Now I know how my parents felt. I am too damn old to be getting crunk (see, even the use of crunk marks me as rapidy approaching middle-agedgrown and sexy) over the latest dance craze. But a friend just passed this song and video on to me and I kinda love it.You can best believe I will be at home practicing this shit when I should be working on my book, or my abs.
It’s from a group called Cali Swag District, and the tune is “Teach Me How To Dougie.” The track kinda reminds me of the percussion heavy, go-go inspired beats of early Salt-N-Pepa and Kid-N-Play tracks (again, dating myself). Despite my best efforts, I am really into how queer it is. I have to say, I am giving props to all the young black men breaking with the hip-hop thuggery of my generation. Two snaps to you!
Recently, the internets have been abuzz with talk of John Mayer, Gen Y’s Billy Joel, about a recent interview he did for Playboy magazine. People have been up in arms because he used the N word during the interview.
“Someone asked me the other day, ‘What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?’ And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass.”
There’s nothing worse than a white dude who is so comfortable with their racism, clearly because they have black friends, to try to let people know how down they are by trying to use the N word just like “the natives” would. This is the thing that he got in trouble for, and why he later issued a litany of apologies via Twitter, about.
But I find his later statements in the interview about actresses Holly Robinson Peete, Karyn Parsons and Kerry Washington, and black women as a whole, much more disturbing.
PLAYBOY: “Do black women throw themselves at you?”
MAYER: “I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.”
PLAYBOY: Let’s put some names out there. Let’s get specific.
MAYER: I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She’s superhot, and she’s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she’d be like, “Yeah, I sucked his dick. Whatever.” And you’d be like, “What? We weren’t talking about that.” That’s what “Heartbreak Warfare” is all about, when a girl uses jealousy as a tactic.
Now, let me say that he also discusses his sex life with his former girlfriend Jessica Simpson in detail, which is also repulsive, and with no regard for what that might mean for her. But for now, I am talking about the black women who found themselves in this story. It’s clear that he associates all these black actresses as some nearly-white enough in class, hair texture or affect as to be “white enough for his David Duke dick” to fuck, but clearly also views them, based on his description of his imagined Washington, as sexually as loose and irreverent as the white women he normally fucks. All of this is every kind of wrong.
What’s interesting is that Mayer felt compelled to apologize about the “Nigger Pass” comment, but not at all to the specific black women he demeaned in this article, nor the millions of other who are implicated in his disgusting little brain of his.
Here’s his whack-ass apology the other night from a show in Nashville, where he basically sums up these statements to his need to be clever and witty, and not on some deep-seated racism and white supremacy. Fuck you, John.
I left for a while. Been working harder than I’ve ever worked before. But I think it’s time to come back. Maybe not as regularly. Maybe a different set of issues, but I need the space to speak.
This piece just ran on CNN.com by Black gay journalist LZ Granderson. I am totally shocked CNN ran it. Granderson’s central point is illustrated here:
Despite the catchiness of the slogan, gay is not the new black.
Black is still black.
And if any group should know this, it’s the gay community.
Bars such as The Prop House, or Bulldogs in Atlanta, Georgia, exist because a large number of gay blacks — particularly those who date other blacks, and live in the black community — do not feel a part of the larger gay movement. There are Gay Pride celebrations, and then there are Black Gay Prides.
There’s a popular bar in the heart of the nation’s capital that might as well rename itself Antebellum, because all of the white patrons tend to stay upstairs and the black patrons are on the first floor. Last year at the annual Human Rights Campaign national fundraiser in Washington, D.C. — an event that lasted more than three hours — the only black person to make it on stage was the entertainment.
When Proposition 8 passed in California, white gays were quick to blame the black community despite blacks making up less than 10 percent of total voters and whites being close to 60 percent. At protest rallies that followed, some gay blacks reported they were even hit with racial epithets by angry white participants. Not to split hairs, but for most blacks, the n-word trumps the f-word.
I like that this piece continues to do, as myself, Jasmyne Cannick and others have been doing for the last several years, to continue to raise the issue of racism within the gay community. And I am happy that more of us are able to access mass media to break intervene in the hegemony of gay politics. But, I think there are two places where I depart from Granderson. One, Granderson suggests that there Black LGBT folks are not unhappy with Obama. I think there are Black LGBT folks who have critiques of Obama, but are very different critiques from what are raised by the mainstream LGBT Movement. I think that there is a way in which Obama, and everything his restoration of Black masculinity and Black family values he represents, implicitly supports and encourages heterosexism & homophobia in the Black community. For me, this is as critical as an end to DOMA or the HIV travel ban.
Also Granderson goes onto say that
The 40th anniversary of Stonewall dominated Gay Pride celebrations around the country, and while that is certainly a significant moment that should be recognized, 40 years is nothing compared with the 400 blood-soaked years black people have been through in this country. There are stories some blacks lived through, stories others were told by their parents and stories that never had a chance to be told…While those who were at Stonewall talk about the fear of being arrested by police, 40 years ago, blacks talked about the fear of dying at the hands of police and not having their bodies found or murder investigated.
I think rather than using Stonewall as a moment separate and apart from historical structural Black oppression, I think Granderson misreads the racial and sexual/gendered dynamics of police oppression of queers that led to the Stonewall Riots, and factually misses who was present, or that police don’t or did not, actually kill queers, and that the spectre of that kind of violence wasn’t also especially targeted at Black queers-we still see that to this day, as last year black transgender woman Duanna Johnson was beaten by Memphis police officers while handcuffed in the precinct, and was later shot to death after filing for a lawsuit against the Memphis Police Department. Granderson could have actually talked about the way this history has been re-cast as white and bourgeois, and as a natural pre-cursor to same-sex marriage and military inclusion fights, rather than actually being in direct opposition to the current LGBT movement projects. In fact, it was widely rumored after Stonewall that the Black Panthers and/or Students for a Democratic Society had been behind the riots. While proven untrue, it was clear that the powers that saw Stonewall as part of the radical black power, anti-imperialist and feminist movements, rather than assimilationist.
So while we have to continue to push and challenge racism in mainstream LGBT politics, we also need to be critical of the Obama Administration, and not allow for racist and revisionist history to obscure and de-value radical politics of Stonewall.
This is my favorite Michael Jackson video, “Remember the Time,” though “Wanna Be Startin Somethin’” is probably my favorite song. I liked Michael’s music like most people, but was far from a HUGE fan. Nevertheless, I have found myself weeping at his loss. Perhaps he meant more to me than I thought.
Stonewall 40th and Pride Unveil NYC’s Shameful Priorities
Written by Yasmine Farhang & Kenyon Farrow
Just months before the 40th anniversary of one of the most significant rebellions of poor and working class queer and transgender people (mostly of color), out-lesbian New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced the city’s proposal for rich gay tourists to commemorate this anniversary—shop till you drop. But for us at Queers for Economic Justice and our allies, our movement for sexual liberation is not for sale.
This announcement was made weeks after New York City refused funding to organizations that house and provide services to homeless queer youth, leaving several organizations on the brink of closing. Speaker Quinn made the City’s priorities clear when she announced that two million dollars would go to launching a gay tourism marketing campaign called Rainbow Pilgrimage. The campaign claims to commemorate the forty year anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion by imploring tourists, domestically and internationally, to connect with this proud lineage. READ THE REST HERE.
I recently met the author of this new piece on Wiretap Magazine called “Selling Ourselves: Questioning HIV Prevention Campaigns,”Kirk Grisham, through mutual friends and he’s a kindred spirit in trying to really push against all of the assumed narratives about “men who have sex with men,” and notions of “community” and “risk” in HIV prevention work. Let’s hope we get into Mailman, Kirk! LOL!
I have gotten into debates on this very blog about the meaning and efficacy of social marketing campaigns. While not perfect, and alone will not end the epidemic, I think they can be effective in breaking social norms, especially when they speak to people as having agency, value, and break certain silences and social taboos. In short: They get people talking and thinking.
Conversely, social marketing campaigns can also be stigmatizing, blaming, and as Grisham says in the article:
City agencies, private firms and the populations themselves share blame for producing these messages, which begs the question: Do we know what’s good for us? Are we simply propagating the same stigma, homophobia and racism vis-à-vis mainstream society through marketing, as seen in the Homoboy campaign?
Do these negative, racist and stigma-filled homophobic messages sell? Would positive messages work any better? Can one sell liberation?
He names some of the most problematic campaigns to come out in recent years, including “Don’t Be a Bitch. Wear A Condom.” The response he gets from Better World Advertising Exec Les Pappas (who I worked with on the WeArePartof You.org capaign)” basically says to Grisham that the message tested well in focus groups.
Where are your politics? When I was at New York State Black Gay Network and we did the campaign with Better World, we were very clear that we did not want to do some tacky stigmatizing campaign that talked down to Black gay men. The campaign we ended up with was taken to focus groups, but our values and politics shaped it from jump. This Don’t Be a Bitch message probably would test in the current social context where Black folks are running around talking about “Man Up” and “No Homo.” Does that make it right? Is it the goal of social marketing campaigns, as they pertain to public health interventions, just to mimick what else is already out there in the world? Or to actually know that what you’re doing isn’t doing more damage than it will acutally do any good? What are the measurements of success?
Very little reporting happens that questions the more subtle forms or racism and homopbobia that happen in do-gooder public relations campaigns. Thanks for continuing a conversation, Kirk.
This event should be a really interesting conversation. If you’re in NYC/NJ you should come through tonight! If not, make sure you get on board with the Newark Pride Events this week. I’ll be there. And I am comin’ from Brooklyn! What’s your excuse?
I just started writing for a new Black-focused news site called TheGrio.com, and my first piece is on my growing frustration with same-sex marriage politics and the Black community:
I have spent many hours in lectures, panels and private conversations trying to explain why Black people, in poll after poll, overwhelmingly do not support same-sex marriage. But my arguments are beginning to lose steam and I am not sure I believe them anymore regardless of how I feel about gay marriage. At the end of the day, there is no excuse for homophobia and I am tired of indirectly defending it.
Hours after the California Supreme Court decided to uphold Proposition 8, effectively banning future same-sex marriages in that state, I found myself standing along a protest route where about 1000 same-sex marriage activists marched along 14th Street in Manhattan to rally in Union Square. Suddenly behind me I heard someone shout “God meant marriage for a man and a woman! Stand Strong Obama!” READ THE REST AT TheGrio.com
I have recently been having a lot of conversations with Black women, particularly lesbian friends, about Black gay misogyny. Without going into grave detail (right now anyways), what are the ways in which black gay male performances of black women actually support patriarchy more than they do to disrupt gender norms? Why is it that many people in our community can only be bothered with women they consider femme, attractive, or some other superficial markers of womanhood while are incredibly hostile to women, lesbians in particular who don’t perform for them, or fit certain high-femme gender norms of what it means to be a woman?
In any case, while I sometimes really am annoyed by Black gay misogyny, I cannot help but also be entertained and highly value the ways in which we continue to develop a whole language and culture that is a whole thing all its own. Case in point, the following video (and if you go to Youtube there’s a whole series of these) of a fake conversation between Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey, which the two describe their frustrations with the other so-called Divas and Legends, reading as if they are two queens from the Ball scene. And what’s funnier is the script run through a computer voice interpreter which strips away the contours of how we actually sound, but you get to hear the actual words and phrasing. This is clearly written by a Black gay man, and while I have to ponder at the ways in which we invoke the feminine that are sometimes horribly problematic, it is at the same time very creative, inspired, and in this case, damn funny.
OK. One more. Whitney Houston schools Keri Hilson.
This got me out of retirement, kids.
