“But the marginalization is different and they have trouble seeing that it’s different because gay white people are more closely aligned with straight white people than with black LGBT people.”Įmbarrassingly, I can draw on personal experience. “People think that because they identify with one marginalized group, LGBT, that they know and can identify with other marginalized groups, black,” said Denzell Faison, a 24-year-old gay, African American law student. (Mark Blinch/Canadian Press via AP)Īs much as members of the white LGBT community understand bias and hate, all shades are not the same. To identify as LGBT and black.Īlexandria Williams talks about the Black Lives Matter movement during a sit-in at the annual Pride Parade in Toronto. What does Pierce mean by “it?” To be black. “I definitely think that there are a lot of white queer, trans folks who just don’t get it,” India Pierce, 27, who is black and queer, told me after the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile last week. In effect, too much #AllLivesMatter and not enough #BlackLivesMatter. People have told me I’m no longer part of the queer community because my Blackness has no place there.”īoth north and south of the border, criticism - rightful, in my view - is being leveled at the white LGBT community for not speaking up forcefully enough about the killings of black men by police in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis. I have been called a “n-” more times than I care to count. Soon after, chapter co-founder Janaya Khan, who identifies as black and queer, wrote in Now: Toronto: “Since the action, I have received hate mail and death threats, primarily from gay-identifying men. The backlash was immediate and harsh, with the BLM group accused of bullying, extortion and being anti-white. Williams accused white organizers of seething with “a historical and current culture of anti-blackness” in the Gay Star News. With those words, the group’s float abruptly stopped, halting the parade for 30 minutes. “We are calling you out!” shouted Alexandria Williams, co-founder of Toronto’s Black Lives Matter chapter. The long-standing schism between the black and white LGBT communities came into sharp focus at Toronto’s Pride parade earlier this month. Members of the Black Lives Matter movement stand amid colored clouds from smoke grenades at the annual Pride Parade in Toronto on July 3.