Really! I literally bought the t-shirt that says Boot Edge Edge. The point of which is to teach us to say his name. I remember being excited and frustrated when I first heard of Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Like, could the first viable gay presidential candidate have a more difficult name to pronounce. At best, it would be chronically mispronounced. At worse, it would become the “butt” of gay political jokes that would shame our entire community. And who needs either? I had come to the same conclusion about Barrack Hussein Obama, “With that name, he’ll never win!” I was wrong.
Is America really ready for our first white gay president? I really don’t know, but a deeper question is, Is our first white gay president really ready for America? This is the question laid at Pete’s feet on June 16, 2019 when South Bend Police Officer Sgt. Ryan O’Neill shot and killed 54-year-old Eric Logan. Til now, the refined and articulate Mayor Pete has resurrected the hopes of the LGBTQ faithful and awaken the shaken hearts of neo-liberal centrists, many of whom are just happy to have a sharp tongued technocrat capable of combating evangelical Christian conservatism. From the start, Mayor Pete quickly proved that he is the anti-Pence, the one who can stand up to the religious right’s hostility toward gay marriage and faith based hate against ungendered bathrooms, non binary pronouns, and same-sex wedding cakes.
As a recovering evangelical, thrust from the fold after coming clean about my same sex attraction, I was among the first to relax in the “shade” and sip of the “tea” that Mayor Pete was throwing in town hall after town hall when pitched a question about his sexuality and his faith. But is his political eloquence enough, in today’s transphobic, and anti-queer milieu? While many gay marriage crusaders and ACT UP survivors hail the coming of our white gay Messiah-elect, many within the community are not so jubilant. The trans and people of color edge of the queer liberation movement are less than hopeful about the prospects of a President Pete. These are those who have been left behind the gay marriage bandwagon, waiting for viability and visibility in community reluctant to bring them along.
While black trans women are being killed in record numbers year after year, while trans rights are being erased from Obamacare and the military, and while HIV/AIDS infections are higher amongst black and brown gay men, the black and brown-led queer and trans activist class are refusing to blindly endorse the white gay privilege inherent in the “Pete for 2020” presidential campaign. Having become the casualties of urban gentrification, cultural assimilation, and rainbow capitalism, queer and trans people of color have very little in common with the recently out of the closet, gay veteran from South Bend, Indiana. The disturbing lack of privilege among the most marginalized in the LGBTQ community and society at large requires a more nuanced dialogue than simply Pete vs. Pence, gay vs. church, millennial vs. baby boomer.
Such nuance is not just limited to the Mayor Pete campaign. Since 2012, liberal progressive institutions writ large are being called to account for trafficking in systems of white supremacy. Taken together, the incessant killings of unarmed black men and the election of Donald Trump has launched the movement to dismantle white supremacy culture in liberal progressive institutions writ large. The fall out has begged the question, how can these bodies that have been deeply committed to the civil rights movement, the liberation of women, and inclusion of gays and lesbians be complicit with white supremacy culture?
While great progress has been made, the journey has been arduous. The systems of white supremacy culture and the benefits that abide with white skin privilege are insidious and reveals an existential crisis, not just among conservatives, but liberals as well. The killing of the unarmed Eric Logan by a white police officer whose body camera was turned off, has afforded America the opportunity to see this crisis first hand as Mayor Pete was forced to exit the political stage to give an account to a community torn apart by another a racialized police murder.
The situation in South Bend not only affords us the opportunity to engage police violence in black communities, but to evaluate the track record of liberal political leadership since the 2014 killing of Michael Brown. While the timing couldn’t have been worse for Mayor Pete, the timing of the tragedy affords the people of South Bend the perfect opportunity to have their voices heard on the political stage. We all get to see in their eyes and hear in their voices the pain and the trauma of living in the shadow of state-sanctioned terror. We get to witness the response of a political candidate in real-time and ask ourselves, “Is he merely lobbying for the black vote? or Does he really love black people?” Does he have the capacity to empathize with the plight of black people? Is he willing to suffer the backlash of white ambivalence, to see the most poor and most marginalized uplifted and liberated?
Is it fair for Pete to have been handed this lot? Maybe not. But it is the hand that he has been dealt. It is the hand that we all have been dealt. Mayor Pete, the police department and the people of South Bend have afforded us all the opportunity to ascertain to what extinct sexuality, race, and class are interrelated. Is gay really the new black? Is the fight for gay rights in Christian America, on par with the fight for black liberation in white America? Should trans people trust the white gay Mayor Pete simply because he is gay, but with no track record on fighting for trans rights?
My answer to these questions is that the killing of Eric Logan just might be a political gift for Mayor Pete in that #BlackLivesMatter movement was founded by queer black women of St. Louis, MO. That this tragedy happened at this moment in our search for a democratic nominee who can beat Trump, puts #BlackLivesMatter front and center in the political debate. In past campaign seasons, the movement for black lives has been deduced to an argument of for or against. Do we hang the banner or not? This campaign season affords us the opportunity to go beyond banners and t-shirts, to accountability and solidarity. White liberals are just as guilty of replicating systems of white supremacy as radical republicans. Hillary Clinton’s problems with race were as significant as Donald Trump’s in that racism exhibited on the right is antagonistic and hostile, but racism exhibited on the left is betrayal.
In today’s political climate, when liberal women are no longer silent about abuse from their liberal male counterparts, and black and brown children are being locked in cages as a result liberal immigration compromises, black communities do not have to go along to get along with liberal politicians providing lip service to #blacklivesmatter. Similarly, the queer and trans POC electorate are refusing to coalesce around a white midwestern mayor, just because he’s gay. We deserve more! We deserve a candidate who reflects our deepest values of liberation, equity, and social justice. No longer are we willing to settle for a mainstream liberal hopeful complicit in our generational poverty, mass incarceration, health disparities, and segregated education. We want more. Mayor Pete has the perfect opportunity to prove that he can offer us more. But only if he wants to.
Trump is a genius.
In January, I was invited to join the 
Arrested for Justice!
