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Presidents Obama’s New Role in the Fight Against Black Homophobia
posted on May 16, 2012Writing for The New Republic, John McWhorter explores the potential benefits of Obama’s stance on gay marriage for the African-American community, where “65 percent … reported thinking of homosexuality as wrong.” McWhorter argues that “Obama is now serving as a useful cultural model.” His new position comes with the burden of trying to correct a view that is “backwards” in the African American community; “throughout its history, black America has pleaded and fought … to overcome the primal tendencies of bigotry” only to “harbor a simple revulsion at the notion of homosexuality.”