Some blacks forgot sting of discrimination – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com 

No, the black experience and the gay experience are not equivalent. Gay people were not the victims of mass kidnap or mass enslavement.

No war was required to strike the shackles from their limbs.

But that’s not the same as saying blacks and gays have nothing in common. On the contrary, gay people, like black people, know what it’s like to be left out, lied about, scapegoated, discriminated against, held up, beat down, denied a job, a loan or a life. And, too, they know how it feels to sit there and watch other people vote upon your very humanity, just as if those other people had a right. So beg pardon, but black people should know better. I feel the same when Jews are racist, or gays anti-Semitic. Those who bear scars from intolerance should be the last to practice it.

Sadly, we are sometimes the first. That tells you something about how seductive a thing intolerance is, how difficult it can be to resist the serpent whisper that says it’s OK to ridicule and marginalize those people over there because they look funny, or talk funny, worship funny or love funny. So in the end, we struggle with the same imperative as from ages ago: to overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. But if last week’s vote taught us nothing else, it taught us that persistence plus faith equals change.

And we shall overcome.

Some blacks forgot sting of discrimination – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com