You Really Tried To Whitewash Stonewall Again, Roland Emmerich?

You would think that director Roland Emmerich, with the sequel to Independence Day coming out on Friday, would have learned his lesson last year to not piss me, the blogosphere, the Net and other TBLG people of color off.

Elizabeth Rivera e-mailed me the link to his interview in The Guardian, and was shocked when Emmerich's behind tried to go down the whitewashing route again.  When he was asked about his 2015 whitewashed Stonewall flop, he went there and said in the interview that 'Stonewall was a white event'.

"My movie was exactly what they said it wasn't it was politically correct.  It had black, transgender people in there.  We just got killed by one voice on the Internet who saw a trailer and said this is whitewashing Stonewall. Stonewall was a white event, let's be honest.  But nobody wanted to hear that any more."

Really?  During Pride Weekend you try this?   That waste of digital film was whitewashing the history of the 1969 Stonewall riots, and I'm proud of being one of many voices on the Net who called your ass out for trying to go there in the first place.

Stonewall was kicked off by people of color, and there's ample photographic evidence and interviews confirming the participation of trans and other people of color in that June 28, 1969.  You then compounded the mistake of relegating major Stonewall historical figures Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P/ Johnson to minor character status in your whitewashed Stonewall movie fantasy by adding a fictional white main character that you admitted was written into the story to appeal to a straight white audience.

So yeah boo boo kitty, not sorry I called that Stonewall movie whitewashing out in my TransGriot post that went megaviral.  I'm an unapologetic equal opportunity truth teller with a widely read blog and it would have been a crime against history for me to not do so.

If by doing so I may have been the spark that jumped off the backlash and protests that were the catalysts to the movie tanking, then that's all good.

The critics spotted the same whitewashing I noted, Mr Emmerich, so let's not go there trying to minimize the vocal opposition to your movie even though you already tried to.  Next time you do one of those movies based on a documented historical event, try grounding it in some historical truth and going from there.  You'll find it may be better for your box office receipts.

I see it has become necessary to school you again until you get it that the Stonewall Inn was the hangout for TBLG people of color and low income LGBT people in New York, not Fire Island closeted gays.  When faced with more NYPD oppression and harassment, those TBLG people of color, who had nothing to lose and were tired of being oppressed, jumped off a rebellion that subsequently led to the start of the modern TBLG rights movement.

And I got that info from not only reading the historical accounts of it, but people who were actually there like Miss Major and a Houston based Big Five gay leader i cross path with on a regular basis in Ray Hill.

I was going to move on from last year and spend some of my T-bills at my local multiplex to check out the Independence Day Resurgence sequel since I loved the original movie, but now I think I'll spend that money on something else like vendors at my local pride event.

You know, the weekend we have those parades and festivals around the country and the world to celebrate the 1969 riot jumped off by BTLG people of color that started the modern TBLG movement.