Black Lives Matter brought us back to the 60s

On Sunday, July 3, Black Lives Matter put Toronto Pride Parade on hold to poke at the middle-class white homosexuals, mainly gay men, who have got comfy in their feelings of being included in the majority. This was to remind us how much we have forgot about the history of human rights movements of 60s and 70s and all those groups who stood side by side to claim for rights from the governments, from the white middle-class heterosexual men. Women, black people, Aboriginal people, visible minorities, LGBT activists, all challenged the government for the same purpose: inclusion and recognition.

But what has happened since then? All those groups have been equally included in society? Hell no! We are living in a system where women, specifically single mothers, are still one of the most vulnerable populations, black people are racialized and overrepresented in incarceration rates in Canada with upsurge of 69% during the past few years, Aboriginals are forced into prisons as their new residential schools, and visible minorities are deskilled and discriminated against in the job market. But this very system has endowed a high level of recognition of rights to white middle-class gay men that is unprecedented in history, and this is not a coincident.

White middle-class heterosexual men in control of the system were challenged during human rights movements of the 60s to hand out some rights to the minorities. Which group to pick for inclusion? The one that has the highest potential to easily assimilate into the image of white middle-class men, the one with enough money to spend and keep capitalism alive, the one that is potent enough to serve in military and further desires of neoliberalist Western states: white middle-class gay men.

Inclusion, or better to say normalization, of white middle-class gay men into the majority has truly enabled Western states to build and strengthen their politics and narratives of progressive multiculturalism. But this representation of inclusive multiculturalism, tokenistically showcased in Pride Parade, comes at expense of minorities who have been struggling since 60s to gain some limited rights. This is why Black Lives Matter’s action is reminder of the fact that human rights movements have not achieved its goals. It is great to see young white LGBT citizens feel safe and accepted. But it is agonizing to see gay men, who were once allies with other minorities in claiming for rights, have now joined the white middle-class heterosexuals in scolding BLM to ask for equal rights. Younger generation of LGBT community may not realize, but those who participated in human rights movements know very well how black people feel once they see a cop on street: helpless and unsafe.

BLM asked for exclusion of the police float from Pride Parade not because they do not want gay individuals to participate, but because the police force represents the system that is excluding minorities, that is disproportionately putting black people and Aboriginals in jail, that is refusing basic citizenship rights to visible minorities. Police float may make white middle-class gay men feel safe and accepted, but reminds other minorities of their sufferings. Being a white gay cop and marching in the Parade doesn’t mean that yesterday you didn’t harass a black person who might have also been gay.

This is not the end of the story though. Normalization of the white LGBT community not only has enabled the system to pride itself as a progressive state in domestic politics, it has also contributed to the elevation of this very discriminatory state through the narrative “gay friendly” “civilized” nation vs. those countries who do not respect their LGBT community the way we do, those “uncivilized” nations that should forcibly come our way. Interestingly, after what happened on Sunday, a white Canadian gay cop, who has served in military in Afghanistan, wrote an open letter expressing how disappointed he was because he was never made feel excluded before. Before rushing into victimizing the police, we should ask what this person was doing in Afghanistan. Whether he was there as ambulance driver or as sniper doesn’t make a difference. The point is Canadian state through narrative of progressive and civilized nation justifies its foreign intervention as if we have solved all domestic issues. Unsurprisingly though, these acts of exclusion and violence, at home or abroad, are now supported by white middle-class gay men who not only brush off the rights of their supposedly allies, women and people of color, but also voluntarily participate in denigrating other nations.

Unlike the 60s, it seems once included now, we tend to forget how it feels to be excluded.