Every Color of the Rainbow

Fri, 06/10/2011 - 6:50pm by pkooger

Ah, the month of June! The days are long, summer is in the air, and people across the country and around the world are celebrating LGBT pride! For those of us sporting rainbow flags, it’s important to remember what they symbolize; diversity and inclusion.

It’s no secret that the most highly represented color in the rainbow is white. White privilege and the invisibility of other ethnicities in the LGBT community has been a constant problem ever since there was an LGBT community to speak of. Marlon Riggs was one of the first to confront the position of gay African-American men in his 1989 film, Tongues Untied. Fifteen years later, Dwight A. McBride released a collection of essays on race and sexuality called, Why I hate Abercrombie & Fitch, demonstrating that not much has changed. An assortment of recent articles, online essays, and blog postings has been compiled to show the current state of affairs, including the experience of LGBT Asian-Americans.

Many of the wisest and brightest minds to write about the intersections of race and sexuality come from the school of black feminism. Authors such as Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Barbara Smith, and many others have been fighting and educating for equality for years.
For additional reading, check out these titles: Dangerous Liaisons, The Truth That Never Hurts, One More River to Cross.

Let’s make this June a time to recognize the inequalities that exist, take a step away from our own habits, and look around at all the people who have different features, different cultures, and different stories than our own. We’ll all benefit!