Chuck Todd Spends Three Minutes Asking Mayor Pete if African-Americans May Be Too Homophobic...

[Celerity]

74. I am a mixed race lesbian, and I also know Atlanta a bit.

My sister lived in Buckhead, near Phipps Plaza for 4 years, whilst she was a dating one of her ex'bf's, and I visited her on multiple occasions. I would say that Atlanta (both white and non-white) is not nearly as conservative (with obvious and large exceptions) as the non-metro dwelling southern populace in general, with a fair amount of that due to a major influx of non-native southerners into the Metro Atlanta area.

I am half West Indian, and homophobia (often overt and quite widespread), is unfortunately endemic in many of the islands themselves and also our diaspora both in the US and also where I grew up, the UK (I am London-raised). Whilst maybe not as pervasive as it is within the West Indian (and Caribbean as a whole) community, my entire life experiences across a broad swathe of both geographical and socio-economic spectra show that our American communities of colour have far to go to help eradicate a deeply-set current of anti-LGBTQ bias. Having had two gay brothers in my own family has truly helped re-enforce this, unfortunately.

The myriad number of southern blacks (and people of colour in general) I know (both queer and straight, cis-gendered and not) have led me to have hope that this will be overcome, but also to be very aware that it is far from being a non-issue, especially amongst the older generations. The influence of the church within the A-A community, from my multiple perspectives (based upon my own observations, anecdotal experiences, and also empirical evidence) remains very strong, and unfortunately sometimes has a very regressive/reactionary streak contained within it at certain levels.