Tuesday July 29; GLBT, Asian-American and Indian-American minority issues

It’s funny how fears of being discriminated against seems to be a phenomenon that knows no boundaries. As Alan van Capelle, Executive Director of the Empire State Pride Agenda and speaking on the behalf of LGBT-Rights shared a remembrance of his early youth with us, being an teenager he blew out the candles of his birthday cake whishing that he wouldn’t be gay. When I was that young I tried to trick myself – since an important thing (which I don’t remember) turned out just the opposite of what I had planned it to be, I figured that if I kept repeating to myself that I was gay, clearly I would turn out not to be. Well, it didn’t work that way. However, the main insight of this little anecdote should be that even young teenagers on their way of courageously clearing a path through the jungle of unfamiliar rising emotions, they already sense the hostility of society towards sexual dispositions that are somewhat different from what is perceived by the majority as the “normal” sexuality or even just “normal” behaviour in the eyes of a few. Speaking of this early learned, or shall I say taught, inner fear or even immanent threat by society, it seems even more unclear to me, why some people take the argument, that being gay is something you happily chose for or decide against or a matter of “lifestyle”, which the word already includes the notion of there being a choice. I am sure, the kids on the streets that Kai Wright later on described, himself being a Journalist and devoted to the subject of (mostly) black gay kids and young adults in NYC in his recent book, would have loved to have had this choice, after having found the courage to come out having watched stereotype-representing but nevertheless gay liberty promoting serials like “Will and Grace” on TV, and consequently being thrown out of their families and homes and, moreover, as a result of no “gay spaces” in their surroundings and neighbourhoods ending up having to work the streets for living and having no other choice than putting their lives at risk (3000-4000 black kids in New York – every night that is! Not to speak of other backgrounds).

Be it what it is, I found Allens self-conscious presentation and strategy quiet intriguing since he mentioned that he wanted to make the state of New York something he called an “engined state”, meaning that his organisation, being structured like a union and mainly working together with 3rd party validators of the lower management level next to the top decision makers, was trying to install a catalogue of specific LGBT-rights in the State of New York in order to along with a few other states serve as a model for the rest of the country - out of the strong belief that revolutions in the past have only taken place, if there was a league of good examples already applying certain practices wished for. He also made a strong argument that language does matter, referring to the question of gay marriage, which civil union will never be an equivalent to, because it is not guaranteed the equal amount of rights, and therefore always somewhat dehumanizing the people concerned compared to heterosexual people. In my eyes a society accepting this biased treatment can never consider itself ideally democratic or even humane, because this would require treating all humans and participants equal and therefore guaranteeing to each human the same amount of rights - and not producing something like a second class. It’s not like we haven’t seen in the past, what thinking in classes can mean for a society as a whole.

Those were not the only topics of the day, though. Vanessa Leung spoke on Asian Americans and Bethany Berger gave a lecture on Native American Communities. Most striking to me was the thought of the strong tendency to connect manifest prejudice with whatever minority. Such as seeing the Asian Americans, the body as such itself consisting of a wide range of nationalities and complexions and therefore making this category a non-representative one, as the “model minority”. Being envious for their successes in education, but blending out that mathematics and natural sciences are the only areas that have the least amount of cultural variation, therefore almost being the only option. In the outcome, because they seem to be doing well as a minority somewhat neutralizing them, so they become invisible. Or the Native Americans, who because of the wrongly imposed connected image or stereotype of wilderness, simplicity and nature, are being perceived as stone hearted capitalists; just because of their natural und historically understandable strive for economic success, in this case in the gaming industry. Again blending out such things as the status of a “domestic depending nation”, meaning recognition, but not to give them a complete recognition after all, as well as the dangers and difficulties their representatives of culture have to face. I guess the majority in a society generally tends to take a very conceited and simple stand on very complicated issues.