While I scrambled to assemble posts this week about the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on same-sex marriage, I simultaneously watched pain flood the streets of Baltimore on my TV screen.
The oral arguments for same-sex marriage were in large part a celebration for the LGBT equality movement. It was just a decade ago that antigay marriage amendments swept the country over a couple election cycles. Yet now, the movement seemed miraculously poised to score a big win that would bring both legal marriage rights and a powerful affirmation of our humanity to every corner of this country. Whether that outcome proves true, still remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the equality movement is expectant—hopeful that the dawn of a new day is upon us.
By contrast, the scene in Baltimore was a poignant moment of pure anguish—a festering wound that deepened by the day. Far from getting a momentous forward push, the headwind seemed to stiffen for a movement that LGBT Americans have drawn so much inspiration and so many lessons from. As I watched the two dramas unfold, I was immediately taken back two years to the week in June in which the Supreme Court issued back-to-back rulings: one pushed equality forward for gays by overturning the Defense of Marriage Act while the other set equality back for black Americans by gutting the Voting Rights Act.
The movements, which have not always sat comfortably together, now seem disconcertingly out of step with one another, which is not to suggest that they are at odds. And yet the commonality between the two movements is that, to their core, they are a yearning for respect—respect for our community, for our families and for ourselves. While the LGBT lawyers at the Supreme Court sought for our love to be recognized equally in the eyes of the law, the kids on the streets of Baltimore made an urgent plea to be seen by a country that seems to have either willfully or willingly forgotten about them.
As a gay American who has both covered the LGBT movement and fought for it over the last decade, it felt almost unsettling to be seeking currency from a system that has systematically devalued so many others. Even as our lawyers argued away in the court room, elected officials—including President Obama—referred to the kids who had taken to the streets on Monday night as "thugs."
Please head below the fold for more on the tale of two dramas.
It was perhaps all too easy to understand the president’s frustration after watching destruction burn through a Baltimore neighborhood that so many residents had fought to build up. But as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer tried to pound home President Obama’s message of condemnation in an interview, #blacklivesmatter activist DeRay McKesson put the violence in a different light, even as he made the case for peaceful protests.
"I don’t have to condone it to understand it," he said of the Baltimore uprising.
In some ways, Baltimore has been harder for America to explain than Ferguson because it is not simply the byproduct of the rampant racism that many Americans wish not to associate with. The police force in Baltimore, a majority black city, is about half black. So is the mayor and the police commissioner. When NPR’s Steve Inskeep
interviewed residents on the streets near where Freddie Gray was arrested, they suggested racism wasn’t at play in Gray’s death.
This reality was plain to Taiwan Parker, who lives in the neighborhood where Gray was arrested. He told us that police-community relations have long been sour. And yet, he said, "It ain't no race thing — it's not a race thing at all."
His friend Michael Johnson agreed. In fact, much of West Baltimore seemed to agree. We interviewed 16 residents — men and women, white and black, young and old. Hardly anybody spoke of Freddie Gray's death as a racial incident.
Parker views the trouble with police as an issue of class.
In this neighborhood where Freddie Gray was arrested, rundown, brick row-houses line the streets. A lot of drugs are sold — a lot. "I'm a three-time felon," one man volunteered within minutes of meeting us.
The problem for America is that if you take racism away as a causation in Gray’s death, what we are left with is very much a microcosm of the nation’s economic divide. Here’s how Dr. James Peterson, Director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University, described it on MSNBC Wednesday.
"Baltimore is America. It is a city that is municipally indicative of the income gaps—the extreme wealth disparities—across this nation. And so addressing those things at the federal and national level is just as important as addressing them directly and structurally in the city of Baltimore."
This is not to dismiss racism as a very real problem in 21st-century America. As a white woman, who am I to say that racism isn't a root cause of Baltimore's anguish? After all, Freddie Gray's death, which
has been ruled a homicide, is just the latest instance in a long succession of black men who have died at the hands of police brutality.
But it is to suggest that what’s happening in Baltimore goes way beyond the runaway racism of one particular city or state or region. It speaks to a nationwide economic divide that’s been exacerbated by systemic racism, making it much harder to lay at the doorstep of someone else besides ourselves.
And so, as the week wore on, it felt oddly privileged and perhaps a little naive to think that nine justices might actually solve some of the inequities that LGBT Americans face, especially when many of us are people of color. In many ways, the legal protections we seek—not just in marriage, but in all areas of our lives—are milestones the Civil Rights Movement passed at least a half century ago. If there’s one thing that became clear this week, it’s that the work of equality is never done.