Cleaver’s antiracism reproduced racism against Black homosexuals and Black women

Evidence

Cleaver’s queer racism and gender racism were striking. Black homosexuals were doubly emasculated (and thus inferior to singularly emasculated White homosexuals): they were emasculated as Black men and emasculated through the “sickness” of homosexuality, Cleaver argued. In Cleaver’s gender racism, the Black woman and the White man were “silent” allies; the White man placed the White woman “on a pedestal” and turned “the black woman into a strong self-reliant Amazon.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1015

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ theme of how hierarchal gender norms get absorbed even into progressive movements.