Race, Housing and Privilege, or More Reasons Why Race Still Matters

Malcolm X stated that segregation and separation had one key difference, “It’s only segregated when it’s controlled by someone from the outside (Dalmage, 2006:303).” The United States has a long history of using law and public policy to maintain the dominant power structure and aggregate power in the hands of whites. Much of this has played out in housing; making race and housing intrinsically tied to privilege. In this post I will discuss how social structures and individual actions were influential in shaping racial conflict, perpetuating and challenging inequality and establishing boundaries. I will also explore how this influenced our ideas about race, inequality and social justice.

In order to discuss the issues of race and housing I think it must first be established that race is, as Baldwin stated, not a biological reality, but a political one (Maly, 2011). Skin color, eye shape and hair texture vary across the globe, but these physical attributes have no meaning in and of themselves, only what we assign to it. We choose which physical attributes are important, organize people according these boundaries and then behave in a way which gives these categories meaning, thus creating races (Maly, 2011).  Proof of social construction can be found in the fluidity of the meaning we assign to these categories, changing them when it is in the best interest of those in power.

The construction of race as we know it, the hierarchy of white over black, began with expansion of European colonialism. As Europeans arrived they brought with them ethnocentric ideals and a hunger for resources which provided the reasoning behind and the motive for deeming native peoples as different and inferior. The European entrance into the Atlantic world, including the U.S., brought slavery. Although slavery had existed in various forms prior to the chattel slavery that came with the Atlantic slave trade, it was chattel slavery’s permanent and transgenerational nature which lead to Africans being identified with slavery. To be black was to be a slave and to be white was to be free, thus began the myth of white superiority.

                Although the idea of slavery seems far removed from the contemporary issue of housing, it is important to note how slavery and the notion of white superiority have influenced our ideas about race and in turn our public policy. First we must look at the creation and maintenance of racial borders. According to Heather Dalmage, racial boarders are created to protect goods and power and are maintained by “laws, language, cultural norms, images and individual action, as well as by interlocking with other borders, including the nation, religion, politics, sex, gender, race and age (Dalmage, 2006:302).” Racial borders are insidious because they are products of our history and seep into our socialization. They appear to be natural and normal, simply the way things have always been (Dalmage, 2006; Maly, 2011). Various borders between whiteness and blackness have been established to protect resources and power for whites, such as the legislation of blackness through the one-drop rule, anti-miscegenation laws and the perpetuation of racialized space (established in slavery) through Jim Crow.  Other ways in which the black/white border is maintained is through ideas about success and citizenship.

                In the U.S. homeownership is a sign of success (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Keflas, 2003; Guglielmo, 2004; Maly, 2005). This was especially true for white ethnics in the 1930s. For these white ethnics home ownership was an outward sign of their community, respectability and status in a society which had labeled them as outsiders and “questioned their ability and worth (Hirsch, 1983:188).” It was a way to become American (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996). Here we see the intersection of racial and national borders: to be an American was to be white and middle-class and white middle-class families owned homes. White ethnics did not have complete access to whiteness due to their connection to their ethnicity, such as the language they spoke, their religion and their tight-knit ethnic based communities. Their ability to gain high income jobs was curtailed by language barriers, low education levels and discrimination on the part of employers.

                White ethnics were largely able to purchase homes due to policy set in place by the government. Following the Great Depression, the Hoover administration identified the housing industry as a way to rebuild the badly bruised economy and went about establishing polices to encourage homeownership (Jackson, 1985).  In 1933 President Roosevelt established the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), which introduced the long-term, self amortizing mortgage, which had standardized payments extended over the life of the loan and extended loan life to 20 years (Jackson, 1985). This released the stigma that had been attached to mortgages, in the past middle-class families were expected to purchase a home out-and-out (Jackson, 1985).

                During this time the U.S. was also experiencing the Great Migration, when African Americans arrived in northern cities in droves seeking a new life with more opportunity away from racism in the Jim Crow south (Hirsch, 1983). African Americans would find that segregation and racism was still present in northern cities like Chicago and Detroit.  By 1920 in Chicago 85% of blacks lived in segregated housing in the large ghetto referred to as the South Side Black Belt (Hirsch, 1983).  Blacks also faced barriers to gaining homeownership. In 1939 only 9% of Chicago blacks owned their own home, this is in comparison to 21.7% of whites and 41.3% of foreign born whites who owned homes (Hirsch, 1983). Aside from racist hiring policies which relegated most blacks to low-end service sector positions with little upward mobility, government policy was also largely to blame for the large discrepancy in ownership.

                Home Owner's Lown Corporation (HOLC) created a uniform system of appraising how housing would be eligible for financing. It devised a system where there were four quality categories, labeled with a letter and color: A/green, B/blue, C/yellow and D/red, with A/green being the most favorable.  Housing which was densely populated, racially mixed, non-white racially segregated or aging was devalued under the HOLC system. HOLC did not start the practice of considering race and ethnicity in appraisal, real estate agents had a long history of racism, but it did apply notions of racial worth on national scale –influencing various financial and government institutions (Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005).

                The HOLC system was adopted by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which was formed largely to spur home construction as a way to ease unemployment. In 1944 the Veterans Administration (VA) instated the GI Bill,  a program which assisted World War II veterans in purchasing housing after their return to the states by offering federally backed, low interest 30 year mortgages. They also adopted FHA appraisal standards, which included red-lining or labeling racially mixed, or non-white segregated neighborhoods as class D, or red, housing and therefore not eligible for financing or re-financing (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005).

                The adoption of red-lining by the VA and FHA lead to two primary outcomes which created an affirmative action program for whites. First, because red-lining barred loans in black and mixed neighborhoods it was essentially useless for black GIs. They could not buy in their current neighborhood, but they also could not move into a white neighborhood because, their presence alone would reclassify the neighborhood. Second, the HOLC, FHA and VA appraisal system devalued older housing stock and only allowed small short-term loans for existing structures, making the purchase of a new home more affordable than the maintenance of an older home. This system resulted in higher purchases in newly developed suburban areas, which due to red-lining, were overwhelmingly white. As whites began to move into the suburbs, industry moved with them, providing suburban residents with jobs, slowly turning the inner-city into a ghetto (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005).

                This coincided with the Second Great Migration, when a new wave of southern black immigrants arrived in northern cities. The South Side Black Belt was quickly pushed to its limits, as blacks struggled to find housing. Conditions quickly became congested and many middle-class blacks looked to urban white ethnic neighborhoods to purchase homes (Hirsch, 1983). Real estate agents had realized that there was a great deal of money to be made by purchasing houses at low costs from whites and selling them at inflated costs to blacks. Once an African American moved onto a white block, whites would generally flee, selling at lower and lower prices, leaving more profit for agents and speculators. This created the dual housing market (Hirsch, 1983; Maly, 2005).

                For ethnic whites their house was generally their primary investment and core savings which is why whites felt that they had to protect their homes from blacks. They knew that property values would drop once an African American moved onto the block and their house would be worth less, but the need to protect their home went beyond money. For these lower-class white ethnics it was their connection to whiteness and “Americaness” through their home ownership that was also being threatened (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005; Maly, 2011). This lead many whites to act out against blacks with violence, such as the Chicago riots in Fernwood and Englewood (Hirsch, 1983). 

                This era also saw the rise of individual acts aimed at barring blacks from home ownership. One example is restrictive covenants—agreements made by homeowners within a certain neighborhood stating they would not sell to non-whites. Often this included agreeing to not post for sale signs on lawns or advertise in newspapers as an attempt to control who would purchase in the neighborhood. Neighborhood associations often pushed members to police each other and maintain segregation (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005). 

                There also were several neighborhoods which pushed for integration, although this does not mean that they were without prejudice. For example, in integrated Hyde Park residents used their political clout to bar a housing project from their community because they did not want to live near poor blacks (Hirsch, 1983). Many communities pushed for integration not out of any desire for equal rights, but as a way to stabilize and protect housing prices (Maly, 2005).

                In 1968 congress passed the Fair Housing Act as part of the Civil Rights bill. Unfortunately, this did not lead to the mass integration of housing across the country. Housing remains largely segregated with African American having the highest levels of segregation and whites the lowest (Charles, 2003; Maly, 2005). In her 2003 article, “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation” Camille Charles discusses that national and local-level studies have found housing discrimination still exists, such as racial steering by real estate agents, and denial of financing based on race. This information is confirmed by Judith DeSensa’s ethnographic study of Greenpoint, where she discusses how the residents set up and informal housing market in order to keep Latinos out of their neighborhood (DeSenna, 1994).

                While organizing this post I made the decision to start with the construction of race so that it would be possible to see how the idea of white superiority (and black inferiority) is the foundation of our institutions and public policy. Throughout our history the U.S. has denied African Americans citizenship, the ability to marry, the ability to learn to read, voting rights and the ability to occupy the same space as whites. Some discount our history and say we must begin our analysis of race and housing after the Civil Rights era, which makes it easy to fall into the trap of colorblind ideology. The problem with this is that it does not take into account the generational accumulation of white wealth and privilege through the denial of equal rights for blacks.

                The creation of the suburbs and FHA loans fashioned an affirmative action program for lower-class whites and white ethnics, allowing them to gain one of the key assets responsible for creating generational wealth: a house. These programs have also maintained segregated black neighborhoods, which have serious restricted the ability of African Americans to gain mobility and improve their life chances (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Charles, 2003). By denying to acknowledge the white privilege that exists because of this, we are perpetuating the myth of white superiority.

We cannot see how our current laws and policy are racist if we refuse to look at how race shaped the past and how a precedent has been created through past legislation, attitudes and beliefs which continue to inform the current moment. This includes our ideas about meritocracy, and the idea that anyone should be able to achieve success. If anyone can achieve the same level of success that most whites have, then for those who do not it is purely their fault—and they alone should bear the stigma attached to failure. This allows whites to maintain power through shaping the hegemonic discourse surround race and success; essentially stating that blacks simply do not work hard enough to gain the same success that whites have. To twist the quote by Baudelaire slightly: the best trick the whiteness ever pulled was convincing the world privilege did not exist.

REFERENCES

Charles, Camille Zubrinsky. 2003. “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation.” Annual Review of Sociology. 29:167-207.

Dalmage, Heather. 2006. “Finding a Home: Housing the Color Line,” in D. Burnsma (ed), Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the "Color-Blind" Era. Lynne Rienner Publishers.

DeSenna, Judith. “Local Gatekeeping Practices and Residential Segregation.” Sociological Inquiry. 64(3): 307-321.

Guglielmo, Thomas. 2004. White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945. Oxford University Press.

Hirsch, Arnold. 1983. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960. University of Chicago Press.

Jackson, Kenneth. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University Press.

Kefalas, Maria. 2003. Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood. University of California Press.

Maly, Michael. 2005. Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the U.S. Temple University Press.

Maly, Michael. 2011. Lecture notes from Race in the City. January 13, 2011- February 3, 2011.

Sugrue, Thomas. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton University Press.

The Relationship Between Whiteness, Citizenship, Racial Categories and Shifting Racial Discourse

             Whiteness has been synonymous with citizenship (if not legally, then in popular thought) in European colonized countries, like the U.S., South Africa and Brazil, since their inception. In the United States full civil, political and social citizenship has largely been restricted to free white men, denying the rights and protections of citizenship to white women, both free and enslaved blacks, Native Americans and aliens (Glenn, 2002). Across the globe, the Union of South Africa was formed and “founded on the premise that Africans would be denied voting rights in all but the Cape Colony,” connecting whiteness and citizenship for generations to come(Goodman, 2004:146).  In this post I will explain how whiteness has been inextricably tied to citizenship, both formal and substantive, through racial categorization. I will also discuss how shifting racial discourse affects the way societies view race which in turn affects racial categorization, whiteness and access to citizenship.

            Just as whiteness has been formed in opposition to non-whites, citizenship has been created in opposition non-citizens—both are social constructions which are fluid and shift to protect the rights and privilege of those in power (Glenn, 2002; Dalmage, 2011). In European colonized countries like the United States, South Africa and Brazil, whites formed new colonizer governments which would establish rights for themselves over those of the indigenous people, and create a claim on land, resources and labor (Glenn, 2002). Although all three began as colonies of a monarchy, each eventually established themselves as independent nations, consisting of citizens rather than subjects (Glenn, 2002).  Citizenship means that you have “full membership in the community in which one lives,” providing certain rights for the citizen in exchange for certain duties (Glenn, 2002:19).

            According to T.H. Marshall, citizenship has three types of rights: civil, political and social (Glenn, 2002). Civil rights are “the rights necessary for individual freedom,” which include freedom of religion, speech and thought, as well as the right to justice, to own property and the form contracts (Glenn, 2002:19). Political rights are the rights necessary to participate in the governance of the community, this includes the right to vote or exercise political power (Glenn, 2002).  Finally, social citizenship or the ability to have one’s basic needs met, this includes the right to some degree of economic security, ability to participate in society and to “live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society” (Glenn, 2002:19; Dalmage, 2011). Full citizenship is the ability to participate in all three of these rights. This makes social citizenship vital to being a full citizen because it is what allows individuals to turn formal rights into substantive rights—meaning without social citizenship, the ability to provide for yourself and your family and the ability to participate in social life, one is unable to exercise their other rights (Glenn, 2002).

            Substantive access to citizenship has often been curtailed by using racial categorization to control access to social rights either implicitly or explicitly. Racial categorization is more than just sorting individuals by shared phenotypes like skin color, hair texture or facial features; it is about creating systems of privilege and denial. Race is socially constructed, meaning that phenotype has no significance in itself, only what society attributes to it; therefore it is not fixed and can change according to the popular beliefs and discourse at the time. In the U.S. black Americans have explicitly been excluded from citizenship based on their race, as well as implicitly through Jim Crow and mass incarceration (Waquant, 2005; Alexander, 2010).        Although blacks were granted civil and political citizenship in 1870, after being deemed subhuman and incapable of citizenship during slavery, Jim Crow effectively barred them from social citizenship—many were unable to vote due to restrictive poll taxes, reading tests and violence (Glenn, 2002; Alexander, 2010). Today many African Americans are barred from full citizenship by state laws which limit the social rights of formerly incarcerated by supporting restrictive employment laws and rescinding the ability of those convicted of a felony to vote (Alexander, 2010). These restrictions are not explicitly based on race, but African Americans are disproportionately affected due to the denial of privilege based on race. The fluidity of racial categories can be seen in census categories (Nobles, 2004).

            Census categories themselves are a form of racial discourse (Nobles, 2004). The U.S. census enumerates by race, while the Brazilian census enumerates by color—both reflect political and popular ideas about race and the construction of difference (Nobles, 2004). Although their beliefs were grounded in the idea of white supremacy, both countries took different tactics to support it. Brazil promoted the idea that through intermarriage indigenous people, descendents of African slaves and European colonizers would meld into one white race—therefore color was more important to account for (Nobles, 2004). The U.S. took this approach when dealing with Native Americans, but when it came to other racial groups the prime tactic was exclusion (Nobles, 2004). The U.S. denied citizenship to non-whites, used miscegenation laws, exclusionary immigration policies,  and reconstructed ideas about familial lineage in order to exclude people of color from citizenship—because of this the identification of race was important (Pascoe,1996; Nagel, 2003; Nobles, 2004).

            If one takes the U.S. census as an example it is possible to see how popular ideas about race have been reflected in the census, which in turn affect government policy (Noble, 2004).  There were eighteen changes to the twenty censuses that occurred between 1790 and 2000 (Noble, 2004). One example is  how polygenists lobbied congress for, and received, the inclusion of the term “mulatto” in the 1850 census in order to support their claim that the offspring of two different races, black and white, would be infertile (Nobles, 2004; Dalmage, 2011). This both reflected one “scientific” approach to race at the time and had an influence on the way race was discussed in society. According to the “one-drop rule” which had dominated popular thought prior, and deemed anyone with “one-drop” of “black blood” black, the term “mulatto” differentiated between levels of blackness.

            Racial discourse is not only restricted to the census. It is also seen within policy. After the Civil Rights Amendment was passed in 1964 racial discourse began to move away from overt racism and the census was needed to identify whether historical inequalities were being addressed in a meaningful way through the group rights won by activists (Dalmage, 2011). As the U.S. moved into the 70s and 80s, neoliberalism began to take hold of policy, including a movement away from group rights and towards individual rights and racial discourse began to shift to colorblind ideology. Colorblind ideology states that society is beyond race and to have truly fair society we must omit race from our policies, including efforts to address historical inequality (Dalmage, 2011). Now right wing activists are asking if we even need to enumerate race in the census. Colorblind ideology works to defend white privilege by limiting citizenship through the family ethic and the idea of the deserving poor (Glenn, 2002; Dalmage, 2011).

            Colorblind ideology is informed by the neoliberal idea of personal responsibility. Everyone is responsible for their own lives and choices and no attention is paid to the circumstances under which you were born. The historical lack of access to citizenship and privilege blacks have had is discounted and instead there is a focus on “bad choices.”  Common arguments for larger amounts of black poverty are connected to ideas about the family ethic, what “good citizens” strive for: women who are chase and bound to the private sphere (home) and men who are breadwinners and bound to public space. Many African Americans do not fit into this ethic because due to the historical inequalities women have been forced to leave the home to work and men are often incarcerated, ironically often times for participating in the underground economy to provide for their families (Dalmage, 2011). Meanwhile white ethnics are used as a defense of neoliberal ideas and the family ethic. They are held up as people who have been discriminated against and through “hard work” have raised themselves up by their bootstraps and accomplished what blacks could not (Guglielmo, 2003; Maly, etal., 2010).  Of course, the fact that they were not denied citizenship for near 200 years is neatly forgotten.

            It is not difficult to see the myriad of ways that whiteness has been tied to citizenship. People of color have been explicitly denied citizenship based on their race and commonly held popular and scientifically held beliefs that they were inferior to whites. They have also been denied citizenship implicitly through racist policies like Jim Crow and the Rockafeller drug laws which have targeted African Americans, as well as through miscegenation laws and exclusionary immigration policies (Pascoe, 1996; Nagel, 2003; Alexander, 2010). One only has to look at current policy, like Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which allows police officers to ask anyone who looks illegal for their U.S. identification. If not in law, in popular thought to be American is to be white.
 REFERENCES

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press.

Dalmage, Heather. 2011. Lecture Notes, Global Whiteness, Roosevelt University. February 2011- March 2011.

Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2002. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor.

Guglielmo, Thomas. 2003. White on Arrial: Italians, Race, Color and Power in Chicago, 1890-1849. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hale, Grace. 1998. Making Whiteness. NY. Vintage Books

Maly, Michael, Heather Dalmage and Nancy Michaels. 2010. “The End of an Idyllic World: Race Memory, and the Construction of White Powerlessness.”

Nagel, Joane. 2003. Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nobels, Melissa. 2004. “Racial Categorization and Censuses.” In Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses. Edited by David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pascoe, Peggy. 1996. “iscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of “Race” in Twentieth-Century America.”  The Journal of American History.83(1):44-69.

Waquant, Loïc. 2005. “Deadly Symbiosis.” Boston Review.

Zaal, Frederick Noel. 2008. “The Ambivalence of Authority and Secret Lives of Tears: Transracial Child Placements and the Historical Developments of South African Law.” Journal of Southern African Studies. 18(2):372-404.

"System D" and the Lack of Sociological Discourse in Popular Media.

Business Insider (BI) published the article "Forget China, 'System D' Is the World's Second Largest Economy", on the worldwide black market, or secondary economy, now dubbed "System D". I am always surprised (although I know I should not be) at how these stories never seem to address the "why" of the secondary economy. The article, and infographic below, frames the discussion through lost tax revenues and "black market entrepreneurs" who have higher profit margins than those in the legitimate economy.

What stories like this fail to look at is why the secondary economy exists. Yes, there are those who are driven by the prospect of high profit margins and are willing to take on the risk associated with large scale black market operations in order to obtain them, but I have no doubt that the majority (of people, not money) do not fall into this category. I think the larger issue is that those who work in the secondary economy  do so to support themselves and their families, because for one reason or another they are not able to within the primary economy. They may be barred by poverty, lack of education, lack of resources, former incarceration, racism, sexism, religious oppression or just plain prejudice.

When we look at countries with the largest black markets (see Shadow Economies all Over the World: New Estimates from 162 Countries from 1991-2007 an updated version of the IMF paper linked to in the article), we see corrupt and poor governments, with even poorer populations. We also see a concentration of brown and black peoples in most of these countries--which historically means countries and peoples who have been mined for resources and left to fend for themselves with alien cultures foist upon them.

If we look at the U.S. and who participates in the secondary economy we see, again, largely black and brown bodies who are barred from participation in the primary economy. We can look at several sociological papers and books written by Waquant, Pitts, Wilson.... and so on which point out that participation in the secondary economy is not usually by choice. Institutional racism has concentrated blacks and other minorities in certain geographic areas and then systematically denied those areas public services such as access to public transit, competitive schools, road repairs, etc. The private sector abandoned these areas as well, despite a real demand in the market for services. These things work in concert to bar involvement in the primary economy and, as if this is not enough, when caught participating in the secondary economy  these individuals are incarcerated. Incarceration, besides the abuse and emotional toll, means that one is further barred from participation in the workforce. It is no wonder the mass incarceration is considered the New Jim Crow.

As I read the comments on the BI article many point to high taxes and the "welfare state" as a reason for the secondary economy, I would have to argue the opposite. It because these governments do not provide basic services to these communities that secondary economy flourishes. The smallest secondary economies exist in countries with higher tax rates. Although I do not have the numbers to back myself up here, I am also willing to bet that the secondary economy in those countries, the U.S. included, are peopled by those segments of the population which fall through the cracks and are not provided their basic needs.

At the end of the day I suppose I am just thankful for my sociological education, that I can supplement popular media claims with sociological research and look at the "why." I just wish that as a society we tried to take a more holistic view of our problems and culture. Hopefully we will get there.

The Rosie Show

Photo Credit: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

A few months ago I found myself flipping through channels, and I landed on the OWN show "Rosie." I did not even know we had the channel. I have always been a fan of Rosie O'Donnell, not just for her talent, but also for her GBLT activism and breast cancer awareness work, so I decided to watch. Apparently, I was watching a rerun. She mentioned that she had received a lot of fan feedback asking, "Why so much gay stuff?" She then showed a short clip of all the mentions of the word gay (a few jokes, mentions of her S.O. and some audience/guest banter) and basically said, sorry, but I am just living my life. I watched the rest of the show and could not get the "feedback" out of my head.

"Why so much gay stuff?" I think a better question is: "Why so much straight stuff?"

Our society is built for heterosexuals (forgive me for the lack of intersectionalism in this post). When a straight woman discusses her upcoming plans for her wedding in Illinois, which does not allow gay marriage, is she told to knock it off with the straight stuff? When a man discusses an argument he had with his wife is he asked to tone down his heterosexuality?

Most Americans consider heterosexuality to be normal and, therefore, any other sexuality becomes "othered"--meaning that it is seen as abnormal. It is a sign of the privilege associated with heterosexuality. I can discuss my life with my husband without being told I am shoving my "lifestyle" down anyone's throat; yet replace the word husband with partner or wife and I am suddenly pushy and overly focused on sexuality.

The "gay stuff" questioned by O'Donnell's fans is just her life--discussing her significant other or sharing a common experience with another person. These are simple things that heterosexuals often discuss and take for granted, but that many in the GLBTQ community are unable to share with others out of fear of rejection, alienation and possibly violence. Everyone deserves the right to live their life without that kind of fear.

One often hears people state that having so many openly gay celebrities on television or in movies is a sign of how far our society has come, but the question "why so much gay stuff" is a sign of how far we have left to go. When will have reached equality? I think it is when everyone can go about their daily lives without being labeled an activist or extremist for doing so.

"It's okay to be gay."