Monthly Archives: January 2009

NYC Baker Makes "Drunken Negro Face" Cookies; Threatens Obama

The owner of the Lafayette French Pastery in NYC’s Greenwich Village (located at 26 Greenwich Ave New York, NY 10011-8319 Phone: (212) 242-7580) thought is making a new cookie: Drunken Negro Faces. In the following news story by local news channel Fox 5, several people reported actually being told that the cookies were called “Drunken Nigger Faces.” To top it off, he told people they were in honor of our new President, who he said would “he’s following the same path of Lincoln, he will get his.” presumably wishing for his assassination.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l_UD2N6R4s]

Here’s what a recent tourist wrote on the website Chow.com who stopped by this bakery:

“You should know this bakery is absolutely horrible. We stopped in while on vacation to see my aunt, and she had been there a few times before. When we came in on Tuesday, they were selling “Ni**er Heads,” poorly made chocolate treats.

Know that this bakery symbolizes hate and ignorance. Do not go here. The owner was quoted as saying “he’s going the way of Lincoln…” and denying he was talking about assassination.

Do not give any money to this business, do what you can to bring them down; it is a new era, it is 2009?! I can’t believe these people still exist.

… and I saw a mouse scurrying behind the display case… probably should have put that first…”

So I guess the mouse was a bigger deal to this tourist than the cookie. What’s also wierd to me about this news report on the video is the weird grins on the faces of the two white women they talk to who reported hearing this. I mean I guess I am glad they found it offensive, but could they just be less glad about it?

This Week in Gay Political Scandal: Portland Mayor Sam Adams

Now that there are lot more out LGBT folks in political office, we can get in on the political scandals just like the rest. And in American politics, nothing beats a sex scandal but a GAY sex scandal.

Enter Sam Adams. Recently elected as Mayor of Portland, Oregon-the largest American city to elect and openly gay mayor. Well he had an affair with a 18-ish year old he was mentoring. OK, so Beau Breedlove (the young man in question) turned 18 in June of 2007, the summer when the two were gettin’ it on and poppin-so it’s slightly unclear whetheer Breedlove was actually 17 or 18 when the affair started, though Adams maintains that he was 18. There are calls in Portland for the mayor to step down, though he was JUST sworn in on January 1. The Associated Press reports:

A contrite Mayor Sam Adams apologized to Portland for lying about a sexual relationship with a male teenager he was mentoring, but asked the city to consider it an anomaly in two decades of public service.

“I screwed up. I blew it. There’s no way to sugarcoat it,” Adams said during a news conference at City Hall Tuesday.

Adams coasted to victory in the 2008 election, making Portland the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor. He was sworn in Jan. 1.

The 45-year-old said he has no plans to resign, but left open the possibility: “If it were no longer in the city’s best interests that I stay, yes, I would resign.”

OK-while it may be kinda skeevy for a 45 year old to be screwing with an 18-ish year old he was mentoring, it’s not illegal. And it certainly does not rise to the occasion of impeachment or resignation-even if he tried to cover up the affair with a consenting adult (that also goes for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, as far as I’m concerned). And what about Breedlove? What’s the point of having “age of consent” if it doesn’t really mean he gets to consent? Though we may not like the choices an 18 year old would make-and I made plenty of stupid ones-isn’t that still his choice? Sure, he may regret it . But then again, he may not.

Video from Black LGBT Protest at Ebenezer Baptist Church

Thanks to Darian Aaron from the blog Living Out Loud with Darian for this video from yesterday’s protest held at Ebenezer Baptist Church, to protest Rev. Rick Warren’s Martin Luther King day speech.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjuI4IxURdY]

Also, Atlanta Progressive News reported on the tensions between the Atlanta Black LGBT Coalition and the white lefties from Atlanta World Can’t Wait-who disrespected the wishes of the Coalition by disrupting the proceedings inside the church.

Black LGBT Folk To Protest Rick Warren's MLK Day Sermon at King's Church

The layers of the following story are a mess. But let’s jump in:

One year ago this weekend, then-Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church where he very directly challenged the Black church and by extension the Black Community on its treatment of Black LGBT folks. He said:

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system. And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.

The leadership at Ebeneezer Baptist Church, the church that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. was pastor, and which played a huge role in the Civil Rights Movement, paid that speech no mind, and President Barack Obama doesn’t seemed to have meant much by it, either. Why? Not only does Obama choose Rev. Rick Warren (Prop 8 supporter, evolution denier and anti-choice zealot) to give the invocation at his inauguration, but Ebenezer Baptist Church has chosen this white evangelical pastor to give the sermon at the MLK Day service!

Coretta Scott King and daughter Yolanda King (both deceased) were both allies to the LGBT community, and would have flat out disapproved of this choice, and so likely would have Martin. It’s hard not to think Sharpton’s speech one week before MLK Day in Atlanta wasn’t also given as an indirect scolding of Ebenezer choosing Rick Warren. But luckily, the Atlanta Black LGBT Coalition, being led by two friends/comrades of mine, Paris Hatcher & Craig Washington, are leading a protest of Ebenezer this weekend to express their outrage on this choice. Southern Voice (my favorite of all LGBT newspapers) writes:

“Warren not only compares women having an abortion to Nazis, and pro-choice supporters to holocaust deniers, but he also opposed the right of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and queer folk to marriage, as well as [admittance] to his church,” said Craig Washington, a founding member of the Atlanta Black LGBT Coalition, which is organizing the protest…These views, these words, are acts of oppression. They are incompatible with the dream of the beloved community Martin Luther King envisioned, and the spirit with which Coretta Scott King founded the King Center.”

Warren “preaches a message that is dated, harmful and dangerous about our bodies, our sexualities and our communities,” said Paris Hatcher, a lesbian activist with reproductive rights group Spark!, another protest organizer.“As members of King’s beloved community, we say that all communities are sacred,” Hatcher said. “And at times like these, Atlanta needs to hear a message of love and liberation that affirms everyone, not a narrow opinion that reinforces the dialogue of oppression and shame.”

The protest is scheduled for Monday, January 19th at 9am, at the corner of Jackson & Auburn Streets, across from Ebenezer.

The reality is that we’re going to have to continue to bring it to the rest of the Black community like this from here on in.

What it Looks Like Now: The Obama Presidency

Yesterday I appeared on GRIT.TV with Laura Flanders talking about controversy surrpinding Obama’s choosing Rick Warren as the person giving the Invocation for the Inauguration. I said on the show, that to me, the choice represented 3 things:

  1. Obama has officially bgean his 2012 run, and this choices was to bring Christian conservatives to his side.
  2. To finally neutralize the rumors that he’s a Muslim, and who better to reassure White American than Rick Warren?
  3. That perhaps he actually is more of a Clintonian Democrat than Progressives would like to believe.

My co-panelists disagreed, and I wish I’d have been better prepared for such opposition. I agree that some of his policy platform looks at this point to the left of Bill Clinton, but many of the people he’s appointed to carry out policy are either to the Right of, or very directly from the Clinton Administration. I also added that Obama’s use of the Clintonian political tactic of triangulation is very much a part of his political strategy as a “uniter.” Wikipedia defines triangulation as:

Triangulation is the name given to the act of a political candidate presenting his or her ideology as being “above” and “between” the “left” and “right” sides (or “wings”) of a traditional (e.g. UK or US) democratic “political spectrum”. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one’s political opponent (or apparent opponent). The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent’s ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular issue.

Obama has clearly used this strategy in his statment about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (“When bombs are raining down on your citizens[ISRAEL, THAT IS], then there is an urge to try and put an end to that.”) But beyond triangulation in speech and Cabinet choices, there is just general political calculation that is going on.

Case in point: After many re-iterations of the “I believe a marriage should be between a man and a woman” talking point, The Windy City Times just published a questionnaire from Obama in 1996 where he clearly states “I favor legalising same-sex marriages.”

Now I am not turning this into a “gotcha” blog post because I am interested in pusing Obama to try to pass same-sex marriage legislation-in the absense of something more expansive to self-define my family-I’ll take the civil union, thank you very much. But it is an example that our soon to be sworn in President is not capable of the same political re-positioning of past Democratic Presidents. I think it’s time to put the party favors down and change the lenses in the rose-tinted glasses . If we’re planning to have anything to really celebrate materially 4-8 years from now, we’ve got to take the kid gloves off.

Note: The New Issue of Black Commentator has apublished part 1 of a new 3-part piece dealing with the significance of this moment, as it relates to the politics of the last 40 years withthe author, Dr. Horace Campbell refers to as the counter-revolutionary period.

Sharpton Turns the Church Out On "Gay Marriage" Focus

The Southern Voice reported today that Reverend Al Sharpton on Sunday in Atlanta called out Black church community on how much energy they put on the same-sex marriage issue, and little else about anything else in the Black community. Here’s what he said:

“It amazes me when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when the they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being delegated into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners,” Sharpton told a packed audience on Jan. 11.

“There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people’s bedrooms and claim that God sent you,” Sharpton added.

(DAMN, THAT LAST LINE IS FIERCE!!!)

He spoke at Tabernacle Baptist Church, which was written about in the New York Times in 2007, because Rev. Dennis Meredith proclaimed the church open and accepting to the LGBT community, which meant much of his congregation went elsewhere. According to SOVO, Reverend Meredith has since come out as bisexual.

Sharpton goes onto speak more about the hypocrisy of minister who are often in the closet themselves, and preaching hatred of gays, as well as their lack of participation in racial & economic justice issues.

“I am tired of seeing ministers who will preach homophobia by day, and then after they’re preaching, when the lights are off they go cruising for trade…“We know you’re not preaching the Bible, because if you were preaching the Bible we would have heard from you…We would have heard from you when people were starving in California, when they deregulated the economy and crashed Wall Street you had nothing to say. When [alleged Ponzi schemer Bernie] Madoff made off with the money, you had nothing to say. When Bush took us to war chasing weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there you had nothing to say. … But all of a sudden when Proposition 8 came out you had so much to say, but since you stepped in the rain, we gonna step in the rain with you.

Let the church say Amen.

Hiram Monserrate & Gucci Mane: On Violence Against Women & What We Don't Do About It

Despite my outrage at the continued and ongoing disrespect for Black male life exhibited by police departments all over the country, (the death of Oscar Grant in the San Francisco Bay area being the most recent case), I am equally as disturbed by the continued and ongoing violence against women, LGB and transgender people that receives hardly as much as a footnote by the Left, Black, Brown, or otherwise.

Two cases in point:

New York State Senator (and former NYPD officer, military officer, and chair of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus of the NYC Council) Hiram Monserrate, was arrested in December for allegedly slashing his girlfriend Karla Giraldo in the eye with a broken drinking , apparently in a “jealous rage.” He denied the charges, but security cameras in his apartment building were pulled and showed him dragging the woman down the hallway and trying to throw her out of the building. Other video shows her banging on doors and asking for help-and though people were home and heard the commotion, no one responded. Monserrate had the audacity to refer to the NYPD investigation as a political lynching. Like Clarence Thomas before him, Monserrate, in order to defend oneself against allegations of violence and harrassment of women, invokes the language of lynching to suggest that this, like the numerous Black men who were lynched when accused of sexual advances toward white women, is another historical instance of a false allegation against a man “of color.”

Of all the Black and Latino, other people of color ,and white lefties who mobilize when (presumably straight) men are assaulted by the police are dead fucking silent about this? I haven’t gotten one email, text or phone call from the usual suspects in NYC demanding Monserrate’s resignation. I am not sure if Giraldo is white or not, but if she is white, how do people of color activists and organizers think about, and operationalize an analysis about violence against women when the perpetrator is of color?

In Atlanta, the following video shows a local rapper, Gucci Mane performing on stage and violently shoving his collaborator and lover (according to her), ATL hip-hop artist Mac Breezy. She retaliated by throwing her cocktail glass at him, and he punches her in the face. In an interview after the event, she explains that he did that because his other girfriend of 8 years was present, and he didn’t want her to know he was seeing someone else. I am reminded of the lack of a response by Black folks in 1990 when hearing about Dr. Dre assaulting Black woman rapper and radio DJ Dee Barnes. Wikipedia recalls the details of the incident:

After a 1990 interview with Ice Cube in which the rapper discusses his leaving N.W.A. at the height of their feud,[2], the group, feeling they had been negatively portrayed, sought retaliation. On January 27, 1991 Dr. Dre would encounter Barnes at a record release party in Hollywood. According to Rolling Stone reporter Alan Light:

He picked her up and “began slamming her face and the right side of her body repeatedly against a wall near the stairway” as his bodyguard held off the crowd. After Dre tried to throw her down the stairs and failed, he began kicking her in the ribs and hands. She escaped and ran into the women’s rest room. Dre followed her and “grabbed her from behind by the hair and proceeded to punch her in the back of the head.” [3]

N.W.A.’s MC Ren later said “bitch deserved it“, and Eazy-Eyeah, bitch had it coming.” As Dr. Dre explained the incident, “People talk all this shit, but you know, somebody fuck with me, I’m gonna fuck with them. I just did it, you know. Ain’t nothing you can do now by talking about it. Besides, it ain’t no big thing- I just threw her through a door.” Barnes sued in February 1991, telling reporter Alan Light: “They’ve grown up with the mentality that it’s okay to hit women, especially black women. Now there’s a lot of kids listening and thinking it’s okay to hit women who get out of line.”[3] In February, Barnes would file assault charges bring a $22.75 million lawsuit against Dr. Dre, who pleaded no contest to the assault. He was fined $2500, placed on two years’ probation, and ordered to perform 240 hours of community service and produce an anti-violence public service announcement.[4]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ktkgTmzLQ]

What’s sad (but not atypical) is that in the Giraldo case, she has apparently stopped cooperating with the investigation and her story has changed from what she initially reported at the hospital. Mac Breezy says she threw the glass because she never lets anyone get away with disrespecting her, but by the end of the interview, says she still loves him and that basically everything is all good. I don’t blame either of these women for the violence they suffered, and then their attempts to cover up or try to make some sense of it (for personal or professional reasons), but rather to question why so-called movement people continue to ignore partner violence, and violence against women and queers in general?

People will point to the popularity of Byron Hurt’s film “Beyond Beats & Rhymes” as a step in that direction. I think that the film is an important intervention on Black masculinities and violence, and I completely think we need to intervene on violence and misogyny among Black men, but I do think that work (like Aishah Shahidah Simmons’ “NO!”) that centralizes the experiences of women and queer Black people’s relationship to intra-racial violence is marginalized. It’s not that the two have to be diametrically opposed, but I know political organizations (black, “people of color” or white-led) or who have hosted screenings of Hurt’s film but who won’t show NO!, Tongues Untied, or a range of other work that exists.