Being A Black Trans Leader Means I Have To Call Crap Out

Been checking out the reaction of white feminists to Rose McGowan's anti-trans outburst, and the first thing I have to say about it is directed at McGowan herself.

No Rose,  I was born on Planet Earth in this solar system.  I don't agree with a world that thinks it has a right to demonize and dismiss trans women and their issues because it doesn't neatly fit with your white feminist agenda. 

And to the white trans women (and others) rushing to try to defend her and trying to call the trans woman out for confronting her (and I wouldn't be surprised if that trans woman in question was Black) what I have to say to you is this:   

Well behaved trans women don't make history or advance policy agendas.  Sometimes you just have to call bull feces out when you see it.   It is also an intrinsic part of our leadership style as Black people to do precisely that, even if it makes friend, foe or frenemy uncomfortable.

It is not a 'cult of intersectionality' as one white trans woman described it on my FB page, and to say that means you really don't have even a 101 level of understanding what Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw was talking about when she was discussing intersectionality in the first place.

Black trans folks, no matter where we are across the African Diaspora, have always had to stand up, call crap out, speak truth to power and follow that truth telling up with concerted, committed action to back it up.   And if I or any Black trans person is going to properly lead and represent our Black trans community, we have to be willing to put ourselves in the situation as this trans person did of calling problematic folks out, even if that action is considered unpopular at that moment in time.

If you think Moni is selling you woof tickets about the principles of Black leadership part, this is what the late Dr. Ronald Walters had to say about it.

Dr. Walters defined the task of Black leadership as providing the vision, resources, tactics, and strategies that facilitate the achievement of the objectives of Black people.

Those goals according to Walters are freedom, integration, equality, liberation, or defined in the terms of specific public policies. It is a role that often requires and results in you as a Black leader disturbing the peace when you speak truth to power.

It also makes some people uncomfortable and causes controversy at times as well.

Speaking truth to power also disturbs the status quo.  It makes people uncomfortable who think that being confrontational is 'disturbing the peace'.  They mistakenly think that being nice, non threatening and non confrontational in the face of oppression will get of the policy change and social justice advancement we seek.

Nope, respectability politics will not make that happen. Demanding what you wish and taking coordinated action to make it happen will.   Black trans people don't care that the calling out crap part of our Black leadership mission tradition is making you uncomfortable.

If it is making you uncomfortable, you need to ask yourself why, and deal with it.
Because Black trans people, myself included, are not going to stop calling out injustice or crap within our movement when we see it.