This week marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the seminal civil rights rally and site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, organized in large part by Bayard Rustin, a gay Black man. The fight for racial justice is far from over in this country, even as the fight for LGBT equality picks up steam — and the two movements, while not identical, are nevertheless interwoven. Here are a few items of late that touch on the intersection of race and LGBT parenting.
Aisha Moodie-Mills, Senior Fellow and Director of the FIRE (Fighting Injustice to Reach Equality) Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP), has two pieces worth a read, which show the interconnections between racial justice, economic justice, and LGBT equality. In an interview at Metro Weekly, she observes:
By almost every metric LGBT families, families raising children — particularly those of color — are more likely to be living in poverty than anybody else in America. Same-sex families, particularly lesbians of color who are raising children in the South, have a major issue. We have allowed our movement to become so upper-middle-class, dominated by this kind of myth of gay affluence, that we miss the mark in talking about economic security and economic justice.
And in a brief at the CAP site, she writes (with colleague Preston Mitchum) further about the same in “Lessons from Bayard Rustin: Why Economic Justice Is an LGBT Issue.” She notes:
Antiquated family policies that assume families are monolithic nuclear structures headed by two different-sex parents ignore the reality of the diversity of families that exists within both the black and LGBT communities. The black family has historically been nontraditional, with children being cared for by extended families of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other so-called kin. Rustin, as well as one of the authors of this brief, was raised by his grandparents. Similarly, LGBT families may consist of nonbiological parents, LGBT parents, and those who are married or not.
The lack of legal recognition of these families makes it more difficult for them to safeguard their children and contributes to their economic vulnerability.
She calls for several state and federal measures to “modernize and equalize family policies for all families, especially those headed by LGBT parents,” which you can read in the full brief.
And at Oregon Live, Rick Settersten writes about his experience as the White father of two Black children. “Race is real and tangible, not an abstract concept. And the racism that comes with it permeates our lives,” he says, and gives examples to prove his point. (For more from a similar perspective, check out American Family: Things Racial, by partners Stacy Cusulos and Barbara Waugh, the White adoptive mothers of two Black children.)