Ask and I shall answer: Black homophobia

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Frequent commenter Amitav asks:

Ta-Nehisi, I've often felt that homophobia has been more acceptable in the poor urban black communities I've been around than in society as a whole. Do you think this is true andif so, why?

I think the whole "more homophobic" deal--kind of like the "more antisemitic" and even the "more sexist" comparison--is heavily weighted by the wealth gap, and where black people live. Poor, unwealthy African-Americans are not only a disproportionate share of black people, there also a large number of them living in urban centers with all their pathologies on full display.I suspect that a lot of white--particularly a lot of white people who are concerned about black homophobia--have more random contact with black poor people than they do with white poor people--this despite the fact that there are more white than black poor in this country.

I'd love to see a comparison between, say, East New York and some random poor white community in Mississippi which matches East New York in terms of poverty. Maybe the cats in East New York are shockingly more homophobic than the folks in said poor white community. But I kind of doubt it.