Why Do Gays Hate Black Music?

I just read something on radaronline.com by a writer outraged that only 11.5 percent of the October ’08 OUT magazine’s list of best gay music is black. It strikes me as silly—on a profound level—to read racism into a fluff list in a fluff “lite-style” magazine like OUT—and to use statistics as proof.

Still, the article makes some intriguing points—such as that there really is no gay community (agreed on the whole—and it’s probably a good thing) and that whites dominate gay culture (just gay culture?)

One of the most flagrant racists I ever met was a gay man, so I’m certainly not denying that the gay “community,” albeit nonexistent, is spotless on this point.

But, God knows, the numbers for homophobia must be sky-high in hiphop and black churches.

The article goes on to make the perhaps valid point that rich gays and poor gays mix only on Craigslist—though I would argue that, historically, the economic classes have mixed more readily at gay bars than anywhere else in American society, except the DMV. And I wouldn't characterize the works of Kanye West, Mariah Carey, and Beyonce (three artists mentioned as being snubbed by OUT) as poor people’s music.

But look who’s pointing fingers: after a quick scroll down RADAR’s “Features” page, I calculated that only 12.5 percent of the pictured faces were black—and one of those is actually Obama’s back in a long shot, and another is Robert Downey Jr. in TROPIC THUNDER.

I’m not sure that one percentage point and blackface give RADAR the moral authority to cast stones.