If you’re white, you can still go suck an egg. But if you’re a transgender male, you will be welcome next year to apply for admission to Atlanta’s Morehouse College, America’s only all-male historically black college.
Despite a long history of social conservatism, which included taking a dim view on homosexuality, blacks have become the most accepting group of the LGBT community in America. The change is driven by intersectionality, a term coined in 1989 by black feminist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, which has recently gained currency. While it is formally defined as “an analytic framework that attempts to identify how interlocking systems of power impact those who are most marginalized in society,” intersectionality can be reduced ultimately to the old adage “misery loves company.” It is powered by the belief that if enough oppressed peoples join hands, they can achieve the voice that any single member group otherwise lacks.
The plan by Morehouse to begin admitting transgenders, the Associated Press reports, was approved Saturday by the university’s board of trustees. The move is forward-thinking, though the trustee’s vision is not all-encompassing. Students who identify as women but were born male will not be permitted to enroll. Anyone, moreover, who transitions from male to female during his (zer?) time at the university will not be eligible to receive a degree.
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An even bigger slap in the face of the LGBT community is the decision to retain the use masculine pronouns, which the university calls “the language of brotherhood.”
