Today, I heard a caller on a radio show say that Dave Chappelle was simply saying that the life of a black person should mean as much as one in the LGBTQ community. The fact that she ignored the existence of LGBTQ black people is the problem here and I don't think it is being stated enough.
The majority of attention seems to be the ugly things which Chappelle said about transgender people, but I think that the erasure or minimization of LGBTQ people in his mind is the root of the problem. Chappelle implies a belief which is prevalent in the black heterosexual community.
This is not to say that the majority in the black community are homophobic or transphobic, but truth be told, there seems to be an "either/or" mentality with some heterosexual black folks. Either you are LGBTQ or black. To these folks, you can't be both. Your identities can't overlap. When they talk about system racism or violence against black people in general, they refuse to acknowledge that LGBTQ people of color have particular problems with those injustices. And when talking about the black family, the black church, black survival in general, we are overlooked.
While Chappelle and his followers claim that LGBTQ lives mean more than black lives in America, there is an epidemic of violence affecting the black trans community. In 2020, 44 trans women were murdered and the majority of them were black. I doubt that hardly any of these folks clinging to Chappelle as if he is Jesus on the cross and they are the Virgin Mary would even care if they were aware of this.
Apparently in spite of what many of them say about "Black Lives Matter," ours don't.
