From the Bay Area Reporter:
In San Francisco African American LGBT seniors often face a double jeopardy in terms of discrimination. Within the black community, they struggle to overcome homophobia. In the LGBT community, they encounter race-based prejudices.
“We’ve gotten burdened at both ends of the candle. By the African American community, which until recently tended to be more conservative relative to the LGBT community within its own ranks,” said Larry Saxxon, 61, a gay black man who served on the city’s LGBT Aging Policy Task Force. “A lot of the African American community still works under the larger social, psychological, and political tendencies of the church.”
Saxxon added that, “on the other hand, we’ve gotten burned by the LGBT mainstream community at large because of racism.”
Those experiences can hamper elder LGBT African Americans’ willingness to seek out support within either community, noted Saxxon.
“You have a very narrow margin in which you can survive and glean support when you can’t fall back on racial bloodlines because of homophobia and you cannot fall back unconditionally on the LGBT community because of racism,” he said. “You have a very small margin within which to work.”
Alas, no different here in NYC. A national disgrace!