Tim Wise Schoolin' Peeps

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Of National Lies and Racial America

By TIM WISE
March 18, 2008
This essay originally appeared in Lip.


For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.

But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--occasionally Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity--for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go--these last words being the first ones uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an "angry black man" like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn't he say that America "got what it deserved" on 9/11? And didn't he say that black people should be singing "God Damn America" because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?

Well actually, no he didn't.

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around--a notion with longstanding theological grounding--and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and "never batted an eye." That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and "save American lives."

But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would "never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."

And Wright didn't say blacks should be singing "God Damn America." He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn't happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don't believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.

Finally, although one can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks--and I do, for instance--it is worth pointing out that Wright isn't the only one who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the one white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early '90s in an interview on CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed "undesirable" including gays and racial minorities.

So that's the truth of the matter: Wright made one comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America's favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been one of those "prosperity ministers" who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Falwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:

"White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac."

And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been one of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the only history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.

We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we're shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation--we're literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.

Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the "shining city on a hill," for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do--and this is true even for millions of black veterans--for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like "God Bless America," for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.

Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I've seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country--when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as "Negro Barbecues," involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to onlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.

Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade--an excising of truth and an assault on memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.

Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not only extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that "Leave it Beaver" and "Father Knows Best," portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks of Beaver and Larry Mondello.

These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were--and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the "good old days" to which we wish we could return, still are--from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before "Leave it to Beaver" debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. One month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.

No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager's textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon "this great country" as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of one's nation into an idol to be worshipped, it not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.

It is they--the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land--who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the ones to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle on in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it--when our nation does--we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.

So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows one to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns one nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the only and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.

What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell one after another essential truth are demonized, not only for the stridency of their tone--which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma--but for merely calling bullshit on those whose lies are swallowed whole?

And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in every picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children's story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they'll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the one they consider God--to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like--is no cause for concern.

Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don't believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief--after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire--many of the white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless one accepted Jesus as one's personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed, hell was where you'd be heading.

So you can curse God in this way--and to imply such hate on God's part is surely to curse him--and in effect, curse those who aren't Christians, and no one says anything. That isn't considered bigoted. That isn't considered beyond the pale of polite society. One is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.

Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com


You can also check out Tim's blog.

No Backsliding On This Campaign Promise

Sen. Barack Obama:

I will also place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sen. Hillary Clinton:

We’re going to expand our federal hate crimes legislation and pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and assure that they are both fully inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

Autumn has a February 11 post on her The View From (Ab)Normal Heights blog talking about this, and I concur with her assessment.

After January 20, 2009, if either Sen Obama or Sen Clinton wins the Democratic party nomination and goes on to be inaugurated as our next president, I and my fellow transgender Americans will expect nothing less in exchange for our votes than a fully-inclusive ENDA.

We expect the presidential bully pulpit in an Obama or a second Clinton administration to be used to not only help get a fully inclusive ENDA passed, but signed by you in the Rose Garden with TV cameras recording the scene for posterity.

There will be zero tolerance of excuses, triangulation, cutting us out of the legislation citing bogus whip counts, rigged polls, false assumptions the law won't pass with transgender people in it, whatever future excuse for non-inclusion I don't have covered in this post or claiming you misspoke on the campaign trail.

I will allow for delay of it in order to take care of more pressing national matters and for the maintenance of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate during the 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 campaign, but I'm not sure how patient my transgender brothers and sisters will be.

If you have wavering DINO's, we expect you to lean on them to get the inclusive ENDA passed. If there are any GOP amendments proposed to water it down, defeat them. If HRC starts spouting that incrementalist crap, tell the incrementalists that it hasn't passed with transgender people cut out of it, so what do you have to lose by including them? If the Sacrilegious Right starts squawking, tell 'em that you do not have a right to hate on, discriminate or demonize fellow Americans or claim that your 'religion' allows you to do so. If that doesn't work, tell 'em go to Hades.

And if some peeps have a problem with that, tough. We transpeople have waited far too long, shed too much blood, and taken too much abuse to NOT have our constitutional rights respected and protected.

A democracy is judged based on how it treats the least of its citizens, not how it treats the powerful and privileged. It's also past time for America to lead on civil rights issues instead of follow.

That message needs to be sent loud and clear to the nation and the world after January 20, 2009.

The Operation

If you haven't eaten lunch or are curious as to how an 'outie' gets turned into an 'innie', you can check out these videos of a gender reconfiguration surgery (or GRS for short).

WARNING: These videos will be fairly graphic, so if you have a weak constitution or just ate, these aren't the video clips for you. You may want to wait until you get home to see this one if you're at work. Minors need to get parental permission to see them.

Part 1



Part 2

Don't Diss My Community To Build Pride In Yours

I happened to be off from work on the day Oprah broadcast her show on intersex people. It's a community that can definitely use the media face time and I eagerly tuned in to watch and learn more about a community that definitely needed the media face time. I was enjoying the show until a panellist made this comment in an effort to explain the differences between the transgender and intersex communities:

"Intersex is a medical problem, transgender is a mental one."

FYI to that person, there is increasing research into transsexuallity that point ot such causes as the 'hormone wash' theory and the BSTc brain regions of transgender people being being at variance with the biological birth gender identity. That would make it a MEDICAL condition.

Transgender people have to deal with enough drama from the religious Right, conservatives, ignorant sheeple in society, right wing talk show hosts and elements of the GLB community. The last thing we want or need is piling on from the intersex community as well. You can respectfully point out the differences between our communities without making incorrect statements as this person did on Oprah.

So what is intersex? It's the preferred description for what used to be called hermaphroditism, which according to the Intersex Society of North America, is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. It occurs in one out of every 1500-2000 births.

For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female types—for example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY.

Intersex is the preferred term of the community. Using the old hermaphrodite term is considered by some people in the intersex community as an insulting and derogatory slur, while others are seeking to reclaim it as a pride word to describe themselves like some people in the GLBT community did for the words 'queer' and 'dyke'.

But a sometimes contentious debate in the intersex community roils up about not only how far do they go to raise awareness and educate the public on these issues, but how to build coalitions with allied groups to advocate for the interests of intersex people.

Some of that debate is exposing some peeps in the intersex community's frustrations with being lumped in transgender people. There are some intersex people who have expressed the opinion that 'transgender activists' are 'forcing them into an unwanted association with the GLB and transgender communities and trampling their rights to self-determination'.

As someone who is one of those 'activists' that peeps love to throw shade at, speaking for myself, that charge is ludicrous and baseless.

The last thing that I or any transgender person wants, given our own tortured history with the GLB community, is to be perceived as someone or a group interfering with the self-determination rights of others like our intersex friends.

I lived for two years with a roomie that was intersex, and I'm deeply aware of some of the shame and guilt issues she had (and still has to) deal with along with her post-surgery gender transition during her late teens. As Lynell Stephani Long can tell you, it ain't easy being an African-American and growing up intersex.

I agree with this closing paragraph from the ISNA website in the section concerning the differences between transgender and intersex people.

People who identify as transgender or transsexual also face discrimination and deserve equality. We also believe that people with intersex conditions and folks who identify as transgender or transsexual can and should continue to work together on human rights issues; however, there are important differences to keep in mind so that both groups can work toward a better future.

Amen. There are issues in which intersex and transgender people can collaborate on that will result in a win-win partnership for both groups. The anti-gay marriage push has negative effects on our and intersex people's marriages. We need to be in coalition fighting ANY Religious Right sponsored legislation that seeks to fix gender definitions based on birth genitalia, makes it harder to change identity documents or even narrowly defines what a woman or a man is legally. We also have shame and guilt issues we have to work out, and that's common ground for jump starting a dialogue between our communities.

But those working partnerships have to be built on a foundation of mutual respect and trust.

The October 5, 1999 700 Club Show

TransGriot Note: With all the faith-based Hateraid being spewed at transgender people lately by fundamentalists and the Catholic Church, I thought it was time to post this transcript from a 700 Club show. Pat Robertson weighed in on transsexuality and stated the obvious on October 5, 1999. Note the parts I have in bold print.

-----------------------------------------

Letter Writer:
I'm 40 years old and have had a sex change. I've been watching your program and was wondering if God forgave me. Should I live as I am now or go back to my birth gender?


Pat Robertson:
This is a very serious question and I appreciate it. There are people who are born with various types of hormonal activity in their bodies and they feel more male than female, and more female than male. I know a plastic surgeon here, in this area who indeed does that sort of thing and, ah, to accommodate what is going on in peoples lives.

Terry Meeuwsen:
This is a very legitimate hormonal thing happening.

Pat Robertson:
Exactly. So, it is not a sin. So you don't need to feel guilty.

He goes on to say...

So you say, will God forgive me. Of course He will, He does. This isn't something that you have sinned and if you wish to get back and your 40 years old, it's not exctly too late. I know as I say, one man who can do a sex change reversal.

Terry Meeuwsen:
God is interested in what his heart, attitude is, speaking spiritually.

Pat Robertson:
God does not care what your external organs are. The question is whether you are living for God or not. Yes, He loves you. Yes, He forgives you and He understands what is going on in your body.

-----------------------------------------------------

Any wonder that the Forces of Intolerance quickly scrubbed this transcript snippet from the 700 Club archives? Pat has since tried to distance himself from these remarks, but it's out in The Net and the gift that keeps on giving. I used that last quote in March 2001 when I testified in my home state in favor of a streamlined name change bill that TGAIN was sponsoring.

I'd like to conclude this post with a scripture from Galatians 3:28 which reads, There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Congratulations Number Two!

There are currently only three African-Americans who have been honored with the transgender community's second highest award for service, the IFGE Trinity Award. Dawn Wilson, moi and Marisa Richmond.

She, I and Dawn have crossed paths more than a few times at various events in the community over the years and we're only a two hour ride up and down I-65 from each other. We jokingly call each other Numbers One, Two and Three in reference to the order in which we won our respective Trinity's. (Dawn in 2000, Marisa in 2002 and mine in 2006)

Marisa is set later this summer to achieve another trailblazing milestone. When the Democratic National Convention kicks off later this summer in Denver, the history professor will be making a little history of her own. She will become the first African-American transgender delegate to participate.

She is pledged to Sen. Clinton, but told the Washington Blade in an interview said that she wouldn't be disappointed if Sen. Obama ends up with the nomination.

She won't be the only transgender person making history at this convention. Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean named transman Diego Sanchez from Massachusetts to one of the convention’s standing committees.

Sanchez is the first transgender person to be selected by the chair of the DNC and the first to serve on the platform committee. There will also be other transgender people who will probably join them as the delegates are chosen in the various state conventions.

In 2004 we had a total of eight transgender people as delegates to the DNC convention in Boston. I thought about trying to become a delegate here in Kentucky, but once I discovered that our state delegation's limited slots were going to reserved for political office holders and higher level party officials, I dropped the idea. I may still end up in Denver anyway blogging the convention. I'll keep you TransGriot readers updated on that as I get further info.

But back to my homegirl. Congratulations Number Two! I'm so proud that Marisa is the first and will represent me and my community well. We'll have to hit Corky's the next time I'm in Nashville to celebrate.

Talking Honestly About Race Is Easier Said Than Done

by Betty Winston Baye'
Louisville Courier-Journal
March 27, 2008

While on break in a jury pool this week, I read every word of Barack Obama's Philadelphia unburdening on race. It's not the best ever delivered, and his delivery didn't knock my socks off, but it was a very good speech.

Referring to his friend and pastor of 20 years, Obama acknowledged that Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks ignited a "firestorm" and reflected "a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right about America." My response is that people tend to see America how they experience America.

I felt a little better when Obama went on to say that "the snippets" of Wright's sermon and "the caricatures being peddled by some commentators" do not represent "all that I know of the man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith."

Obama recalled that Wright and other African Americans of his generation (my generation, I hasten to add) "came of age in the late '50s and early '60s… a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them."

I'll say.

At least Obama, unlike some his age, sees that he is not self-created -- that he is, in fact, the beneficiary of struggles waged long before a white American from Kansas met an African from Kenya in Hawaii, married and in 1961 gave birth to a pretty brown baby boy.

I didn't like what seemed to me Obama's putdown of my generation. But it's hard to hold a grudge when my generation of social activists was in the habit of putting down predecessors. It's a rite of passage to see flaws in one's elders. It was a while before many of us in the movement understood that social revolutions tend to take time.

It pains me to recall an especially unkind letter I wrote to The New York Amsterdam News, attacking NAACP leader Roy Wilkins. I was young, energetic and enthusiastic, but had never walked a mile in the shoes of a black man many years my elder.

As for Obama, he'll figure out that he didn't invent the idea of forging alliances across racial lines, and that he's not the first to cry for change, now! He's been able to carry the demand further because of what others did.

Sadly, the impact of his speech won't reach some, because there's still no common vocabulary for black and white Americans to use in talking honestly about race.

I adored his insistence that Americans "realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper." Shared adversity often has been an organizing tool, helping to keep disadvantaged groups from being at one another's throats.

Audacity of hope notwithstanding, Obama gets it that America has been stuck in "racial stalemate" for years, partly because we talk past each other. I was reminded of this anew when a near-hysterical caller on a radio show excoriated Obama for belonging to that "segregated church," Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Actually, the UCC is a predominately white denomination, and the caller missed the part of Obama's speech in which he repeated "the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning."

Most American Christian churches are segregated; a few blacks or whites sprinkled in does not an integrated congregation make. The difference, however, is that some churches acknowledge their segregation and talk often about how they came to be that way. At other segregated churches, the subject of why they're segregated hardly ever comes up. It's the old elephant in the living room. Sunday after Sunday, pastors preach comfort-food sermons that don't challenge the fact that good church folks make wonderful mission trips abroad, but hardly engage in meaningful ways with fellow Christians worshipping in their segregated churches across town.

Obama said in his speech, and he's right, that there remain "complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked out." Isn't it obvious in the tenor of this campaign? Obama is also right that it's naïve to believe we can "get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy -- particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own."

Clearly, a lot of Americans aren't comfortable with race "talk." It's painful. So they ask the infamous Rodney King question, "Can't we all just get along?" Well, now Barack Obama says, "Yes we can," and he's being told by some, "Not now, Junior."

But you know in my church, from pulpit, pews and the choir stand, it often is said and sung, "What God has for me is for me," and "No weapon formed against me shall prosper." I take that to mean that if the presidency is what God has for Barack Obama, it will be, and nobody -- not Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Jeremiah Wright -- will stop it.

Betty Winston Bayé is a Courier-Journal editorial writer. Her column appears Thursdays in Community Forum.

Second Texas Democratic Caucuses Bring More Chaos

By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — Traffic jams, long lines, crowds, confusion and chaos marked Texas Democratic regional conventions Saturday as an unprecedented number of political activists turned out to help elect presidential nominating delegates for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

There are 67 at-large delegates at stake, depending mostly on the results of the state senatorial district and county conventions.

Obama was the caucus winner on primary night, and an Associated Press delegate count showed he might be holding his ground.

Obama's campaign late Saturday said he would win, claiming he would receive 38 delegates to Clinton's 29. Clinton's campaign says Obama should wait for the official results before declaring victory.

If the Obama campaign prediction is accurate, that would give Obama a total five-delegate advantage over Clinton in the Texas primary/caucus contest.

Obama won all of the Houston-area conventions, except Senate District 6, a heavily Hispanic community that went for Clinton in the popular vote. That district's results were the subject of an ongoing dispute late Saturday.

The area conventions often were marked by exasperation as thousands of people who had never participated in the process before gathered to show support for their candidate and try to win a slot to attend the state party convention in June.

"It's going very good," state Senate District 17 Chairman Bert Anson said in the midst of the convention in Elsik High School's gymnasium. "I've only been yelled at and cursed twice. I've only lost my temper once. No, I've lost my temper twice."

Delegates statewide also had to suffer through long sign-in lines to declare their allegiance to a candidate. Some arrived at 7 a.m. and did not make it into their convention halls for hours. The delegates were elected at the March 4 precinct caucuses.

"People are frustrated. Everybody's got a life. We're not professional politicians," said Ron Rothe, a Clinton alternate attending the Senate District 4 convention at the San Jacinto College North Campus. "But the crowd is very amiable, and we only do this every four years."

Republicans also held senatorial district and county conventions Saturday to elect delegates to their state convention, but there were no delegate contests because U.S. Sen. John McCain has clinched the GOP nomination.

Gov. Rick Perry attended the Senate District 14 convention in Austin to urge his fellow Republicans to pass a resolution showing support for the Boy Scouts of America against "increasing attacks" from "radical homosexuals, liberal extremists" and the American Civil Liberties Union. The Boy Scouts bar gays from serving as troop leaders.


Traffic jams
Democratic Party officials on the March 4 primary night had predicted Obama would lead 37-30 based on a preliminary count of the 1 million people who turned out for precinct caucuses. The delegate split, however, can change based on how many delegates pledged to each candidate showed up for the local and state conventions Saturday.

Clinton claimed a 65-61 advantage in the delegates allotted based on the March 4 popular vote results in the primary.

The conventions Saturday were electing about 7,300 delegates to the state Democratic Convention, June 5-7 in Austin. Those delegates will make the final decision on how the 67 caucus delegates are divided.

Typically, only a few hundred people turn out for the local conventions, but this year party officials had to find larger venues because tens of thousands of delegates attended.

Traffic jams leading to the Travis County Exposition Center for the Senate District 14 and Senate District 25 conventions caused numerous delegates to abandon their vehicles more than a mile away and walk to the convention.

The Senate District 11 convention in Pasadena had more than 1,200 people show up at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Hall. The parking lot overflowed into a nearby elementary school, and cars lined the streets for blocks.

At the Senate District 6 convention, an area of heavy Clinton support, there were more than 40 precincts who had no delegates show up for the convention.

Clinton received about 64 percent of the popular vote in the Senate District 6 in the March 4 primary, but only 55 percent of the delegates attending Saturday's convention backed her.

That gave Obama an opportunity to make up for losing ground in Webb County, where Clinton received all 51 delegates to the state convention because Obama's delegates did not reach a 15 percent threshold attendance for claiming delegates. He had received 20 percent of the vote in the primary there.


Getting wild
One of the wildest conventions was Senate District 19 held at a San Antonio warehouse.

When there was a fight over the list and credentials of registered delegates, the warehouse owner threatened to expel the convention.

At the Senate District 13 convention at Texas Southern University in Houston, an Obama stronghold, Clinton supporters unsuccessfully tried to gain delegate strength by asking Obama backers to switch so they would be elected as delegates to the state convention. Obama came out of the convention with 272 state delegates to Clinton's 69.

When U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, a superdelegate pledged to Clinton, spoke to the Senate District 13 convention, some Obama supporters booed her.

Despite the hassles Saturday, many Democrats said the turnout excited them about their prospects of breaking the Republican political hold on Texas.

"I wish we could bottle this enthusiasm and carry it over to November, which I think we will do," said Rodney Griffin, temporary chairman of the Senate District 13 convention in Missouri City.

Houston Chronicle reporters Alan Bernstein, Cindy George, Eric Hanson, Harvey Rice, Matt Stiles, San Antonio Express-News reporter Graeme Zielinski and The Associated Press contributed.

Transgender Teen Tells Story

from MomLogic

03/13/08 1:03 PM
In her own words, a transgender teen talks candidly about acceptance and tolerance.

We were shocked by the recent murder of 15-year-old Lawrence King--a young boy who was openly gay and reportedly wore mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school. Transgender teens have been in the spotlight lately and have left a lot of parents at a loss when it comes to talking to their own kids. Rika, pictured, a 17-year-old boy who came out as a girl during her freshman year (pictured), sheds a little light on the world of transgender teenagers.

Mom Logic: How did your parents react when you realized that you were really a girl?

Rika: I was in this depressive state. I didn't know if I was gay. I had good friends I was able to connect with, but I wasn't really sure of myself. At that point it was a taboo thing for me to wear female clothing. I was doing badly in school. And my parents asked me questions to know what was wrong and to help them help me. Finally I came out and told them, "Yes I am transgender." Then we went to Puerto Rico and I wore feminine clothing comfortably. That was my freshman year of high school. At that point, I went to a therapist and she said, "Well, she knows that she is a girl and it would be more polite to refer to her as 'her.'"

Mom Logic: How have you had to endure slurs or insults?

Rika: Honestly, I don't know where people get the balls to come up to a girl and say, "Are you a guy?" That is the most hurtful thing someone has said. When someone says something that is really vile or evil, there is obviously more of a problem with you than with me, because I am confident with who I am. That question is offensive because even if I was born female, why would you come up to me and ask me that question?

Mom Logic: How has your Mom been supportive?

Rika: When it comes down to it, she doesn't hear what I say and say "Ohmigosh!" She has always been the person who has been open about sexuality and people being themselves. A lot of things that I am able to talk to my Mom about are things that people would not be able to talk to their parents about. She is really good at asking questions, and it helps me to be free to explore my sexuality. I think in the beginning she was saddened by the fact that I was her only son, and she felt like she was mourning her son. I was offended by that, because I said, "I was never your son. I was always your daughter." But she got over that really fast. I give a lot of credit to my Mom. There's no real strife between us. Other than that, we've always had our teenage struggles.

Mom Logic: What are your tips for Moms and teens who have friends that are transgender?

Rika: Honestly, one of the main things is that you have to reinforce confidence. No matter what decision your child makes, it is still your child. A lot of parents try to control their kids. It's not up to parents anymore what decision the child has to make. By neglecting giving them love you don't help them develop the confidence to stand up to other people. I am grateful that my parents gave me the confidence to say you can be female! It's a beautiful thing to be transgender, you can take both aspects of male and female and make a new person. For a parent it's about reinforcing what they are naturally. Nurture their natural tendencies and watch him develop. As for other teens, if you're not going to accept me, I'm not going to accept you. If you can't be supportive, you probably need to end the friendship, because the person who isn't transgender will probably be uncomfortable, and the person who is won't feel comfortable to be who they are.

Hillary Didn't Win Texas

One of the spin lines coming out of the Clinton campaign to mask the beatdowns she's been getting on a regular basis from Sen. Obama is that 'she wins the big states while he wins the little states and the caucses'.

Well, she needs to revise that one. One big state she didn't win is my home state of Texas. As many of you are now aware, my home state has a two-step process that determines the allocation of its delegates.

Two thirds of the delgates are determined by popular vote. The other delegates are determined by a caucus which starts 15 minutes after the polls close on election night.

Sen. Clinton narrowly won the popular vote by a 51-47% margin. That earned her 65 delegates to his 61. But what has been kept quiet is that she got blown out in the caucus portion of the Texas Two-Step Primary, and when you total up the delegates, Sen. Obama will have MORELone Star State delegates than Sen. Clinton. Since it's all about the delegates, Sen. Clinton actually lost Texas. CNN reported this on March 11.

The Texas secretary of state will be announcing the official results on March 29, and it will confirm what many of us have known for a while. Hillary not only lost Texas, but her chances of winning the nomination are growing more remote by the day.

New Rally Location Set for New England Transgender Pride March

The organizers of the first New England Transgender Pride March and Rally have announced a change in location for the rally. The march, which will step off at noon on June 7, 2008 from Lampron Park/Bridge Street School in Northampton, MA will proceed, not to Veterans Field, but to a rally in the Armory Street Lot behind Thornes Marketplace in downtown Northampton.

Veterans Field is unavailable due to re-seeding this year. The Armory Street Lot is the same location where Northampton Pride is held each May.

“We’re pleased with the new rally location, as it is more central in Northampton and more easily wheelchair-accessible than Veterans Field,” said Justin Adkins, a member of the Trans Pride steering committee. “We’ll be providing American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting for the entire event.”

The rally, which will begin at 12:30 p.m. and end at 5:00 p.m., will be headlined by Leslie Feinberg, a pioneering transgender writer whose books include Stone Butch Blues, Transgender Warriors, and Drag King Dreams; and Miss Major, a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and Lead Community Organizer of the Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project, which advocates for the human rights of transgender prisoners. Several activists are slated to speak who will address proposed gender identity/expression anti-discrimination legislation in MA and CT, and the civil rights needs of transgender people in employment, education, housing, healthcare, and public accommodations. Featured performers will include the Boston-based drag troupe All The Kings Men and Joe Stevens of Coyote Grace.

New England Transgender Pride is currently seeking volunteer workers and sponsors for the event. Interested individuals and organizations may sign up online at www.transpridemarch.org, and groups that wish to march with their banners may register there, as well.

TransGriot Note: I've just accepted an invitation to speak at this upcoming historic pride march. Hope to see you there!

What Kind of Prophet?

Reflections on the Rhetoric of Preaching in Light of Recent News Coverage of Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. and Trinity United Church of Christ

by The Rev. John H. Thomas
General Minister and President
United Church of Christ

Over the weekend members of our church and others have been subjected to the relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ for thirty-six years and, for over half of those years, pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family. These video clips, and news stories about them, have been served up with frenzied and heated commentary by media personalities expressing shock that such language and sentiments could be uttered from the pulpit.

One is tempted to ask whether these commentators ever listen to the overcharged rhetoric of their own opinion shows. Even more to the point is to wonder whether they have a working knowledge of the history of preaching in the United States from the unrelentingly grim language of New England election day sermons to the fiery rhetoric of the Black church prophetic tradition. Maybe they prefer the false prophets with their happy homilies in Jeremiah who say to the people: "You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place." To which God responds, "The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. . . . By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed," (Jeremiah 14.14-15). The Biblical Jeremiah was coarse and provocative. Faithfulness, not respectability was the order of the day then. And now?

What's really going on here? First, it may state the obvious to point out that these television and radio shows have very little interest in Trinity Church or Jeremiah Wright. Those who sifted through hours of sermons searching for a few lurid phrases and those who have aired them repeatedly have only one intention. It is to wound a presidential candidate. In the process a congregation that does exceptional ministry and a pastor who has given his life to shape those ministries is caricatured and demonized. You don't have to be an Obama supporter to be alarmed at this. Will Clinton's United Methodist Church be next? Or McCain's Episcopal Church? Wouldn't we have been just as alarmed had it been Huckabee's Southern Baptist Church, or Romney's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?

Many of us would prefer to avoid the stark and startling language Pastor Wright used in these clips. But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild "obscenity" in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly four thousand cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered. Where is the real obscenity here? True patriotism requires a degree of self-criticism, even self-judgment that may not always be easy or genteel. Pastor Wright's judgment may be starker and more sweeping than many of us are prepared to accept. But is the soul of our nation served any better by the polite prayers and gentle admonitions that have gone without a real hearing for these five years while the dying and destruction continues?

We might like to think that racism is a thing of the past, that Martin Luther King's harmonious multi-racial vision, articulated in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and then struck down by an assassin's bullet in Memphis in 1968, has somehow been resurrected and now reigns throughout the land. Significant progress has been made. A black man is a legitimate candidate for President of the United States. A black woman serves as Secretary of State. The accomplishments are profound. But on the gritty streets of Chicago's south side where Trinity has planted itself, race continues to play favorites in failing urban school systems, unresponsive health care systems, crumbling infrastructure, and meager economic development. Are we to pretend all is well because much is, in fact, better than it used to be? Is it racist to name the racial divides that continue to afflict our nation, and to do so loudly? How ironic that a pastor and congregation which, for forty-five years, has cast its lot with a predominantly white denomination, participating fully in its wider church life and contributing generously to it, would be accused of racial exclusion and a failure to reach for racial reconciliation.

The gospel narrative of Palm Sunday's entrance into Jerusalem concludes with the overturning of the money changers' tables in the Temple courtyard. Here wealth and power and greed were challenged for the way the poor were oppressed to the point of exclusion from a share in the religious practices of the Temple. Today we watch as the gap between the obscenely wealthy and the obscenely poor widens. More and more of our neighbors are relegated to minimal health care or to no health care at all. Foreclosures destroy families while unscrupulous lenders seek bailouts from regulators who turned a blind eye to the impending crisis. Should the preacher today respond to this with only a whisper and a sigh?

Is Pastor Wright to be ridiculed and condemned for refusing to play the court prophet, blessing land and sovereign while pledging allegiance to our preoccupation with wealth and our fascination with weapons? In the United Church of Christ we honor diversity. For nearly four centuries we have respected dissent and have struggled to maintain the freedom of the pulpit. Not every pastor in the United Church of Christ will want to share Pastor Wright's rhetoric or his politics. Not every member will rise to shout "Amen!" But I trust we will all struggle in our own way to resist the lure of respectable religion that seeks to displace evangelical faith. For what this nation needs is not so much polite piety as the rough and radical word of the prophet calling us to repentance. And, as we struggle with that ancient calling, I pray we will be shrewd enough to name the hypocrisy of those who decry the mixing of religion and politics in order to serve their own political ends.

Moni's Take on the Rev.Wright-Obama Controversy

As the child of a retired media personality, one of the things my father drilled into me and my siblings was don't believe what you read in the papers (and the Net), hear on radio and see on television at first glance. You have to always ask the who, what, when, where and why questions. You ask yourself why is this coming out now, what's their agenda, and who's behind it.

My father's words were ringing in my ears when I first heard about the alleged hostile remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I didn't go into 'Attack Obama' mode like it seems that some whites have done who were looking for ANY excuse to NOT support him. I went into critical thinking mode.

I also considered where this video was coming from. FOX News.

This is a proven Republican propaganda mill that has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to lie, obfuscate, and bend the truth to accomplish its mission of electing GOP candidates.

The GOP is scared shitless that they will have to face Obama in the fall and contend with the massive voter turnouts and new voters that he would not only bring into the process, but swamp their candidates in a Democratic landslide. GOP electability is dependent upon low turnout elections. The more people brought into the process, the higher the probability of Democratic candidates for office getting elected.

The GOP has a long, negative history of using race baiting to boost their electoral chances, bait and switch campaigning and voter suppression tactics in minority communities to win elections. They were faced with a situation in which their old tried and true tactics weren't going to work. They were originally salivating at the prospect of a race with Hillary Clinton and had to find some way to negatively define Obama without looking racist as they always do.

Enter Faux News, Rev. Wright and edited video played in an endless loop with faux indignation spewing out of various conservative commentators mouths. I do find it interesting that this selectively edited video comes out not long after the GOP had a closed door strategy meeting a few weeks ago about how they were going to combat Sen. Obama's surging popularity and was timed to appear while Sen. Hillary Clinton's executing her 'kitchen sink' strategy.

By the way, here's the so-called 'hate sermon' in context.



Since when did non journalism award winning Fox News become a trusted news source? I'm a little sick of news organizations like CNN and others treating the propaganda arm of the Republican party as a news source.

But back to this controversy. It's interesting as well that this so-called 'hate-mongering' pastor was invited to this September 11, 1998 White House gathering of clergy that President Clinton held during the height of the Lewinsky scandal (and BTW, Sen Hillary's just released First Lady schedules show that she was there in attendance.)

Ask yourself this question. If Rev. Jeremiah Wright is such a 'hate mongerer', then why was he invited to this event?

I also find the hypocrisy and racism inherent in this high-tech lynching of Rev. Wright breathtaking. The conservative media is all over the edited out-of-context video of Rev Wright's sermons, but no similar sustained foaming-mouth outrage from my white brothers and sisters is forthcoming at Rev. Rod Parsley or McCain spiritual advisor John Hagee, who have longer histories of saying anti-American statements and jacked up comments.

Gee, I wonder why?

Hagee and Parsley have in the name of God, accused Catholics of aiding in the Holocaust, said that the victims of Hurricane Katrina got what they deserved, advocates wiping out more than a billion Muslims, and the fact that John McCain has enthusiastically solicited the support of people he once called 'divisive and dangerous' in 2000 is ignored.

What's even sadder is that the parishioners of Trinity UCC are being savaged by race-baiting conservative pundits who have no clue, don't want to know or don't care about our culture. What's even sadder is that people in my own party are repeating the Faux News talking points ad nauseum without asking themselves why Rev. Wright and this church is being attacked.

I also have to laugh at the conservative definition of racism, which is basically any Black person who is not only unabashedly proud of their heritage, but has the cojones to criticize this country, point out the reality of the color line and how it affects everything in this country.

Hell, I've been accused by some peeps in the transgender community of being 'racist' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Jasmyne Cannick has also had the same 'racist' charge hurled at her because she's unapologetically Black as well and has called out the GLBT community on numerous occasions on her blog and in the various media forums she participates in for their racist behavior on various issues.

Y'all can fall for the Faux News okey-doke, or the bogus racism charges from Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and the rest of the GOP-Conservative Noise Machine if you want to, but the facts are that racism is alive and well in this country. I've been saying it for years along with others and now this discussion is for better or worse, happening during a presidential political campaign.

One of the fears I'd expressed when I announced on the blog that I was supporting Sen. Obama in an earlier post was that some white people have higher than normal expectations for an African-American candidate than they do for a similar white candidate. An African-American candidate has to almost walk on water to get support from these peeps, and if they grudgingly give him that support, they are quick to abandon him if any bullcrap surfaces.

That is what I fear is happening now. I felt that much of the early white support for Obama was because of the fact he wasn't in their minds tied to the old Civil Rights Movement peeps, which some whites still harbor ill will to even in my own party. Obama also didn't feed into the 'angry Black' stereotype that some peeps still tar and feather any African-American who dares to think and candidly speak their mind with.

It's ironic that the best man for the job, who tried to avoid discussing race and run an issues-oriented campaign, may possibly end up not getting the nomination or end up in the White House because of the unresolved racial baggage of this country.

And that would be a tragedy.

Moni's 2008 NCAA Women's Tournament Picks

I'm a big college hoops fan, and that also includes women's games as well. I have been pleased to see the increasing amounts of quality women's college games being broadcast on TV.

So I'm starting a new tradition on TransGriot in honor of Women's History Month. I'm going to post my NCAA tournament picks for the women's tournament as well.


Greensboro Region

First Round
UConn, Texas, Old Dominion, Virginia, George Washington, Cal, Iowa State, Rutgers

Second Round
UConn, Old Dominion, Cal, Rutgers

Regional Final
Uconn, Rutgers

Greensboro Region Champ
UConn


Spokane Region

First Round
Maryland, Xavier, W. Virginia, Vanderbilt, Pitt, Baylor, UTEP, Stanford

Second Round
Maryland, Vanderbilt, Baylor, Stanford

Regional Final
Maryland, Stanford

Spokane Region Champ
Stanford


New Orleans Region


First Round
North Carolina, Georgia, Kansas State, Louisville, Oklahoma State, Marist, LSU

Second Round
North Carolina, Louisville, Oklahoma State, LSU

Regional Final
North Carolina, LSU

New Orleans Region Champ
LSU


Oklahoma City Regional


First Round
Tennessee, Purdue, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Arizona State, Duke, Syracuse, Texas A&M

Second Round
Tennessee, Oklahoma, Duke, Texas A&M

Regional Final
Tennessee, Duke

Oklahoma City Regional Champ
Tennessee


Final Four Teams
UConn, Stanford, LSU, Tennessee

Championship Game
UConn, Tennessee

2008 NCAA Women's Champion
UConn

Gov. Bill Richardson Endorses Sen. Obama

This video says it all. Bew Mexico Governor and former Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson aendorses Senator Barack Obama for president.




And to add to the Clinton campaign embarrassment for losing the endorsement of a major player in hubby Bill's administration and the only sitting Latino governor, Casey Knowles, the then 8 year old girl in Hillary's '3 AM' ad is now 18 years old and an Obama precinct captain in Washington state. She's not happy with her likeness being used in Hillary's attack ad.

Thinking About My Ex

Today would have been the 45th birthday for my ex-girlfriend Glenda.

She was the last person I dated before I transitioned, and I find myself thinking about her from time to time even though she's been deceased for seven years. We had a rocky, contentious relationship that put a major chill on our friendship for a while when it ended.

It was 1991 and I had reached a crossroads in my life. The only time I was dressing in male clothes at this point was either to visit family or go to work. I was kicking myself for letting another crossroads opportunity slip by when I was 19. As the 80's gave way to the 90's I had come to the conclusion I'd made a big mistake.

Enter Glenda. She and I were co-workers once upon a time, and I was feeling the heavy breath of my rapidly approaching big 3-0 birthday the next year. She entered my life at the time I was seriously wrestling with the 'do I or don't I pull the trigger on transition' question. She didn't know I was dealing with that issue since I kept it hidden from all except a few carefully chosen few people.

As I mentioned in my Valentine's day post, I was trying to avoid getting entangled in romantic relationships, but basically what happened to me is what Miriam Makeba said about the subject in her 1987 book 'My Story'.

Love has never cared about my schedule. It just barges in whenever it wants.

And it kicked the door down in this case.

One of the things that was causing the hesitation was that I was not only working in a place where I was surrounded by beautiful, college educated sistahs, I was getting increased romantic attention from those same sistahs. They saw my college educated happily single childless and gainfully employed self as marriage material.

I knew that once I began transition, that I was taking a 'good brother' as they saw me off the market forever. I began to wonder if I was doing everything possible to be a 'guy', and felt that maybe the key to some of my troubles was that I was avoiding romantic entanglements.

And I had to admit that Glenda had a lot of the qualities "the Twin' was looking for. She was a PK, intelligent (we both went to UH at the same time but didn't cross paths there), a sports fanatic, breathtakingly beautiful with supermodel looks, was proud of and cognizant of our history, and was just short of six feet tall at 5'11" with long, shapely legs.

But at the time I was gradually making moves to begin transition and had even started taking hormones. I tried to keep our interactions at 'just friends' level but she wanted more.

Then love barged in and we spent the next two tumultuous years together. The relationship got off to a rocky start because she wasn't honest about being a divorced mother with a teenage child, I didn't tell her about my gender issues and both of us found out about the other's big secret AFTER we fell into bed.

Long story short, two years later the relationship collapsed. When you wake up looking at a woman with a caramel brown complexion so flawless she only wore lipstick and mascara and barely wore makeup, has a curvy 38-25-38 body that allows her to wear a burlap sack and make it look fashion forward and sexy, and you have you own gender issues it breeds jealously.

She had her own demons and insecurities, exacerbated by her desires to have another child with 'The Twin' as the baby daddy. It also doesn't help your own sense of femininity if you're dating someone who also looks as good wearing a dress and heels as you do and you are occasionally borrowing panty hose from the 'brother' you want to father your next child.

When we broke up I came home from work that evening to find out she'd walked with half the stuff in my apartment, including a stereo that I'd owned since the early 80's that had sentimental value for me. I'd bought it from earnings with my first job. She'd also slashed my uniform jackets. It guaranteed that the bitterness I harbored over all the arguments, lack of closure and the night she swung a glass Coke bottle at my head (and fortunately missed) wouldn't go away for a while.

But I do have to give her credit. Being with Glenda wasn't all bad, it was fun at times. She was affectionate and loving when she wanted to be, she gave me a run for my money when we fired off sports trivia questions at each other, and had a wild sense of humor. After she discovered my stash of femme clothes early in our relationship and point blank called me on my transgender issues, she helped me with my presentation and makeup issues, got me more comfortable in going out in the big cruel world out there, went on a few forays into Montrose with me, and basically told me on numerous occasions (even though she was less than pleasant about it when she said it during one argument) that I was more feminine than she was.

That relationship also emphatically drove home the point that I was on the wrong side of the gender fence and needed to correct it ASAP.

The Cold War between us lasted until 1998. One day Glenda surprised me by pulling me aside in the crew lounge and told me that she was sorry for all the negative things that happened during our relationship. She said she missed our friendship and wanted to repair it. I discovered that some of her co-workers blamed her for my transition and were giving her the cold shoulder as a result. It took us a while, but we eventually got back to the communication and friendship level we were at before our ill-fated relationship.

I remember the last time I saw her like yesterday. It was Thursday, March 15, 2001 and I was getting my hair done at Sadat's shop when she walked in. We exchanged greetings and then she asked me to give her a hug, which I did.

She proceeded to tell me that she was having pain in her abdomen area, had it checked out by a doctor friend of hers but he couldn't find anything wrong. I told her she needed to get a second opinion. She said she was planning to see another doctor after she flew a two day trip she had scheduled starting the next day.

That Sunday night something told me to call her, but I changed my mind and decided I'd call Glenda on her birthday which was coming Tuesday.

I never got the opportunity to deliver that birthday greeting. Monday night I received a tearful phone call from her homegirl DeAndria informing me that she was dead. She'd been found collapsed on the bathroom floor of her apartment and the subsequent autopsy confirmed what I suspected was wrong when I talked to her in the shop.

Her appendix ruptured.

I didn't go to the funeral. I was still reeling from my involuntary separation from the airline after 14 years a month earlier (which I found out later was initiated by a right-wing Republican state legislator) and wasn't ready to face all my former co-workers yet who were traveling to her hometown for the funeral.

There are days when I think about her, I wonder if she'd still be alive if I'd followed my instincts and called her on that fateful Sunday night.

One of these days when I go back home I'll travel there, head to the cemetery where she's resting and say my goodbyes.

Blue Bell and Me

If you've been a loyal longtime TransGriot reader, you'll notice that I not only make frequent references to 'The Best Ice Cream In The Country', aka Blue Bell, but talk it up with an almost missionary zeal.

Hold on a sec, I'll be right back. (now on knees bowing in direction of Brenham, TX)

Okay, I'll now return you to this regularly scheduled post. Had to go downstairs to the fridge and help myself to a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream before I continue writing.

What is it about Blue Bell that makes native and naturalized Texans go wild about it? For me, it's a taste of home I don't get often in Bluegrass country. In fact, they only started selling it up here just last year.

Every part of the United States has a regional dish or snack food unique to the area that you can't get anywhere else. For example, Chicagoans are that way about Jay's Potato Chips and deep dish pizza. As a matter of fact, every time I'm in the Chicago area I don't leave Chicagoland without either grabbing a large bag of Jay's or chowing down on a deep dish pie. You can make a friend for life with a Philadelphia native that's residing somewhere else if you visit their hometown and bring them back Tastykakes. Native Louisvillians are the same way about Grippo's Potato Chips.

I can't get Frenchy's chicken, Harlon's barbecue, or a Katz's deli sandwich up here, but I can go to my local Walgreens or Kroger's and purchase my favorite Blue Bell flavors. If I'm feeling homesick, one bowl of it is enough to help me get through it.

Blue Bell is quintessentially Texas as well. The creamery was founded just over 100 years ago in Brenham, and for the longest time you couldn't get it anywhere but southeast Texas. They slowly expanded the distribution area for this legendary ice cream to cover all of the Lone Star State, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and southern New Mexico. You can now get it in 19 states.

If you want to find an expatriate Texan, hang around the Blue Bell freezer. Sooner or later we'll show up to pick up our favorite flavor.

Speaking of favorite flavors, time for me to get a refill.

Transgender Pride: It’s About Time

Guest Post by Bet Power

When it comes to our rights, we transgender people cannot wait our turn. Yet that’s what Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and the Human Rights Campaign told us to do when they stripped the proposed federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) of protections for gender identity/expression and left in only sexual orientation.

They also told us this: Let lesbians and gays (but only those who are gender-conforming) move forward under the law while trans people stay behind; “incrementalism” is a valid strategy for human rights; gender identity/expression would kill the bill; the votes were not there to pass the original, trans-inclusive ENDA; trans people first need to educate others more; and – most offensively – yours (Trans) is a new movement: put in more time, pay some more dues.

Tell that to Susan Stanton, the Largo, Florida city manager fired for transitioning to female. Tell that to 15-year-old Lawrence King, an effeminate gay boy bullied and then killed by a classmate who shot him in the head just because of what he wore.

It’s about time we look at history to see how long trans people have struggled.

Transgender is not a recent fad. In the United States, trans and intersex activism started before gay activism. In 1895, a group of New York androgynes started a group called The Cercle Hermaphrodites “to unite for defense against the world’s bitter persecution.” (Stryker: It’s Your History). It wasn’t until 1924 that Henry Gerber founded The Society for Human Rights, in Chicago. In 1950, the gay-male oriented Mattachine Society began; and in 1956, the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis.

Trans people took part in the civil rights activism of the 1960s, including a group of 150 patrons in “non-conforming clothes” who were turned away at Dewey’s Lunch Counter in Philadelphia. They went on to protest and distribute information about gender variance.

Some would like us not to mention Compton’s Cafeteria, where the first recorded transgender riot against police oppression occurred in August 1966 in San Francisco, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in NYC by three years.


Some prefer to erase important historical facts about Stonewall itself, which started Gay Pride:

▼ Police routinely harassed bar patrons under old NY state laws prohibiting cross-dressing as well as men dancing with men.

▼ A transgender woman, Sylvia Rivera, threw a bottle at a police officer after being prodded by his nightstick (Duberman: Stonewall), perhaps the first act of resistance at the Stonewall Inn sparking several nights of riots. Rivera said, “That night, everything clicked. Great, now it’s my time. I’m out there being a revolutionary for everybody else, now it’s time to do my own thing for my own people.” (E. Marcus: Making History)

▼ A butch female wearing a man’s black leather jacket who was being brought to a patrol car put up a fierce struggle that encouraged the crowd to do the same (D’Emilio: Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities).


▼ Besides Sylvia Rivera, these transgender individuals – among others – are veterans of Stonewall: Marsha P. Johnson, Daria Modon, Miss Major, China Fucito, and Storme DeLarverie.

▼ When riot control police arrived at the Stonewall to rescue officers trapped inside the bar and break up the demonstration, a group of drag queens formed a chorus line, kicked up their heels, and taunted police by singing, “ We are the Stonewall girls / We wear our hair in curls / We wear no underwear / We wear our dungarees / Above our nelly knees!” (www.glbtq.com)

▼ Throughout the first night of the riots, police singled out many transgender and transsexual people and gender non-conformists, including butch women and effeminate men, often beating them.

If it were not for the Stonewall veterans – including drag queens, trans people, and transsexuals alongside gays and lesbians – we would not have the community assets and organizations we have today, from GLAAD and GMHC to Lambda Legal Defense and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

It’s about time we move forward with a loud and proud 21st century Transgender Movement. We’ve come of age. Our time is now. Critical legislation is in need of your support. Until the LGBTI Movement stands up to oppression based both on gender expression/identity and sexual orientation, the federal ENDA and Hate Crimes bills may never pass. Trans people want to keep making progress along with gays, lesbians, and bisexuals – just like at Stonewall.

We hope to see you all at the first New England Transgender Pride March & Rally on June 7 in Northampton (www.transpridemarch.org). Remember Stonewall? That was us! “We’re fired up / Won’t take no more!”

Bet Power is the Director and Curator of the Sexual Minorities Archives, a national collection of LGBTI literature, history, and art since 1974, located in Northampton, MA. He is also the founder of the East Coast FTM Group (www.ecftm.org), monthly peer support for the full spectrum of masculine persons in the transgender community.

Moni's 2008 NCAA Men's March Madness Bracket

Hey TransGriot readers!
Last year I posted my NCAA tourney bracket on the blog and didn't do too badly. I picked Florida to win it all and they did.

It's a new year and a new NCAA tournament starts in a few hours. I love it except when they keep showing highlights of a last second shot from a certain 1983 NCAA championship game.

Anyway, here are my picks for this year's NCAA men's tournament. I'm still working on my NCAA women's tournament bracket and will post that tomorrow.

East Regional

Ist Round
North Carolina, Indiana, Notre Dame, Washington State, Oklahoma, Louisville, Butler, Tennessee

2nd Round
North Carolina, Notre Dame, Louisville, Tennessee

Regional Finals
North Carolina, Tennessee

East Champion
Tennessee


Midwest Regional


1st Round
Kansas, UNLV, Villanova, Vanderbilt, Southern Cal, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Georgetown

2nd Round
Kansas, Vanderbilt, Southern Cal, Georgetown

Regional Finals
Kansas, Southern Cal

Midwest Champion
Kansas


South Regional

1st Round
Memphis, Mississippi State, Michigan State, Pitt, Marquette, Stanford, Miami, Texas

2nd Round
Memphis, Pitt, Stanford, Texas

Regional Final
Memphis, Texas

South Champion
Memphis


West Regional

1st Round
UCLA, Texas A&M, Drake, Connecticut, Baylor, Xavier, West Virginia, Duke

2nd Round
UCLA, Connecticut, Xavier, Duke

Regional Finals
Connecticut, Duke

West Champion
Connecticut


Final Four Teams
Tennessee, Kansas, Memphis, Connecticut

Championship Game
Memphis, Kansas

2008 NCAA Champion
Kansas

Hail Cougars! UH SGA Unanimously Passes Gender Bill

I'm so proud of my alma mater this morning!

The University of Houston is the Lone Star State's third largest university sizewise behind Texas and Texas A&M. I just received the word that on March 12, Josephine Tittsworth, Social Work Senator for the Student Government Association, at-Large Sen. Van Hua and English literature sophomore Christopher Busby introduced a bill that mandates that the University of Houston include the phrase 'gender identity and expression' in the university's nondiscrimination statement. The UH nondiscrimination statement already covers sexual orientation, but the bill sponsors wished to expand it to cover transgender students as well.

According to Josephine, the largest crowd of audience attendees that anyone could remember to observe an SGA meeting was there. Numerous faculty, staff, and students addressed the SGA to express support for the inclusion of transgender students in the nondiscrimination statement.

After some debate the vote was taken with the SGA unanimously passing the bill. It now awaits the final approval of the UH administration and incoming UH president Renu Khator.

So yes peeps, contrary to what you've heard about Texas and the fiction that it's Bush country, it's basically at heart a progressive state.

Congratulations to Josephine and everybody involved that did the hard work to pass this bill. Thank you UH SGA for doing the right thing and making this alum even more proud to be a Cougar.

A More Perfect Union

TransGriot Note: The full text of Sen. Barack Obama's speech delivered this morning in Philadelpia.


"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working-and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

They Hate Moni

TransGriot Note: I know I said a few days ago that the 'Hate on Haters' post would be the last time I wasted bandwidth on these WWBT clowns. But it has come to my attention that one of my WWBT haters went nuclear in their 'Attack Monica' campaign on her blog. Since I'm not even going to respond to her diatribe, I was inspired this morning to do one of my infamous song rewrites about this situation.

They Hate Moni
Sung to the tune of 'They Want Money' by Kool Moe Dee

I'm thrivin'
They’re hating on me
All the so called WWBT’s
While I’m kicking knowledge
They rant incessantly
And incoherently
No need to deny to me
You latte-drinking heifers don't like Moni
While screamin' and yellin' like crazed banshees
No I ain't got no time for you tricksters
But slide your number
And I might chat with ya
You calling me racist
You shouldn't of said that
You played yourself
And I know where your heads at
Jealous of you don't make me laugh
You tramps all want my autograph
Or wanna be me so bad maybe
But I ain't sweating you so-called ladies
Forget all the silly rumors you heard
Here's the deal so spread the word

Yo,
I’m laughin’ at you girlfriend
Yo,
More woman than you are
Yo,
Proud of my history
The WWBT’s
Naw, they hate Moni

And I can see 'em a mile away
And when they act up
I just smile and say
Back up off me
Smell the coffee
Keep screamin' and plottin'
You mental softies

Watchin' you fume from the second I diss ya
Hear racist bile in your careless whispers
I know the game it's old and lame
Peeps respect my name and it drives you insane
I’m livin’ life and that pisses you off, hon
You’re home alone while I’m having fun
WWBT’s are whacked, yeah I said that
It ain't fiction it's a plain fact
Intellectually hanging with me come on
Your brains are already too far gone
I’ve got style
I’ve got class
You WWBT’s are nothin’ but crass

Yo,
I’m laughing at you girlfriend
Yo,
More woman than you are
Yo,
Proud of my history
The WWBT’s
Naw, they hate Moni

The WWBT crew I'm givin' them fits
‘Cause this transsistah is mad legit
I don’t sell woof tickets or take no shh..
Whatever I post it’s getting hits
So listen ladies and take the hint
I’m not an intellectual wimp
Oops, got an interview be back in a flash
Is that your dentures I’m hearing gnash?
Tired of wasting precious bandwidth
Admit you’re bitter and deal with it
So they wanna hate on
The media master
Keep proving my points
You’re social disasters
Neocoochie? Don’t care if you have one
Sorry that nothing’s happening
In your bedrooms to make you grin
You girls keep trying to crash my party
One day you might become somebody

Yo,
I’m laughing at you girlfriend
Yo,
More woman than you are
Yo,
Proud of my history
The WWBT’s
Naw, they hate Moni

Transition In the Key Of Life

Hey TransGriot readers!

My computer's been offline for a few days since we made the big switch at the house to a cable modem. While I was bummed that I didn't have access for a few days, I'm not complaining about the unlimited long distance phone service we picked up in the process and the faster Net access.

So let me catch you up on what's been happening in my life since my last post. Got a phone call yesterday from Kirk inviting me to take part in a panel discussion on impeachment that the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression is holding next Monday. The Alliance will be holding these discussions on various topics of importance to the local community and I'm honored that I was asked to be part of the kickoff one. Then again I shouldn't be too surprised since they've honored me with awards in 2006 and 2007.

I caught up on some of my reading, and checked out the latest Ebony and ESSENCE magazine issues. This month's ESSENCE has Erykah Badu on the cover.

Had a long chat with my sister about family and political happenings in the home state. Was out of my fave Fashion Fair foundation, so I rolled up to the mall and grabbed some since I was almost out. With Derby coming I need to buy a backup one. With all the upcoming parties, my Pure Brown shade disappears fast.

Enjoyed talking to blogger Jackie Saturday night about a wide range of subjects, and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Had a long conversation with my homegirl last night and helped her sort out some drama.

Made plans with another group of sistafriends to see Tyler Perry's latest movie Meet The Browns which opens this Friday. And oh yeah, earlier today I went to my favorite nail shop and got my nails done.

If this sounds like mundane stuff to write about, maybe it is. But this is what the ultimate goal of a gender transition is. Unfortunately some peeps have it twisted and have forgotten that gender is between your ears, not between your legs.

Genital Reconfiguration Surgery (GRS) is not the end all and be all Holy Grail for a gender transition. Doing normal everyday stuff while presenting in the desired gender while doing so is.

We're not quite at the point yet in which transgender peeps can negotiate through society on a day-to-day basis without major drama, or having to make yearly lobby trips to Washington DC and our various state, local and county governmental bodies, but we're slowly getting there.

Mississippi Primary

I have deep roots on my mom's side of the family in Mississippi. My mom and uncle were born there along with my maternal grandparents. I spent more than a few childhood summers visiting the state.

Today my relatives in Yazoo City, Itta Bena, Greenwood, and Jackson along with other Mississippi Democrats get their opportunity to weigh in on this battle between Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton.

If Obama takes it tonight, Hillary will continue her as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson calls it her 'Animal Farm' strategy and dismiss it as 'another small state loss that doesn't count' and focus on using race baiting to take Pennsylvania.

Those delegates add up, and you better be counting your lucky stars that the Dem party rules for the 2008 primary season this year didn't allow 'winner take all' contests because this thing would be over by now.

Speaking of over, while I like the idea of a dream ticket, I agree with Sen. Obama. How in Hades is somebody that's in second place in the delegate count gonna have the nerve to suggest that she should head the ticket?

But I'll let Sen Obama speak for himself. This is a transcript from a town hall held in Columbus, MS yesterday.

Barack Obama at Columbus, MS Town Hall [3/10/08]
I respect Senator Clinton. She was a friend of mine before this campaign. She"ll be a friend of mine after this campaign. Because we're gonna have to unify together to win in November. But I do have to say I was listening to some of the things Senator Clinton said down here in Mississippi over the last couple of days.

So I am gonna have to say a little bit about it.

You know as I understand it. Both Senator Clinton and President Clinton repeatedly talked about how I would be a great Vice President. They kept on saying well you know he would be a fine Vice President. It would be a formidable team with Clinton at the top and Obama in second place.

Now first of all..with all due respect..with all due respect. I have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I have won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton. So I don't know how somebody who is in second place is offering the Vice Presidency to the person who is in first place. I mean. I am just wondering. I am just wondering. If I was in second place I could understand it, but I am in first place right now. So that is point number one.

But there is another. There is a second point. This is an interesting point. I want you guys to follow me on this. President Bill Clinton back in 1992 when he was being asked about his selection for Vice President. He said the only criteria, the most important criteria for Vice President is that that person is ready if I fell out in the first week that he or she would be ready to be the Commander in Chief. That was his criteria.

Now they have been spending the last two, three weeks. Remember with that advertisement with the phone call. Telling everyone.. Getting all of Generals to say well we are not sure he is ready. "I am ready on day one", "He may not be ready yet" But I don't understand it. If I'm not ready how is it that you think I should be such a great Vice President. Do you understand that?

See I was trying to explain to somebody a while back.the okidoke. You all know the okidoke. When somebody is trying to bamboozle you, when they are trying to hoodwink you.
You.They are trying to hoodwink you.

You can't say that he is not ready on day one unless he is willing to be your Vice President then he is ready on day one.

So look I just want everybody to be absolutely clear here, okay. I want everyone to be absolutely clear. We are in a tough battle and I don't presume that I have won this election. Senator Clinton is fighting hard. She is tenacious. I respect her for that. She is working hard to win the nomination. But I want everybody to be absolutely clear.

I am not running for Vice President. I am running for President of the United States of America. I am running for President of the United States of America. I am running to be Commander in Chief. And the reason I am running to be Commander in Chief is because I believe that the most important thing when you answer that phone call at three in the morning is what kind of judgment do you have, not how long you have been in Washington, but what kind of judgment do you have when you are answering that phone.

And I believe that I have shown better judgment than Senator Clinton. I believe I offer a clean break from the policies of George Bush. Because Senator Clinton went along with George Bush on the war in Iraq. Senator Clinton went along with George Bush on her willingness to try to saber rattle when it came to Iran. She has gone along with many of the conventional ways of thinking about foreign policy that have gotten us into trouble. That is what I intend to change when I am President of the United States.

So I don't want anybody here thinking that I that somehow well you know maybe I can get both. Don't think that way. You have to make a choice in this election.

Are you gonna go along with the past or are you gonna go towards the future?

Are you gonna do the same old thing or are you gonna try something new?

I am not running for Vice President. I do not believe Senator Clinton is about change because in fact this kind of gamesmanship, talking about me as Vice President, but he maybe he's not ready for Commander in Chief. That is exactly the kind of double speak, double talk that Washington is very good at. That people who spend a lot of time in Washington have a lot of experience at, but is not gonna solve the problems of the country.
"I don't understand. If I am not ready, why do you think I would be such a great vice president?" Obama asked the crowd, which gave him a standing ovation during his defense. "I don't understand."

"You can't say he is not ready on day one, then you want him to be your vice president," Obama continued. "I just want everybody to absolutely clear: I am not running for vice president. I am running to be president of the United States of America."

Hate On Haters

What I do reflects on you
What you do reflects on me
What WE do reflects on the ENTIRE gay community.

That was the text of a sign that used to hang in various Houston gay clubs in our Montrose gayborhood. It was a reminder to all of the club patrons that like it or not, you are now a minority and the rules changed from the 'rugged individualist' selfish behavior you used to exhibit on a daily basis. Whether you liked it or not, you were part of a community of people under attack by our parent society and your interactions in the world around you had to take that into account.

It's a lesson that we African-Americans and other peeps of color have had drilled into us from the cradle, but some WWBT's have refused to learn.

Over the last several weeks we've had an infestation of WWBT's on various GLBT blogs spouting their selfish, hateful, transphobic and increasingly insulting rhetoric on various GLBT blogs that one by one has gotten the authors banned from the major ones like Bilerico, Pam's House Blend and others. They are now trying to bring that Hateraid over here, especially since I have called them out on their bullshit on this post and others.

I'm not tolerating it. I've worked hard to build TransGriot into a place where my fellow African-Americans, our supporters and others around the world can come and get information about transgender issues from an African-American perspective. I refuse to let a bunch of clueless, exclusionary latte-sipping racists who have no idea about how politics, much less anything else works (and don't care) try to tear down what I have patiently built up here over the last two plus years.

It's not an issue with African-American transpeople. This is only coming from a small, loud argumentative segment of elderly white transwomen. It's an unwelcome blast from the past that is so 90's, and it's the last time I'm wasting this blog's bandwith commenting on this issue. I have bigger fish to fry.

I chuckle because every time these peeps post their vitriolic crap (which I delete) in a vain attempt to quote unquote 'try to make me look bad', they're missing the mark. They need to look in the mirror (if it doesn't break first) to ascertain who this is really hurting. You're making yourselves look like the peeps that not only need Jesus, but need straitjackets and prescription medication as well.

But unfortunately your vitriol has a negative effect on the transgender community in general, and I believe that's your ultimate goal. You WWBT's not only want to make the community look bad, but want to use the Republican strategy of driving wedges into its constituent parts to break it up.

You peeps have been miserable failures at working well and playing nice with each other since the 90's. The evidence is overwhelming that there's a viable, vibrant transgender community that is growing and evolving. You WWBT's not only hate it, you want to by any means necessary manufacture your reality that there's no transgender community. You are attempting to remix and attack us with the same 'womyn born womyn' radical lesbian feminist crap you've been smacked with by the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival peeps since the early 90's in order to jack with the common interests that bind and enable us to work together.

This cynical strategy of yours will also fail.

Whether you WWBT's realize it or not, as much as we despise even being associated with or mentioned in the same breath with you, our parent society and the GLBT community links us with you Ann Coulter wannabees. The winds will blow the fallout from your verbal attacks on us back toward you as well.

To the rest of my regular readers, I apologize to you. Think of the WWBT's as our misguided senile grandparents who spout outrageous and embarrasing statements at inopportune times. Think Ann Coulter. Same mentality, same racism, same sophomoric arrogance level. They think that just because they spent $10,000 or less on a neocoochie back in the day and they got that money by any means necessary, it makes them ubermenschen. They forget that like everything else in society since the 70's, SRS prices have gone up as well, and for various reasons not everybody can or will have SRS.

We can't help the fact that some of you are frothing at the mouth and bitter about the fact that you're home alone and some of my sisters not only look better than you, some of them are in satisfying long term relationships with biomen despite having five inches of neoclit in their lace panties.

If y'all would check those jacked up attitudes, you might get to use that neocoochie from time to time and not only feel a man inside you, you'll get to experience what an orgasm feels like.

All of your ugly comments will not change the fact that I am a proud, college educated African-American transwoman who has mad writing skills, has a Trinity on my mantel, and have biowomen and transwomen who consider me one of the girls. I have peeps gay, straight and transgender all over the planet who not only love and care about me, they value my friendship.


I'm blessed to have a diverse, worldwide readership of this blog who values my intelligence, wit and insightful commentary on various issues. I'm happy that I've gotten to do speeches, college lectures and panel discussions in addition to numerous print and radio interviews. I'm honored that I've garnered awards from my fellow non-transgender African-Americans and the GLBT community for doing civil rights work, am considered a valued member of my church, and have the love and unconditional support of my family.

In other words people, I have a life. So hate on haters, I'm a Phenomenal Transwoman.

I'm having a blast being the best Monica I can be and succeeding. I'm not only kicking knowledge about transgender people, but doing my part to help speed up the day when unconditional acceptance of transpeople in American society and having our rights codified into law is a no brainer and a reality.

Alexis Meade Is More Important Than You Think

Back in 1967 an African-American actress contemplated leaving the network television show she was on and going back to Broadway. She was the only African-American in the integrated cast of this show and was upset that she wasn't getting to do anything besides be in her words 'a glorified telephone operator.'

At an NAACP event that week she was approached by a man who said that a fan of the show wanted to talk to her. She agreed to meet him, and was stunned when the fan turned out to be the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.



According to the actress, Dr. King told her that the show was one of the few programs that he and Mrs. King allowed his children to watch. He told her that her character was important because the show portrayed men and women truly as equals. When she mentioned to Dr. King that she was going to quit the show, he said, "You can't do that. Your character is the first non-stereotypical role on television and is in a position of authority. People who don't look like us see us as we should be seen, as equals." He went on to tell the actress, "Don't you see, Star Trek has changed the face of television."

The actress then told Gene Roddenberry that she was returning to the show.

You Trekkies probably guessed that I was talking about Nichelle Nichols and her role as Lt. Uhura. There's a reason why I'm bringing this story up, and it dovetails with my complaints about the negative images of African-American transwomen on television.

What Dr. King knew and I know is that image is everything. Dr. King spoke and wrote volumes about equality and brotherhood, but a TV show demonstrated it. Star Trek inspired an African-American girl from Chicago named Mae Jemison to reach for the stars and become an astronaut. A little girl in New York named Caryn Johnson was inspired by seeing Nichelle Nichols on television to become an actress. As Whoopi Goldberg, she landed a recurring role as Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Mae Jemison even had a cameo role on Star Trek: The Next Generation herself.

Rebecca Romijn's Alexis Meade character is that important, peeps. While Ms. Romijn isn't transgender, her character, like Uhura 40 years before is a representative of a group marginalized in American society. Alexis is not only intelligent and beautiful, but is shown in a position of power and influence. The reactions of her family members ranging from her mother Claire's total acceptance of her daughter to her father Bradford's outright rrejection and her brother Daniel struggling with the changes in their relationship mirror what goes on in our lives.

She also gives non-transgender people a glimpse of the prejudice we face, the alienation that we experience from friends and family alike, our complicated love lives, and the gut wrenching emotions we go through before and after transition. I could write posts every day for the next ten years about these issues, but a top rated TV show such as Ugly Betty in the one hour it's on the air reaches more people than Bilerico and my TransGriot one combined.

Like the unknown positive effects of Nichelle Nichols' Uhura that became apparent decades later, how many transkids who are being teased, tormented and bullied flip on Ugly Betty and are reassured by Rebecca's character they aren't alone, they aren't freaks and they can one day BE Alexis Meade? How many of those transkids will be inspired to do great things because of this character?

How many people who didn't have a clue about some of the crap we transgender people go through, see her character, emphatize with Alexis and now support us in our fight to get included in ENDA and hate crimes legislation?

How many people in 'flyover country' who believe that all transwomen look like NFL linebackers have their minds opened to the fact that transwomen not only exist, but are smart, attractive and talented people that can do more than turn tricks?

Even Rebecca Romijn realizes how important this character is. She's stated in some interviews she's in constant communication with her transgender friends to ensure she gets it right.

So yes people, Rebecca Romijn's Alexis Meade character has the potential to one day be as important to the eventual acceptance of transgender people as human beings in the United States as Nichelle Nichols' role of Lt. Uhura was for African-Americans.

And it's why I'll continue to push for realistic portrayals of African-American transpeople until it happens.



TransGriot note: This post is also on The Bilerico Project

Mary and Jane

from the Trinidad Express, Trinidad & Tobago
Saturday, March 8th 2008
By Cedriann J. Martin

Let's call them that. Mary is from Guyana. She is brash and brave. She shows off her breasts. She names names. Immediately she's an open book.

Jane is Trinidadian. She is polished and discrete. She warms into telling her story only after her trust has been earned.

They are both trendy: low rise jeans, shiny skirt, tight tops, too much perfume. Unlike most of the other sex workers I've interviewed both have a secondary education. Mary turned down the option of going to University. Jane did the eight-to-four thing for a while. Their entry into the sex trade had as much to do with a search for sexual identity and validation as with money.

They were both born boys. Until I was told, I couldn't tell. Jane, in particular, boggles the mind.

Mary describes a happy childhood with her mother and sister. She was a precocious child, eavesdropping on conversations and reading books. That's easy to believe. She starts her story like a children's novel. ("My mother and I on afternoons would go for beautiful walks on the sea wall.") She knew she was attracted to men since age seven. ("When I saw good-looking men I would always be delighted.") By eleven she
had her first sexual experiences with men in their early twenties. She assures that it was consensual. ("They were young boys, really. But to me they were big.") By 15 she was secretly dressing in women's clothes. Two years later she began selling sex.

Jane's journey was traumatic. She was an effeminate boy in an insensitive family. And she was sexually abused by multiple male relatives. It started when she was seven.

"Growing up feminine like that there are wicked people who want to interfere with a boy child. It was forceful at first but I was frightened to tell because I thought I would get licks. But it aint make sense digging it up now," she says. "I done evolve into something else."

I disagree. It's worth exploring. Jane obliges.

"I had a primitive family," she explains." This is 20 years ago. No cable. No "Queer as Folk". We in a primitive, war-like state. If I went to them with that issue you could imagine? I think (the abuse) altered everything about me. It also created a part of my personality too because I keep things to myself. I became more closeted. It drives people to their death. If I was a different person-not as headstrong-I
would have committed suicide. I cried a lot and hoped for better. I wasn't the guilty one or the gay villain. They were."

She describes trying to overcome the trauma by getting girlfriends as a teen.

"I wanted to take a turn and be like everybody else. Then it would just come back up: 'You too girly. Look two girls.' I liked girls. I had sex plenty times. That's why I tell you it's very confusing. Some tansies say 'ooh, I can't stand women'. I have to talk on my own behalf now. Everybody's experience is different so you have to analyse it as such. I was trying to go along the normal line society in
Trinidad was going along. People would come in between and tell the girl 'he is a buller man'. So you're thinking now: 'It makes no sense. Next thing I have children with this girl and people telling the kids their father gay'. It's sad."

A search for escape inadvertently led to sex work. She was depressed and left her job. Then she heard about a gay pageant. The winner would go to New York.

"It was a chance... a means of getting out. At that point I was still living like a boy but I stayed by my gay friend and spent the weekend so we could go try out for the pageant. That was in 1998, the year Wendy Fitzwilliam won. So it was a big thing. Everybody wanted to be in a queen show. That was your gay dream," she recounts.

She was selected as a delegate and spent more time at her friend's apartment during the preparation. She didn't know that her friend was a prostitute. One night Jane's friend took her to work. (Here Mary interjects that seasoned sex workers don't dissuade younger ones: "They never tell you that what they are doing is not in their
interest," she says. "They always encourage you." Earlier on, in a separate interview, a male sex worker revealed that it was Mary who taught him how to apply make-up when he started selling sex in Suriname.) Jane was lent a skirt and ponytail. She wore a pair of girl's shoes that she'd been hiding. She was scared as they pulled up to a curb in San Juan and saw about two dozen men in drag. ("That was
Trinidad's hey-day!" Mary squeals.)

"As I reach a sports car pull up. And a guy, knowing what I was, told me to jump in. I was like 'Wow! This going on here in Trinidad? And watch this nice guy! And watch how much money he giving me just for a blow job!' (TT$400.00) My first experience prostituting had me in awe. Sometimes I feel like it's more than a vibe. It could be a spirit or an entity or something. Because if you go out there and have a good
experience you would be hooked."

Her initiation into the industry was like a charm: expensive cars and who's who, she says. Eventually both Mary and Jane would pinpoint that they wanted to live as women. For Mary encouragement came from a French lover she lived with in French Guiana. He was a doctor who sourced female hormones from Brazil and injected Mary himself. She was so excited about getting breasts that she often sneaked a double dose while he was asleep.

"Within three months I had breasts like yours," she says, pointing to my pair. "I used to admire the way I looked. I used to stand up all day in front the mirror." Eventually she began gaining weight and stopped the injections. Her male hormones came back with a vengeance. She swears that she was once as convincing as Jane.

Jane was more thoughtful and deliberate about the decision: "I did research before. I was afraid because everybody was like 'God make you one way so don't go and change yourself'. But I felt incomplete. I wanted to be a woman so bad."

She looked up hormone regimens on the net. She knew of the risks associated with certain ingredients and, yes, the weight gain.

"You have to maintain diet and exercise," she tells Mary. "You can't just go swallowing hormones." She sourced her hormone cocktails from local pharmacies. The demand from trannies, she says, has driven prices of the once-cheap drugs way up. Jane will like to go abroad eventually for the surgeries that would make her sex change complete. They are done in Trinidad but she'd prefer somewhere with a bigger
market for the procedure: "I don't want them practicing on me".

Whereas strangers wondered aloud whether she was a boy or girl while she lived as a man, she now lives comfortably as a woman.

The pair explains the difference between being transgender and just being gay.

"It is not a woman and not a man. I would put it as the third gender. It comes under the gay umbrella but there are different sections. For instance a gay guy could be closeted or he could be flambouyant. A drag queen is loud make-up, eye lashes and fake nails. That is man playing woman... like theatre. Transgenders are more timid, more ladylike, more feminine."

I ask about the demand for their sexual services. While some customers hire them precisely because they were born male, others don't know. Or pretend not to know. Mary is convinced she's got them fooled: "Some ask if it's a man or a woman. For me, I always say woman."

Jane has a different take: "It is a mind over matter thing. They know it is a man but they don't want to hear it. If you don't tell them you're a man they will go home and lie down with their wives and feel conscience-free that they slept with a woman."

There is the distinct possibility of violence in cases where a client discovers (or pretends to discover) that they aren't real women.

"If you say you're a woman and they find out you're a man they could probably beat you to death. I have a friend who works in Suriname. A customer visited her every week but we never knew he was that against men. One night he found out and he chased her with a big cutlass from one end of the village to the other."

Jane also endured a cutlass ordeal. She was waiting for transport when a man approached, requesting sex. She explained that she wasn't working. He was affronted: No man can't buss style on me dress up like no woman," he told her. They had a cuss-out. He returned minutes later with a concealed cutlass. Jane was chopped twice on her arms. She blocked a swipe to her face with a hand, severing the nerves in those
fingers. Police came to the scene to assist but wouldn't take a report.

"If you are a homosexual and somebody assaults you it is up you to take the law into your own hands," Mary chimes in.

HIV is the other major threat. Jane admits that in the beginning she frequently had unprotected sex with clients.

"I not going to lie and say 'never me' to prove a point. It happened. Thank God nothing came of it. My learning curve came through seeing people dying. It's easy to practice safe sex now. You give your clients your habits. If you know you are not going to have unprotected sex with me you would put on the condom. I really feel people out there are trying to get you sick. And some try to prove a point by
throwing real money."

How much, I ask, is real money. As much as TT$4000-$5000.

"For a night?"

"Fifteen minutes."

Must be some clientele. Jane is deliberately vague: "My clientele is over the top to the bottom of the ladder," she says. I press her further when the recorder is switched off. Businessmen. Lawyers. Musicians. Jane learned not to disclose the identities of her customers early on. A local entertainer commissioned a cut-tail when he found out that she told someone about their encounter.

According to this pair regional artistes routinely seek their services when they perform in the southern Caribbean.

Mary blurts two names. One of them has built a sizeable portion of his career on bunnin' batty man.


Copyright 2008 All rights reserved. Trinidad Express 35 Independence Sq, Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Escape From Louisville

TransGriot Note: This was originally posted to the Bilerico Project. Photo from the Courier-Journal

As many of you who've been monitoring the progress of the winter storm that's been shellacking the Ohio River Valley this weekend know, Louisville got whacked with a foot of snow.

But yours truly wasn't here to watch all the fun. I took a road trip to Chicago.

Actually, there was a reason for my seeming madness. I hit the road with Dawn Wilson early Friday morning to watch her fence in the North American Cup tournament in Chicago. Dawn is a competitive fencer and has been doing it for four years. She knows I love a good road trip, so I tag along to watch her when my schedule allows.

Dawn's no slouch as a saber fencer. In Vet 40 she was ranked number 16 in the nation and 24th in the combined rankings before we hit I-65 north for this event . She was eager to continue her push to the top of the Veteran's rankings in this tournament being held at the Rosemont Convention Center.

I had to work until 7 AM EST, so when my shift was mercifully over I headed straight home to finish packing. As I was driving hone from the airport area the first flurries were starting. By the time I'd gotten home, packed and put my bags in the car those flurries had rapidly changed into large, wet flakes.

Dawn was on her computer getting directions to our hotel in Rosemont. Usually she's badgering me to get moving because I'm the slowpoke when it comes to starting our road trips in a timely manner. This time she was the one holding up progress. I looked out the living room window at 8 AM and noticed the two inches of accumulated snow on my car. I'd only had it parked in the driveway for 20 minutes, so I knew we had to get moving soon or else we risked getting trapped in town.

We finally got moving northward ten minutes later and were dogged by snow and high winds all the way to Indianapolis. (sorry Bil, we'll catch ya next time). Once we got to the northwest side of Indy we broke into brilliant sunshine for the rest of our 165 mile run to Chicagoland through the picturesque northwest Indiana farm country. We arrived in Chicago about 1 PM CST and got her fencing equipment inspected after checking into our hotel which was right across the street from the venue .

After we finished, we walked around the center and ran into her LFC teammate Lou Felty and a few of Dawn's Vet 40 fencing buddies. They discussed the 'Baby Vets' nickname some of the Vet 50 fencers jokingly gave them. You have to be 40 to compete in the Veterans division and some of them just recently passed that milestone birthday.

But many of these Vet 50's aren't laughing tonight. A 'Baby Vet' won it, and Dawn and the rest of the 'Baby Vets' served notice with the beatdowns they adminstered that they were forces to be reckoned with in the Veterans Women's Saber Division.

Dawn and the 'Baby Vets' are part of the over 90,000 people in the United States that participate in this fast-paced Olympic sport. They range in age from 12 to 70 and some of those participants are also GLBT people as well. Even though I'm not a fencer, since I'm an FOD (friend of Dawn's) and have been to numerous tournaments with her, they show me just as much love as they show her in the fencing world.

Dawn's competition started at 7 AM CST this morning, so I decided to stay in bed for an extra two hours before checking out of our room since I'd been up a grand total of 32 hours since Thursday.

I woke up to Chicago being dusted with 2 inches of snow. By the time I sauntered over to the convention center, her pool bouts were over. She'd gone 5-1 in her pool and received a bye into the direct eliminations. She got through her first two DE matches before losing her third one 10-5 and missing out on a medal. After hanging around to watch the gold medal match and the medal ceremony, we headed back to Louisville.

Once again, just as we did on the trip up, we ran in and out of snow all the way to Indy, then had a clean 100 mile run to Louisville. Fortunately our driveway had been cleared when we arrived home at 7 PM EST since we weren't looking forward to shovelling 12 inches of show.

What Dawn is looking forward to is an upcoming July trip to San Jose, CA for the Summer Nationals. I'm just looking forward to the next time I get to hit the road.

Joe Lied, Our ENDA Inclusion Died

The Homosexual Rights Corporation (they don't deserve to be called 'Human') continues trying to get itself back in the good graces of the transgender community. But this YouTube video is a major reason why they're having a hard time in addition to the transgder community being fed up with the decade's worth of hostile duplicity, their passive/aggressive resistance to adding us to ENDA and their morally bankrupt bull.

Now they are trying to spin this video as Joe 'missspeaking'. That's what y'all might call it inside I-495, but outside the beltway we call it lying.

And it's all about WHERE you made that speech. You made that speech in Atlanta, not Washington. In the Deep South, when you say something, your word is your bond.

The best part about it is that it's on video for all to see.



Deal with this reality, Joe and HRC. You lied, and the $20,000 of our community's money the Homosexual Rights Corporation collected while making that speech at the Southern Comfort Conference will make it impossible to forget.

Chucky Went Too Far

You long time TransGriot readers know I can't stand the new jack minstrel show that Chuck Knipp puts on. I've posted more than a few times and written columns about how insulting this 'act' is to me and other African-Americans gay, straight or transgender.

It seems like Chucky definitely has his water on for Jasmyne Cannick. She's been singled out by SQL defenders for the ongoing campaign protesting the SQL show. There's now a website called banshirleyqliquor.com that seeks to end this ongoing insult to Black womanhood.

First it was putting Jasmyne's private phone number and e-mail address on his website, which ended up with her receiving death threats from Chuck's fans.

Now this bullshyt. Either he or someone in his camp took Jasmyne's head and photoshopped it to the body of Annie Hawkins-Turner, a porn star with 120XXX breasts.

This is what Jasmyne had to say about it.

So I decided, after much thought, to post the photo that Charles Knipp, aka Shirley Q. Liquor, tactlessly posted on the homepage of his website last week.

Yes, that's my face, no that's not my body. That body belongs to Annie Hawkins-Turner, better known as porn star Norma Stitz, get it...enormous tits. And while, Ms. Hawkins-Turner made a name for herself with her extremely large natural breasts, 120XXX-50-60 to be exact, I make mine from my work in politics, journalism, and social justice activism.

...This is about a man, a white man, a white gay man, who dresses up in drag and blackface for other white people, mostly gay, and mimics Black women. This is about the fact that there was a campaign launched against him in 2007 that cost him money with canceled shows. This is about the fact that someone took the time to report on his racist blackface minstrel act and he didn't like it.

...If Knipp is such a bad ass, why post my photo on a porn star? All he ever had to do was just name the date time and place to debate me one on one about his racist and derogatory show. I mean after all, the man obviously has no problem dressing up and imitating a Black woman, he should have no problem debating one.

Jasmyne, I don't see it happening because Chucky wouldn't last five seconds with you.

I issued the same debate challenge to SQL defenders here in Louisville and as of yet no one has stepped up to accept it. What they did do was browbeat my former editor into cancelling my three year old column last September in the local GLBT paper by threatening to yank ads if it didn't go bye-bye.

But whether you agree with her or not, what was done to Jasmyne was disgusting, unacceptable and nekulturny. If you're wondering what the word nekulturny means, it's Russian for uncultured.

Chucky claims to love and honor Black women, but his vicious actions directed at Jasmyne Cannick and the negative portrayal of African-American women through his SQL character belie that.

I'm Glad I'm Not Like You

As I wrote about back in January, I have a hater and agent provocateur that it seems like has made it her mission in life to post contrary and negative comments on just about any thread I initiate on the Bilerico Project.

As many of you may already be aware of, I was honored to be invited to join it as a contributor earlier this year.

On a recent post of mine called 'I'm Pissed Off', the hater posted a comment totally unrelated to the topic in which she stated that I and Monica Helms, another activist she has Hateraid for, wasn't like her.

Gee, in my case was it my photo that clued you in to that profound revelation?

Once again we have the whiny, exclusionary, borderline delusional rants of WWBT's polluting the Internet. They are hating on people who have put themselves out there to do the work of advancing civil rights coverage for all GLBT people. They turn intelligent, thoughtful discourse into a WWE wrestling match. The WWBT's are not only making asses of themselves, they are proving themselves to be the transgender equivalents of Ann Coulter.

But the WWBT's are right about one thing: I'm not like you.

I'm a proud African-American transwoman who is descended from the survivors of the Middle Passage. I'm a Phenomenal Transwoman who like her biosisters is proud of her heritage, cognizant of her history and revels in the fact that she can take her place amongst some of the most beautiful and intelligent women in the world.

I'm a proud African-American transwoman who is also a third generation Texan. I come from women who make history, start and build organizations and work to solve problems sometimes at great risk to their own safety or comfort level, not passively sit on their butts behind a computer terminal, incorrectly spout and misinterpret feminist theory and snipe at everybody that doesn't agree with them.

As the late Rep. Barbara Jordan, one of my heroines and a fellow Houstonian said when she accepted the NAACP's Spingarn medal in 1992, "It is a burden of Black people that we have to do more than just talk."

When I didn't see people like myself represented in the early national transgender leadership ten years ago, I and others got involved so that my people's issues would be part of the general transgender community conversation. We also wanted our transkids to see people standing up for transgender rights that reflected their cultural heritage as well. When the transgender community was resistant to or indifferent to having us in their spaces, organizations or conferences, we created our own.

I'm glad I'm not like you. I revel in every chocolate brown curve of my body. I love not only the quiet strength and intelligence of my transsistahs and transbrothas, I love the variety of skin tones me and my transpeeps have from vanilla creme to the deepest darkest ebony hue. I love the way we can wear anything from jeans to couture and rock it with the confidence of supermodels strutting the runways.

One thing I pray for is not only gracefully aging, but that I continue to have the same thirst for knowledge that I've had since childhood. I pray I continue to keep an open mind, not let the madness of a few narrow minded people discourage me from fighting for everyone's civil rights, be willing to seek out young people who have different spins on issues that will expand and add flexibility to my views, and continue to be a positive influence on mine and the next generation of transgender people.

I also pray that I don't turn into a bitter, exclusionary, self-hating, selfish shrew like some of you WWBT's have become.

I'm glad I'm not like you, and I thank God every day for that fact.

The Wreck Of The Henrietta Marie Exhibit

On a story summer day in 1700 a homeward bound British-based merchant ship was driven onto shoals 35 miles west of Key West, Florida. It broke apart and sank with the loss of all hands and its cargo. Prior to its demise in the Florida Keys, it had made a stop in Jamaica to sell some of its cargo it picked up in the initial leg of its vovage from London to the west coast of Africa.

Over 250 years later it was discovered in 1972 by Mel Fisher, who was looking for the sunken Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha. Dubbed the 'English Wreck', the site after some preliminary exploration lay undisturbed until 1983.

Upon further examination of the wreck site by archaeologists, they discovered a set of shackles. As they continued to comb the wreck site they found additional pairs until the count reached 80. After discovering the ship's bell, they have concrete evidence of the ship's name, and after checking surviving maritime records in Jamaica learned of the nature of the cargo it had sold there.

The cargo it had offloaded there was 190 captive Africans, and the wreck that Mel Fisher had discovered was the Henrietta Marie.

They had discovered not only one of the few slave ships to sink in North American waters, but had a name for it as well. In 1993 members of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers placed a memorial at the wreck site.

The memorial faces the African coast three thousand miles away and has a plaque that bears the ship's name.

The inscription on the plaque reads;

"In memory and recognition of the courage, pain and suffering of enslaved African people.

Speak her name and gently touch the souls of our ancestors."

Since then the Henrietta Marie has become a treasure trove of information in terms of the triangular slave trade. It is the focal point of a traveling exhibit called A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie.

I recently found out that the Frazier International History Museum here in Louisville has been hosting the traveling exhibit since January 26. Since we rarely get these caliber of exhibits here and it will only be in town until May 26, I made it a point to go to the Frazier yesterday and check it out.

If it does hit your city, I would highly recommend it. I along with a multicultural crowd spent a few hours Sunday afternoon wandering through the interactive and critically acclaimed exhibit. It transports you back to the world of 1700 and tells the story through spoken word, video, artifacts from the ship, maps, smells and song.

It drives home one point I've been making for several years now. Our culture and our nation today is still affected on multiple levels by the echoes of the slave trade. The only way that we can more forward from the current testy state of race relations in this country is to confront that history head-on.