LGBT

Why You Should Care About Real Hate Crimes

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Based on all the information as of today, Jussie Smollett is trash.

I have been closely following the curious case of the Empire actor. Smollett, who is black and openly gay, claims that he was attacked in what is being called a hate crime.  According to him, while he was out getting food at a local Subway in Chicago during the polar vortex at 2 AM a couple of weeks ago, two men assaulted him with a noose and bleach and screamed: “This is MAGA country.”

At first, like most people, I was angered by his alleged attack, but when I started thinking more about the incident, it began to make no sense to me.  Then I started seeing YouTube videos here and here by gay, black men who openly questioned his narrative.  Then I heard Smollett was going to be interviewed by Robin Roberts, and I thought I would finally get the story straight from the victim.  I really wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.  But after viewing the interview, I was more confused than before.  There were no suspects, no witnesses, no video surveillance, and no credible evidence.  Smollett’s version of the story that he wants us to believe defies basic logic and common sense.  Then the whole story started to fall apart over the weekend with the arrest of the two Nigerian brothers.

I really don’t want to believe someone would make up such a story.  Making up hate crimes in these times not only emboldens Trump supporters, but it also undermines real hate victims.  The next time a person of color or a gay person who is not as rich and famous as Smollett is really assaulted, they might not be taken seriously.

If Smollett did lie about this incident, it shows that he is a psychopath who really doesn’t care about black and LGBT people, and who doesn’t mind putting them in harm’s way when it is convenient for him.  With this said, just because Smollett doesn’t care about real hate crime victims, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.

According to a new Human Rights Campaign report, 2019 Black and African-American LGBTQ Youth Report, 30 percent of black LGBTQ youth have been physically threatened because of their LGBTQ identity, including 41 percent of black transgender and gender non-conforming kids.  2018 was one of the deadliest years for transgender people, especially trans women of color.

I remember a couple of years ago I was watching a TV program about cold cases.  There was one segment about this black woman in Louisiana (or Mississippi… I don’t remember) who was found dead in a shallow ditch outside a small town after someone complained about a foul smell.  The police figured the woman had been in the ditch for at least two weeks based on the state of her decomposed body.   They did an autopsy and found out quickly that she was biologically born a male, based on the typical scares of someone who has had gender reassignment.  They couldn’t identify the body and the woman didn’t match any recent missing persons’ notice.   The autopsy also revealed that the woman was killed by multiple gunshots and was possibly raped.  There was no DNA of her potential killer found on her body or in the vicinity of the ditch.  There was nothing on or near the body to positively identify the woman.  After some time, the woman was buried in an unmarked grave, and her case has sat cold for the last ten years.  How sad is it that this woman was possibly so ostracized and invisible in her community that her body wasn’t identified and no one claimed or acknowledged her in both life or death.

I say all this to point out the realities of what hate crimes look like in America today.  For Smollett to take advantage of the real fears oppressed groups in this country have to deal with is outrageous!  If anything good comes out of this, maybe we could all take real hate crimes more seriously.

Pose: Race and Ball Culture

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I have become an instant fan of Pose, a great new FX show about 1980s ballroom culture.  The show is reminiscent of the seminal documentary Paris Is Burning, which similarly showcases LGBT Blacks and Latinos’ lives in New York City.

Balls have a long history, starting around the 1900s, which were more like fashion shows and pageants.  Back then, they even did ballroom dancing and were judged on appearance and costume.  Queens of color were generally not invited to these events.  When they were invited, they were expected to lighten their skin and straighten their hair to compete.  Sometimes these balls were rigged in favor of white queens.  The 1968 documentary The Queen, which is about the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant drag contest, is, in my opinion, a very boring film, but you can watch it here if you want.  Near the end of the film, it is most interesting when the winner declared is a mediocre, forgettable white queen near the 56-minute mark.  A much prettier, legendary black queen named Crystal LaBeija, who stormed off the stage when she is awarded third place, should have won the contest.  The video below shows LaBeija reading the poor white queen for filth.  I can watch this video all day!

“I will sue the bitch!”

“I have a right to show my color, darling.  I am beautiful, and I know I’m beautiful.”

The short clip is not only significant for LaBeija’s fierce reading, but it also marked an important cultural shift.  LaBeija didn’t sue anybody; what she did do was revolutionize ball culture. LaBeija and fellow queen Lottie hosted their own ball just for black queens a few years later.  They also started House of LaBeija, and Crystal led the house as the “mother.”  The first ball for queens of color was actually hosted in 1962 by Marcel Christian, who would also change her surname to LaBeija.  But House of LeBeija holds the distinction of being the first house to host a ball.  After LaBeija’s ball, other houses were created.  A house is a group of LGBT-identified folks who compete in balls together and create an emotional support system for group members, many of whom are young, black, and gay and shunned by their biological families because of their sexual and gender identities.  A house is a family, and this house system still exists today, thanks to Crystal LaBeija.

After LaBeija died in 1982, Pepper LaBeija became the house’s mother.  In addition to the House of LaBeija, there is the House of Xtravaganza, one of the first predominately Latino houses, House of Dupree and House of Ninja, founded by famed voguing dancer Willi Ninja.  All four of these houses were featured in Paris Is Burning.

This movie still is influential even to this day.  Madonna culturally appropriated voguing into a dance craze.  Terms like “shade,” “work,” “gag,” “fierce,” and “giving face” are now part of the normal lexicon.  Pepper LaBeija and Dorian Corey taught us why reading is fundamental and inspired a new generation on Viceland’s My House.

Darling, our culture is better because of ball culture.

What Is White Privilege?

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Recently I finished reading Phoebe Robinson’s awesome book, You Can’t Touch My Hair. While a great deal of the content and the attention the book has received has mainly focused on Robinson’s struggles with her black hair throughout her life, I was particularly interested in two parts of the book that specifically revolve around instances of white privilege. To be even more specific, white privilege in the LGBT community. One issue is regarding the story of the white lesbian couple that didn’t want a biracial child and the other is a sad tale of the white lesbian fetishizing a black female slave.

I discussed this book with one of my friends, Melissa, a very outspoken black lesbian who has had negative experiences with some white LGBT folks, and I wanted to get her thoughts on the book. After talking to her, we came to the same conclusion about this racial identity issue in the LGBT community.

Just a quick refresher, a couple of years ago a white lesbian couple in Ohio used a sperm bank to get pregnant. The bank gave the couple sperm from a black donor instead of a white donor they requested. After giving birth to the child, they then proceeded to sue the sperm bank for the mistake. Mind you, the couple had every right to sue the sperm bank, but they seem to be doing more damage to their child’s life through the lawsuit and the media frenzy that ensued at the time.

I remember when this story first happened. One of the mothers was on TV complaining about the “emotional distress” of living in a conservative, bigoted, lily-white community in Ohio with a biracial child and the punishment of dealing with their child’s natural hair.

The first thing to come to my mind was that the conservative, bigoted, lily-white community in Ohio hated the biracial child, but was okay with being neighbors with a lesbian couple.

Okay, girl…

“The couple sees themselves as white before gay,” Melissa said. “They live in literal white privilege in Ohio and thought as long as they are white, they could pass and be seen as equals in their white community. Having the black child disrupted their white privilege status. Instead of them saying ‘Hey, let’s move to a community that is more diverse, and inclusive, and welcoming of our family,’ they are basically saying ‘Hey, this black kid with the nappy hair is messing up our white privilege lifestyle, and reminding the community that we are not really white because of our dyke status.'”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Regarding the other issue, Robinson recalls in her book when she took a writing class at Pace, and a white lesbian classmate wrote a story about the relationship between a black female slave and her slave master’s daughter. Yeah, this actually happened…

From an NPR interview Robinson did last year:

…This one girl in my class, she’s very sweet but she just recently discovered that she was a lesbian — which I was like: Yes, it’s amazing that you found yourself. So, she wrote this play that … I think it was coming from a good place, it really was, but she wrote this play about slavery. …

Basically, the slave had the chance to get her freedom, but she turned it down to stay being a slave at that plantation or whatever because her and the slave master’s daughter were like having an affair. …

I kind of had to speak up and be like, you know, I don’t think any slave would be like: “Hard pass on freedom, I’m going to keep picking cotton so I can hook up with this chick twice a week.” …

…If you want to write a story about slavery, by all means, do it. But it has to come from a place that’s respecting the past and respecting the people in it…

There is so much wrong with this story. This again proves my point about the problem of sanitizing the history of slavery. People are graduating from schools today who don’t have any clue about the harsh realities of slavery, and this incident is a result of the lack of proper education on the subject. When you have people going around saying that slaves were “migrant workers” and Sally Hemmings was a “mistress,” then you can’t be surprised that this classmate would write such an inappropriate story.

Again, Melissa and I agreed that this not only showcases white privilege in the LGBT community, but it also fetishizing black bodies.

“This reminded of this time I briefly dated a white girl in grad school who had a hard time understanding why the black gay community might not have the same life priorities and concerns as white gays,” Melissa said. “I used to tell her that gay black people deal with the same problems straight black people deal with – racism and discrimination – living while black stuff, right. We are out here struggling with housing, poverty, healthcare, and cops beating us up. She was all about marriage equality is the priority.  I’m discriminated more for being black than for being gay in my everyday life because it is easier discriminate against skin color than sexuality because it is obvious. Most black people are obviously black and it is easier to discriminate against that. Whereas, most gay people are not obviously gay, unless they say so. Gay whites have the privilege to pass when they need to in most cases.”

Interesting! And this is why they dated briefly.

“We had been dating for a few weeks and stuff was starting to get sexual between us, and she texted me out of the blue that she had this sexual fantasy of me being a criminal breaking into her apartment to rape her with a big, black, veiny dildo,” Melissa said. “I didn’t even know what to say. The whole black criminal thing really had my head go back. I was like this girl is really sick in her racist mind and wanted me to live out her warped black, rapist, lesbian BBD fantasy. The fact that she would even text that to me and not think twice before pressing send says a lot. I texted her back and told her to never contact me again and I blocked her. Blocked her! Never saw her again. I don’t really mess with white women anymore.  I mostly date my own kind now.”

Well, alright then… I wasn’t expecting Melissa to say all that…

I don’t really know how to appropriately end this post after writing that. Just go read the book!

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