Leonard Pitts On Black Voters And California Proposition 8

The columnist writes that as African Americans voted for Barack Obama and "struck a blow against a history that has taught us all too well how it feels to be demeaned and denied," "some black folk chose to demean and deny someone else." African Americans supported the passage of Proposition 8, an initiative denying recognition of same-sex marriages, by a margin of more than 2-1. Noting that "the black experience and the gay experience are not equivalent," Pitts states: "Gay people were not the victims of mass kidnap or mass enslavement. No war was required to strike the shackes from their limbs. But that's not the same as saying blacks and gays have nothing in common. On the contrary, gay 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."