this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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All human skin colours (including "white") are shades of brown. The flag has a brown stripe for people of colour.
So if white is a shade of brown, then why is that stripe there? To signify what? That we all have skin?
The social construct of whiteness excludes so-called white people from having "colour" or "brownness". These are objectively untrue of people with pale skin, because cream is a colour and a shade of brown. But white supremacists and white culture at large deny objective reality, and substitute their own. This is why the term "people of colour" is able to exist. If it weren't for racists pretending white isn't a colour, it wouldn't make sense. In society, white people are privileged by being treated as though they do not have race. The privilege of being white is never having to think about your race if you don't want to. It's the default. If you say "a worker" or "a politician" or "a firefighter" or "a woman" or "a gay person", society teaches people to think of a white person in all of those cases. Being nonwhite is considered a character trait, and being white isn't. People of colour were often given less depth in older movies, and excluded from being the protagonist, and that's still happening, because society says whiteness is the default. That whiteness... isn't a characteristic. Within this social context, a brown line which is objectively the colour of "white skin", subjectively excludes white people due to their social privilege.
I don't want a flag that doesn't include everyone for some weird queer theory or hetronormative analysis reason. 🙂😉
And that's why the rainbow is enough. It speaks beyond all these complications. Adding brown to it implies that brown people were not part of the rainbow, that more need to be added. All we really needed to do was indicate that brown people like any people fall under the same gay flag, regardless of the current existing social dynamic relating to race.
If the rainbow had been enough, then we wouldn't have ended up with racist queers in the community. That's why the rest of us decided to send a clearer message. Are you interested in sending a clear message?
It was always enough. I think your message isn't clear nor helpful.
Then why are there racists why fly the rainbow flag?
/: I don't like racists but I can't stop them from being gay or taking pride in being gay or flying this flag or any flag. Hopefully by meeting other people different than them, they will stop being racist and grow as people. I don't think SWJing will help in any way, probably it makes it worse. I don't like that vomit flag and I won't fly it, but you can if you like 🤷♂️
What a cowardly response. You dismiss all possibility of actually working to make things better, and choose hopes and wishes instead. Your argument is that trying to make things better is bad? How dishonourable.
My argument is: don't fix what's not broken.
This hyped obsession with skin color irks me as a "gay person of color". This is a flag to celebrate all sexualities, it's redundant to add the brown or black to it for purely SWJ-y reasons. I think your response is complicated and unpractical, it also kills me how it's okay to make sweeping statements about white people like that's not some form of racism rofl
Like have that flag if you like, but as a "gay person of color", I will not, and I will always point out how vomity it looks, how it lacks good design, and how it never helped.