Yeah, Alec Baldwin Really Is a Bigot - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic

Yeah, Alec Baldwin Really Is a Bigot - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic: The most telling—and bizarre—portion of Alwan's essay is the idea that "homophobic feelings are no more of a choice than homosexuality itself." This is a really terrible thing to write, but more importantly it's false. And I know it's false because I was once a homophobic bigot. When I was a teenager, my anger almost certainly manifested itself in the same way as Baldwin's. Calling someone towards whom you meant violence a "faggot" was what you did. The fact that it was what "you did" doesn't make it any less bigoted. It means that bigotry was that much more pervasive. "Faggot" littered our understanding of English. Crews who were worthy of beat-downs were "faggot-ass niggas"; when our friends were behaving in weird ways they were "acting like fags"; when a boy shook a man's hand and it was weak, he was told to not "shake hands like a faggot."