He wasn’t an unhappy man. His lips were often pressed together in what might be perceived as a snobbish sneer, but they were actually capable of smiling. The hands folded in his lap as opera blared through his headphones could lead his arms into a surprisingly warm embrace. People looked at his pressed slacks and his neatly buttoned shirt and correctly assumed that he was an academic of some sort. The thin, gold, framed glasses helped give that away, too. Those, and the faraway look on his face as he watched the same blur outside the window that he had watched for the last five years.

She had been taking this train for the last six years. As long as they had been riding together, they never spoke; eye contact and a small nod were all they had ever exchanged. She always had a book with her and spent most of her time engrossed in it. Every so often, she would read a passage and look up, thumb and forefinger swinging up to catch her chin as she turned toward the window to think. Sometimes she noticed his reflection.

They only ever rode together in the morning. She was never there when he and his backpack and his half-empty lunch pail got on his return train.

Today, as he looked down the row to find his usual seat, she crossed his mind. He wondered, briefly, how she got home every day, what she did. He didn’t know whether she stayed in the city later than he did or whether she left earlier. It perplexed him that he did not know this, or even her name. He could not recall what her voice sounded like.

This shouldn’t have bothered him. He had barely ever looked at her. Yet here he was, almost in a panic over it. For the last five years, they had spent two hours a day together. That is ten hours a week, nearly two days a month, nearly three weeks a year that they had spent sitting two yards apart and knowing nothing of each other. He pulled the headphones down around his neck and rubbed his hand over his mouth. Something about that wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right.

He had never had such a feeling before. This concern that there was something terribly wrong with knowing nothing about someone who happened to be little more than an ornament in his daily routine. That is the way the world is. People are furniture until they are not.

No, people are always people. He had spent the last five years content to sit and watch the blurs in the window, forgetting.

The next day, he decided, he would say hello.

Photo by Flickr user danellesheree

I understand where this sentiment comes from, but I cannot say that I agree. I find this slogan problematic: it fosters the idea that racism against the African American community is a thing of the past and it appropriates the narrative of a struggle that is still very much going on, our President-elect notwithstanding. When I first read the reports of voter statistics and saw the overwhelming percentage of African Americans who voted for California Proposition 8, I was immediately concerned about the effect this would have within the LGBT movement; a wounded community would start looking for scapegoats. Seventy percent is a huge number, but people (specifically white gay men) have been far too quick to say “well it’s because of Obama,” as though gay rights were sacrificed for a step forward against racism. There seem to be people who are intent on blaming African American homophobia for Tuesday’s results instead of recognizing the fact that LGBT movement has largely ignored people of color and made queer people of color nearly invisible. As a queer Cambodian woman, I empathize with black gays’ & lesbians’ sense of being ignored and uninvolved by mainstream LGBT activism.

The repercussions of this invisibility and lack of outreach are becoming apparent. A UCLA student wrote to Rod 2.0 that someone at the protest in front of the Mormon temple in Westwood shouted at him: “YOU NIGGER. . . If your people want to call me a FAGGOT, I will call you a nigger.” It is appalling that white people would target black people who are actually participating in a protest against Prop 8 and, worse, that they seem to think that experiencing an act of discrimination is license to discriminate against others. This is not acceptable and only shows that the LGBT community needs to deal with the issue of racism as much as people of color must deal with homophobia.

I did not witness any blatantly racist behavior at the march on Saturday, but I was very aware that there were few black people in crowd. That in itself is symptomatic of the invisibility of black gays and lesbians in both communities. It’s arguable that the black gay community faces some of the most difficult challenges with homophobia, racism, and the inevitable clash of both.

One man at the march held a sign with the 7 of 10 statistic and the words “We supported ur rights.” I couldn’t articulate to him at the time why his sign made me so uncomfortable, but I realize now that it was because of the language. When I read “we supported your rights,” I immediately questioned who constitutes that “We”? The sign implies that racism isn’t a problem in the LGBT community and to say “your rights” is to suggest that there is a distinction between the rights of Black people and the rights of LGBT people–it divides the overlapping communities and plays King Solomon with Black gays and lesbians. The point of civil rights activism is that there are rights which belong to everyone and language like this isn’t going to help the cause gain allies.

Yes, civil rights for gays is the movement of the moment, but let us please not forget that the movement to end racism is far from over, and let us not further victimize each other in this process.