Gay For Pay: In The Bay

I've recently relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm working in San Francisco and living in Oakland California. Initially I did not think that this would be the culture shock that it has been, considering that I grew up in California's San Francisco Bay Area and went to Junior High school and High school in Oakland. But boy was I wrong!

After living for 12 years in the "deep south," I've developed a way of being that is not necessarily compatible with the bay area. Particularly my way of being around justice issues and issues of social equality are incompatible. In the south, one can trust that white people who talk about Social Justice are a little more than rhetoric. Racist white people certainly do not come in liberal packages in the south.

Race issues in the Bay Area are completely FUCKED UP! The trick seems to be that if liberal white people can make you believe that they do not have race and class benefits then they can keep their feminist, anti racist, anti classist identity, from college, and do not have to give up their race and class benefits. It's all a bit too much like having one's cake and eating it too.

Every white person that I've met here considers themselves anti-racist. Columbus Day is instead, "Indigenous Peoples Day," black people are instead "African American." Everyone is for the abolishment of prisons and the eradication of homelessness, and everyone is pro-Palestine. Public schools in the bay area are named after such American heroes as Cesar Chavez, Malcolm Ex, and June Jordan. Every home has copies of the Bluest Eyes, or By The Light of My Father's Smile proudly displayed in there libraries. Every organizing initiative tries to include representatives of people of color communities. The Mexican celebrations of Day of The Dead and Cinco De Mayo, along with Junteenth and Kwanza are on the calendars of every liberal home, white, black, Asian, and Latino/a alike. I should say White, African American, API and Latino alike. Everyone rides bikes, shops at thrift stores and co-ops, grows there own food and smokes "home-grown" weed.

This is the liberal capital of the world!

San Francisco and its bay area is "The Myth of The Level Playing Field." This myth is powered by the bike riding, food growing, pot smoking, room mating, kwanza celebrating, liberal white queers who have post graduate degrees, make over $100,000 in a year and live in bungalows on the co-op land. Everyone is fake working class. Those that don't make over $100,000 in a year can afford to make less. For example, all of the nonprofit jobs pay below $40,000 which here in California is considered low income. While shopping for jobs I've begun to wonder "How do these people survive?" Then I go back to the nonprofit lessons given to me by my friend Shira, a Progressive Jewish Clergy Woman. Shira says that "movement" nonprofits are all about white guilt. See the rich whites play this game where some of them work in the nonprofit and get their rich white friends to donate to the nonprofits and everyone gets to fix there guilt. The low pay is part of that guilt fixing mechanism.

This is something that folks who use their jobs as there primary source of income and in my case ONLY source of income don't really understand. How can someone live off of $40,000 a year in the bay area? Is it because of the roommate culture? Is it because of the wonderful public transportation and bike lanes? No. The real answer is that one cannot afford to live off of $40,000 in the bay area. Those that seemingly afford to live on this kind of income have other income sources like parents, trust funds, and investments that allow them to work for the pennies, identify (because of there "income from work") as "Working Class," and get to be absolved of guilt by penance.

What is annoying about this whole set up is that while everyone is an anti-racist and feminist change agent, poverty is just as devastating here as it is anywhere else. With all of the wealth in this area, and for all of the progressive politics of the bay area it is troubling that more money does not make it into the hands of the poor and those that serve the poor. But rich whites don't have to help the poor here because they are working in nonprofits for $20,000 a year and are poor themselves. Right? While walking down the street with a group comprised of former welfare reform worker, homeless advocate, and a few other social justice types a woman approached us with such a look of anguish on her face I thought that she might pass out on the spot. She asked for help. Not for change but for help. I was hurried into the room by the Welfare reform worker, the Homelessness rights attorney, the troubled-youth advocate, and the Human rights trainer, the door was slammed behind us. We stepped over the woman.

This is how I see the bay area. People full of rhetoric about fairness, equality, and justice, who are immensely politically correct and who work in the "movement" all while stepping over and forgetting the poor.

More on Sexual Desire

I think it was Frued who suggested that the object of our sexual desire is actually what we want to desire us. That our sexual desire is more about the desire to be desired than it is about actual desire of bodies. So I am attracted to the people I am attracted to because they are the ones that I most want to be desired by and not the other way around. This bring to mind for me a question:

Is our collective-desire, as Black gay men, for convential and frankly stereotypical male bodies telling of a desire to be affirmed by the heteropatriarchy that has rejected us?

Ulester Douglas, a friend and a professional therapist in Atlanta, suggests that we are attracted to the places in our lives that hold the most pain. Another question:

Are the bodies that have most often carried rejection for us the bodies to which we are most attracted?

Is Black Gay male obsession with a patriarchal picture of "masculinity" and "man hood" about the fact that these are the entities from which we have experienced the most rejection and from which we carry the most pain?

Is our obsession with hip hop bodies and masculinities about our experience of rejection from the working class black men in our pasts?

What the hell is wrong with ITLA?

Southern Voice recently published an article about allegations made by In The Life Atlanta (Black Gay Pride Organizing Group)that AIDS Services Organizations in Atlanta should "Be ashamed of themselves," for not giving large amounts of money to the Black Gay Pride celebration. The text of this article appears on the SOVO website.

Below is my response:

August 25, 2006


It’s extremely egocentric for ITLA and Greg Smith to suggest that because AIDS Service organizations (ASO) don’t support there thing that they’re doing nothing about HIV among Black gay men. National AIDS Education and Service for Minorities (NAESM) and AID Atlanta have spent millions of dollars and decades fighting AIDS in Black communities. AID Atlanta dedicates most of it’s, seemingly begrudged, 6 million dollars supporting the life needs of people living with AIDS. Medical care and housing are commodities AID Atlanta spends its money on. These organizations have employed scores of employees with the expressed intention of curbing HIV among Black Gay men. To suggest that because ASOs don’t give money to Black Gay Pride they’re not concerned about Black Gay men is ridiculous and offensive!



Black LGBT people will spend millions with companies that have never spent a dime supporting BGP. Where are ITLA’s allegations against the scores of corporations that have never supported BGP but reap the benefits again and again? If ITLA spent the same amount of time soliciting corporations as they spend trying to tax the scarce resources of other nonprofits they would easily raise there alleged $75,000 budget. Where are ITLA’s admonishments against the hotels and clubs that will pack themselves to capacity thanks to BGP? If ITLA used the same advocacy against the huge companies that rake in the dough and snub their sponsorship requests, as they use against ASOs they might be able to demand support from these companies with the same entitlement with which they demand support from struggling charitable organizations.



While ITLA seems happy with DHRs donation to them, in 2006 though they are the most affected by AIDS, DHR did not give a grant to a single group to support HIV prevention among Black Gay Men within the metro Atlanta area. Maybe some of ITLA’s media advocacy skills should be directed at breaking that story instead of trying to Gestapo NAESM and AID Atlanta into breaking there banks.

I am greatly offended by ITLAs attacks against organizations that have supported the actual lives of many Black Gay men who are living with HIV. ITLA has misdirected the frustration, that comes from scraping together scarce resources, at charity groups while they should be going after some of the huge companies that will once again reap benefits and not write a check to ITLA.

Sincerely Bothered,

Kevin E. Bynes

Divide and Conquer

Aron Ranen's Black Hair Documentary Part One


I recieved this video in an email from a Yahoo group called 'Black Young Professional Public Health Network'and I was disturbed for obvious reasons. Below is my emailed response to the video. I think the enteprising of the Jews in Germany was a reason used to murder 6 million. What treatment of Koreans will be justified because many of them own Beauty Supply Stores? Please read below:

“The same dog that bit me bit you, we look like fools fighting each other, lets go get the dog.” –Elijah Muhammad-

I would be much more interested, particularly on this public health list, in hearing what proportion of health care services consumed by Black people are provided by black people. How has the health industry profited on Black peoples health disparities?

I would be much more interested in hearing, on this public health list, what proportion of housing consumed by black people is provide by black people. How have inner city housing owners profited by Black people lack of home ownership?

What proportion of primary, secondary and post secondary education consumed by black people is provided by black people? How has the education industry profited by Black folks lack of ownership of education institutions? Did you know that a good number of the HBCUs that we attend were founded by white men? Did you know that many of those HBCUs have white dominated Boards?

What proportion of food that we consume is produced by black people? How has the food industry and the grocery industry profited from the lack of black owned grocery stores. Is Koolaid and Churches Chicken owned by Koreans?

I realize that black people really want a reason to hate Koreans and I sympathize. But targeting Koreans because the have captured a large share of a particular market as “unfair” and some how against black people is silly. Attempting to paint Koreans as predators or oppressors is misguided. There is nothing more wrong with Koreans owning most of the hair shops than there is with Koreans owning most of the nail shops. Koreans cannot be placed at fault for the lack of Black entrepreneurship. I would have thought we would have learned our lessons during the Rodney King riots. Remember us destroying our communities to get back at Koreans while the areas where the police who had abused Rodney lived, were left unscathed? Koreans are not to blame years of social inequality that have driven black people into ghettos and that have driven Koreans into ghettos are to blame.

The question then remains: Are the above industries dominated by Koreans too? If they are not who do we blame? Mexicans? Japanese? Jews? What other people of color group should we target instead of targeting the systematic oppression of us all?