommodating for other diverse groups are similar for the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community,” says Karen Sumberg, executive vice president of the Center for Talent Innovation, singling out “heavy industry, engineering”.
“Finance is ahead of the game on this topic, but law is not,” she says.
Double lives
In explaining his silence on the issue, Cooper said he was at least partly more interested in reporting the news than reporting on his private life. Many LGBT employees feel the same. “A lot of people are private people,” says Mercer. “I understand the reluctance to discuss sexuality at work.”
But the pressure many people may feel to keep their private life extremely private can be detrimental both to employee and company.
“Instead of concentrating on having to switch switch pronouns, tell lies, and conceal details of their lives, they can concentrate on their professional lives,” says Sumberg. “For companies, there’s more trust and better talent retention.”
While the HRC and Stonewall emphasise the importance of companies creating safe environments for a diversity of employees, gay workers in some firms can face a Catch-22.
“Support for LGBT issues has such a strong correlation to whether not people know LGBT Americans,” says Cole-Schwartz. “I think that the more someone can be out, the more he or she is going to be able to influence the perceptions of the people around them.”
In some cases, though, that means being put in the position of office trailblazer, a role not everyone finds themselves comfortable with.
That dilemma may be a temporary one, with the current “Generation Y” workforce described as being more prominently out at work than their predecessors, according to Karen Sumberg.
As people come out at younger and younger ages, experts say they are more likely to enter the workforce out of the closet and less likely to go back in for professional appearances – which will create a more inclusive work environment for employees of all ages.
“Over a 20-year span it’s been an incredible change,” says Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York. “It’s one of the most fast-lifting stigma that I can think of.”
Entertainment Weekly Article: CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper Finally Comes Out Of The Glass Closet Declares He Is Homosexual!!!
CNN anchor and daytime talk show host Anderson Cooper has publicly declared he’s gay.
In discussing last week’s Entertainment Weekly cover story on the emerging trend of celebrities nonchalantly coming out of the closet, Cooper revealed his sexuality to Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan emailed Cooper about the story, noting that public figures revealing their sexuality still matters, even if many are no longer startled by the news. The 45-year-old newsman has always been private about his personal life and has long been rumored to be gay.
“We still have pastors calling for the death of gay people, bullying incidents and suicides among gay kids, and one major political party dedicated to ending the basic civil right to marry the person you love,” Sullivan wrote. “So these ‘non-events’ are still also events of a kind; and they matter. The visibility of gay people is one of the core means for our equality.”
To which Cooper responded:
Andrew, as you know, the issue you raise is one that I’ve thought about for years. Even though my job puts me in the public eye, I have tried to maintain some level of privacy in my life. Part of that has been for purely personal reasons. I think most people want some privacy for themselves and the people they are close to.
But I’ve also wanted to retain some privacy for professional reasons. Since I started as a reporter in war zones 20 years ago, I’ve often found myself in some very dangerous places. For my safety and the safety of those I work with, I try to blend in as much as possible, and prefer to stick to my job of telling other people’s stories, and not my own. I have found that sometimes the less an interview subject knows about me, the better I can safely and effectively do my job as a journalist. …
Recently, however, I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something – something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true.
I’ve also been reminded recently that while as a society we are moving toward greater inclusion and equality for all people, the tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible. There continue to be far too many incidences of bullying of young people, as well as discrimination and violence against people of all ages, based on their sexual orientation, and I believe there is value in making clear where I stand.
The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.
I have always been very open and honest about this part of my life with my friends, my family, and my colleagues. In a perfect world, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business, but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted…
Cooper’s full statement to Sullivan is here.
NPR Article: More Single Gay & Heterosexual Men Are Deciding To Start Their Own Families.
B.J. Holt always wanted to be a dad. As he approached 40, with no life partner in sight, he felt a version of the ticking biological clock.
“The ‘having the children thing’ started to overwhelm the desire to have the relationship first,” Holt says. “They sort of switched on me.”
So Holt decided to go it alone. A few years ago, he used an egg donor and a surrogate to create a family of his own.
First came Christina, now 4, a strawberry-blond bundle of energy who loves to stage ballet performances in the living room of their New York City apartment.
Little brother Payson is 2, and dissolves into giggles when daddy swings him up to his shoulder for a bounce.
Challenging Stereotypes
When Holt decided to have kids, he didn’t know any other single dad by choice. But family and friends were ecstatic and supportive.
As for strangers, Holt has gotten used to their assumptions about his family. He laughs as he recalls driving through a toll booth on a recent weekend.
If a guy gets called because his kid is sick and he has to leave, it’s like, ‘Where’s your wife?’
– Brian Tessier, founder of a hotline for prospective single fathers
“There I was, in the car with my two kids in the backseat,” he says, “and I was fumbling for the money. And [the woman in the tollbooth] said, ‘Take your time, take your time. Daddy’s without the mom today!’ ” Holt says he just smiled and drove on.
Holt is gay. Steve Majors, communications director for the same-sex advocacy group Family Equality Council, says many young gay men once believed living openly gay meant not having children.
“Either you were in a heterosexual relationship and having children, or you were gay,” Majors says. “You couldn’t have both.”
But with the rise of same-sex marriage, gay men have pioneered the use of reproductive technology to have children. Majors says single gay men now email him or show up at parenting seminars, wanting to learn more about starting a family.
At the same time, gender roles for straight men are evolving. With more stay-at-home dads, and fathers generally spending more time caring for kids, advocates say men are realizing they don’t necessarily need a wife to be a parent.
Brian Tessier recently started 411-4-DAD, a hotline for prospective single fathers. “I think we probably right now are up to about 30 calls a month,” he says.
Tessier adopted two boys through foster care. He’s gay, but he says half the calls he gets are from straight men. Many believe they can’t legally adopt on their own, he says.
Tessier assures them that’s not true, though they may well face stigma and suspicion.
“I think that it’s a bias on the part of the agencies and the system itself that questions men’s ability and their intentions of why they would want to be a single father,” he says.
Tessier also sees lingering sexism in the workplace.
“If a mom is in a meeting and all of a sudden she gets called because her kid is sick, nobody raises an eyebrow,” he says. “But if a guy gets called because his kid is sick and he has to leave, it’s kind of like, ‘Where’s your wife?’ ”
‘I Will Always Be There To Love Them’
The Williams Institute, a think-tank on same-sex issues at the University of California, Los Angeles, finds there were more than one million never-married men — both gay and straight — raising children in 2010.
Gary Gates, a demographer with the institute, says that’s three times more than two decades ago. The census doesn’t ask how many of those men are raising children alone versus with an unmarried partner, or if they are single fathers by choice, but adoption and surrogacy agencies say they are seeing more such dads — and not just in the U.S.
Avi Brecher, an Israeli, has traveled the globe to create a family. Speaking one evening via Skype, he was holding 3-month-old Ariel, born this spring to a surrogate in Minnesota. Daniel, 6, adopted from Guatemala, was at his side.
Related NPR Stories
Gifting Birth: A Woman Helps Build Other Families
Surrogate Charity Lovas has given birth to eight children; three of them are her own.
Making Babies: 21st Century Families
NPR explores how advances in reproductive technology are changing when and how we create families.
Brecher says his dream from his mid-20s was “to have a family with three children and a dog.” He was married briefly, but it didn’t work out. He’d still love to find a wife, he says, but as a pediatrician, he’s confident he can raise his kids well on his own.
Still, he makes sure the children spend time with women, including his mother and a nurse who baby-sits them.
“If it’s female friends of mine,” Brecher says, “I let them hold Ariel so she can feel the touch of a female, which I believe is different from a male.”
Back in New York, B.J. Holt keeps a photo of a smiling, pregnant woman on a table right by the front door. She’s the surrogate who carried both of his kids. He calls her their “special friend,” and she has already visited twice. Holt says he knows his kids will eventually have questions about their family.
“Even though I’m going to have a struggle of getting them to understand why we don’t have a mommy in our picture, they will always know that I’m there to care for them,” he says. “I will always be there to love them. And that’s all that ultimately matters.”
Interesting Article: Why Are Gay & Straight People Afraid Of Bisexual Men?
Will Men Ever Be Able to Come Out of the Bisexual Closet?
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| William Hamon |
In the porn industry, several men that I know do not disclose their bisexuality to employers, nor do they do bisexual porn, for fear of being discriminated against or losing jobs. One such porn star (who wished to remain anonymous), said that several female co-stars would not appear with him on screen due to that fact.
The more time I spend writing about sex, more and more of my male friends and acquaintances have brought up this topic as a source of frustration. While many seem to be comfortable with experimenting sexually, they feel they can only do so as long as no one else knows about it. A friend of mine and fan of the swinger site Lifestyle Lounge, checked bi-comfortable on his profile and then received several hateful responses via chat, saying bi men were not welcome in the swinger community. He changed his status back to straight, in order to avoid further aggressive behavior.
Bisexuality is often seen as a cop-out, a phase, or an all-out denial from people on every side of the sexual spectrum. Again, these are all fear-based reactions to a subject that makes people extremely uncomfortable. If you are a man, you are encouraged to have a lot of sexual partners, but you are never encouraged to be sexual with other men.
Straight men are barely even allowed to be on the receiving end of anal sex with women because it’s seen as gay behavior. Never mind that a lot of men happen to enjoy anal stimulation. If society says you like to take it up the ass, then you must be gay. This is the kind of thinking that leads to self-hatred and feeds outdated gender stereotypes. Even in my enlightened sex-positive community, men are very uneasy even broaching this subject.
On a personal level, I think it’s hot when a man is sexual with other men. In the handful of times I’ve jerked off to porn, it was always the guy-on-guy variety. I also enjoy having threesomes or foursomes with men who interact with one another and then with me. But, I am not all women, and some women can’t handle it because according to the stereotype, it is just a matter of time before the bi guy discovers he is gay and leaves her.
Breaking News: Incendiary Research Study Claims Children Of Lesbian Parents Lead Miserable Lives!
Controversial UT study on gay parenting sparks debate
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A new UT study stating children with gay parents turn out resoundingly different than children with heterosexual, married parents has spurred LGBT advocates across the nation into the offensive.
Led by associate professor Mark Regnerus, the New Family Structures Study appeared in the June issue of Social Science Research and sought to answer the question, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships?” At the end of the study, Regnerus found that adult children who grew up with gay parents, particularly lesbian parents, fared worse socially, emotionally and in relationships than children who had married, heterosexual parents. One theme in the data was instability in LGBT households.
His findings sparked debate online Monday, and today four major LGBT organizations, the Family Equality Council, Human Rights Campaign, Freedom to Marry group and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, issued a joint statement condemning Regnerus’ research for seeking to disparage LGBT parents.
“The paper is fundamentally flawed and intentionally misleading,” the statement read. “It doesn’t even measure what it claims to be measuring. Most of the children examined in the paper were not being raised by parents in a committed same-sex relationship, whereas the other children in the study were being raised in two-parent homes with straight parents.”
The Witherspoon Institute, a conservative research organization working to enhance public understanding of moral foundations, and the Bradley Foundation, which supports conservative principles and government, contributed funding to the New Family Structures study. In his findings, Regnerus said funding sources played no role in the study.
Regnerus and others in the UT Population Research Center, a research entity that focuses primarily on topics such as parenting, as well as partnering and human development, analyzed more than 15,000 people ages 18-39. Out of the total respondents, 248 indicated their mother or father had a same-sex relationship at some point while growing up.
In a piece for Slate, Regnerus pointed to findings in recent years suggesting homosexual parents are just as good as heterosexual married parents and in some studies, better. Regnerus said the drastic difference in his findings from those of other researchers was a result of better research methods, particularly his use of a random sampling approach rather than locating and surveying small minorities.
Regnerus said he is not claiming sexual orientation is at fault in these worse outcomes and does not know about any kids currently being raised by lesbian and gay parents.
“Their parents may be forging more stable relationships in an era that is more accepting and supportive of gay and lesbian couples,” Regnerus wrote. “But that is not the case among the previous generation, and thus social scientists, parents and advocates would do well from here forward to avoid simply assuming the kids are all right.”
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