Washington Watch-Racism And Lack Of Diversity In The LGBT Community

I've talked about this subject for Lord knows how long in the seven years I've been writing at TransGriot, so it was nice to see the rest of the mainstream Black media jump getting the discussion started for the rest of the African-American community.  

The TVOne Washington Watch Sunday show hosted by Roland Martin is a nice alternative to Meet the Press and other Sunday conservafool dominated fare.   This particular show was broadcast back on March 11, but needs to be seen in light of recent rainbow tinged bigotry eruptions in the wake of the marriage equality legislative failure in Illinois.  

My ascot wearing Houston homeboy had as guests on this Washington Watch episode to discuss the topic Rev. Dr. Darlene Nipper, the deputy executive director of the national Gay And Lesbian Task Force, Cleo Manago, CEO and founder of Black Men's Xchange; and Earl Fowlkes, president and CEO of the Center for Black Equity to tackle the topic of racism and lack of diversity in the LGBT community.

Illinois Is Looking More Like Prop 8 2.0

Well, well, well  John Aravosis.   Looks like there's increasing evidence piling up to show that you were loud and wrong as usual.

You were also wrong for peddling that bigoted 'The Blacks cost us marriage equality in Illinois' meme  in the immediate aftermath of the non-call for a House marriage equality vote that has been repeated like a mantra in various spots in the Gayosphere and progressive blog comment threads that Black bloggers are now going to have to spend time debunking. 

I presume the 'I'm sorry' Americablog post will be swiftly forthcoming to the Black community and the legislators you slimed, but I suspect it'll be a snowy June day in Houston before we see it.
  .
It's also eerily looking more and more like Prop 8 2.0 in terms of the deja vu all too eager white gay propensity to quickly point the finger at my community for this stunning Illinois marriage equality legislative failure and engage in rainbow bigot eruptions. .   

Before the weekend was out I was starting to get confirmation about what I suspected was the real reason the marriage bill failed Saturday morning:

A Gay, Inc organizational frackup. 

It turns out that your vanillacentric staffed umbrella marriage org on the scene there didn't even bother to hire more lobbyists to talk to the Illinois Black legislative caucus, when they knew for months it was one of their lobbying weaknesses.   The problem wasn't addressed until a day and a half before the vote was supposed to happen and former Illinois Chitown Democratic legislators Paul Williams and Coy Pugh were put on the payroll 

Williams and Pugh had they been given ample time may have been able to flip some votes in the Caucus, but they damned sure needed more than a day and half for that task. 

The umbrella org also repeated California's failure of not consistently engaging the Black and Latino communities and mobilizing progressive ministers and priests tn the state to neutralize and drown out the bigots in the African American Clergy Coalition and the Roman Catholic Church.

Thanks to TransGriot reader Chitown Kev for pointing me to an NBC5 article entitled 'Don't Thank (Or Blame) Black Legislators For Killing Gay Marriage' and giving me more ammunition to point out why fanning the hell-fire flames of gay bigotry against Blacks is not only wrong but not helpful to your marriage cause. 

Interestingly enough that NBC5 story breaks down how the so-called 'homophobic' Black Legislative caucus votes would have probably gone down if a marriage vote had been called

Eleven of the 20 Black Caucus members would have voted YES,  four NO and five were undecided.

YES
Ken Dunkin, Chicago
Esther Golar, Chicago
Chris Welch, Hillside
La Shawn Ford, Chicago
Christian Mitchell, Chicago
Rita Mayfield, Waukegan
Al Riley, Olympia Field
Camille Lilly, Chicago
Arthur Turner, Chicago
Marcus Evans, Chicago
Elgie Sims, Jr., Chicago

NO
Monique Davis, Chicago
Mary Flowers, Chicago
Eddie Jackson, East St. Louis
Charles Jefferson, Rockford

UNDECIDED
Thaddeus Jones, Calumet City
Jehan Gordon-Booth, Peoria
Will Davis, East Hazel Crest
Derrick Smith, Chicago
Andre Thapedi, Chicago

As an FYI moment, the six Latino Illinois legislators were considered supporters.

Now compare and contrast that with the 92 white legislators in the Illinois House.  I pointed out the fact in my initial Saturday post the bulk of the people and legislators opposed to marriage equality don't look like me and it was borne out in this report.

45 of the 47 Republicans (who are survey says, all white peeps) were opposed to the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act with only two supporting it..  

The 45 remaining white legislators in the Illinois House are Democrats. Of those white Democrats 26 were considered solid YES votes, but there were 19 white Democratic legislators identified by the Windy City Times who are either committed to vote NO on the bill, or have not publicly supported it. 

Those legislators are Brandon Phelps, John Bradley, Jerry Costello II, Jay Hoffman, Daniel Beiser, Sue Scherer, Stephanie Kifowit, Anthony DeLuca, Katherine Cloonen, Patrick Verschoore, Jack Franks, Michelle Mussman, John D’Amico, Natalie Manley, Emily McAsey, Kathleen Willis, Fred Crespo, Keith Farnham, and Kelly Burke.

So how in the hell does the Black Caucus get the blame or the failure of this bill when all along you had a white Democratic legislator problem?  

Easy, when you want to deflect from your own organizational failures.

"Don’t blame the Black Caucus. The Black Caucus has always been with us and so have the Latinos,” said Rick Garcia, the policy director of the Civil Rights Agenda. “They are just using the black people as an excuse.”

And once again for you white gay peeps still pouring gasoline on the hell fire flames of gay bigotry against African-Americans, 60% of Black Illinois residents supported marriage equality with many of them being high profile ones like Desiree Rogers, the CEO of Johnson Publishing Company, Linda Johnson Rice, the chair of Johnson Publishing Company, the Rev Dr. Otis Moss III, the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, retired shortstop Ernie Banks, Andrea Zopp, the president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League just to name a few      

So for those of you in the Illinois gay community still squawking about who not to support in the next election cycle, primary challenge or you're petulantly not going to support issues of importance to the African-American community in retaliation for this setback, my suggestion is you don't let the white privilege you're swimming in be the catalyst for writing a political check your azzes will regret cashing.  

Seems y'all need to be focusing your attention moreso on the problem you have with white people supporting marriage equality.  You need to do a better job building support for marriage equality amongst your fellow white people, get busy building that coalition of progressive ministers you'll need to fight the bigoted ones and quit scapegoating Black people for your failure to come up with an argument that resonates with your fellow white folks.

Because frankly, Black people, and especially Black TBLG folks are sick and tired of being blamed for your failure to do precisely that.  

#BlackPrivilege Twitter Hashtag Going Viral

It started as a Black Twitter smackdown to a racist Tumblr page, but has raged on Twitter since Friday night and gone viral.   It was at one point a trending Twitter hashtag

It's the #BlackPrivilege Twitter hashtag, and it has struck a nerve on many levels with Black Tweeps including Toure of MSNBC's 'The Cycle'.

You know I had to jump in on this and was happy to see some of my comments have been retweeted.  We also had some peeps try to derail the feed as many Black Tweeps predicted would happen and claim the racism is a figment of our imaginations or we're 'perpetuating it' by talking about it.

The #BlackPrivilege hashtag is now going global with respondents from other parts of the African Diaspora such as Canada and Great Britain starting to check in.

It'll be interesting to see how long the momentum continues with this and if it even gets any mainstream media coverage.

Somehow I doubt that it will. 

Jada Pinkett-Smith Questions Whether White Women Should Grace the Covers of Magazines Aimed at WOC?

Guest post from Renee of Womanist Musings

Like many women of colour I grew up looking at magazine racks with row upon row of White faces staring at me.  I would be lying if I said that it didn't have an impact upon how I perceived my race and gender growing up.  Things have not changed much and now I find myself wondering how this exact same circumstance is going to effect my niece as she grows up.  As a woman of colour, I cannot divorce my race from my gender.  This is why the row upon row of White women staring back at me from magazine racks continues to impact me. Even when I look past it and validate my own self worth, it does not mean that those I interact with see me as an equal, let alone human.  There can be no doubt that Whiteness continues to represent the idealized form of womanhood.  Sojourner Truth's Ain't I a Woman speech, is still highly applicable today.

On her facebook page, Jada Pinkett-Smith wondered if the best path forward to deal with the ongoing equality in magazine covers, is for magazines created for POC to be more open about having White women grace their covers.

There is a question I want to ask today. I'm asking this question in the spirit of thinking outside of the box in order to open doors to new possibilities. These possibilities may be realistic or unrealistic. I also want to make it clear that there is no finger pointing here. I pose this question with the hope that it opens a discussion about how we can build a community for women based upon us all taking a deeper interest in one another. An interest where skin color, culture, and social class does not create barriers in sharing the commonality of being... women. With love and respect to all parties involved, my question is this...if we ask our white sisters, who tend to be the guardians of the covers of mainstream magazines, to consider women of color to grace these covers, should we not offer the same consideration to white women to grace our covers? Should women extend their power to other women simply because they are women? To my women of color, I am clear we must have something of our own, but is it possible to share in the spirit in which we ask our white sisters to share with us? I don't know the answer and would love to hear your thoughts.

What Jada fails to acknowledge is that these magazines were created specifically because of the erasure of our experiences in the mainstream media. While her approach is well intentioned by allowing White women to grace the covers of magazines that have been created for women of colour, it reinforces the idea that there isn't a single place where Whiteness does not belong.  Historically, people of colour have always been asked to turn the other cheek and hold out an olive branch to Whiteness, even as it works daily to ensure that we remain second class citizens.  This olive branch which Jada suggests, will not force Whiteness to be more inclusive; it will simply reduce already limited opportunities for women of colour.

The truth of the matter is that we cannot pretend that we are simply a community of women.  This is the same argument that feminists have used for years, even as they try to erase the effect that racism has on the lives of women of colour.  It is naive to expect the White owned and run media to suddenly capitulate and work towards more inclusive coverage.  No powerful force in history has ever just handed over power, or even consented to share power and why Jada thinks that this would suddenly be the case, if only people of colour would consent to share our spaces is beyond me.

We cannot treat Whiteness as though it is some benign force, when it wages war against people of colour across the globe daily. The sales of the all Black Italian Vogue show that there is a market for inclusion and still yet these magazines refuse to capitulate.  Clearly, maintaining White hegemony is far more important than the bottom line.  Since this is a fact, I must ask, what reasonable sense does it make to open up the few spaces reserved for WOC to White women? If they cannot be motivated by their own financial best interest, why would our sacrifice cause a moral quandary?

What we need to do is act from a position of strength.  It's already bad enough that in many ways businesses that target Black people, have either been bought out by White run companies, or controlled by White management.  How much of our power can we afford to give away?  We have already seen that as a result of these actions nothing has changed. It's a foolish person who keeps repeating the same action, while hoping for a different result.

When integration occurred, the Black community lost institutions that have been our backbone for a very long period of time. We have seen as a result, less cohesion and less forward movement. This is not to say that integration didn't have positive results, but that it came with a cost. It was a compromise that never should have been made because Whiteness has no interest in the dissolution of its social, or institutional power. While I agree that we need new ideas moving forward, making room for White women is a backward step and nothing good can come of it.

Oh Hell No! Man Utters N-word And Slaps Crying Child On Delta Flight

This is definitely a Maya Wilkes moment  and a well earned nomination for Shut Up Fool of the week.

Heard about Joe Rickey Hundley, who while traveling on a February 8 Minneapolis-Atlanta Delta flight let his inner bigot out while in seat 28A next to 33 year old Jessica Bennett and her 2 year old toddler Jonah.

Jonah began crying while on final descent.into Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on Flight 721 probably due to the altitude change that can cause some brief ear discomfort.  

Bennett believed that Hundley was inebriated and claimed he drank several double vodkas during the two hour flight  

The 60 year old Hundley is not only alleged to have said to Bennett "Shut that n----r baby up," he took it a step further by following the racist comment up with a slap to Jonah's face that only intensified the crying.

He denies it, but other passengers have verified it was said.. Once that happened other nearby passengers intervened and Hundley was arrested upon arrival at the gate.

He was charged with simple assault (really?) and faces up to a year in prison if convicted of the misdemeanor count.  He was also charged with public intoxication and has been suspended from his job as president of Idaho-based Unitech Composites and Structures.


TransGriot Update: Now that his story has gone viral and international,reports are that Hundley has now been terminated from his job.

Damn Secretary Powell, You Just Now Figuring Out The GOP is Intolerant?

You just now figuring out Secretary Powell that your party has a 'dark vein of intolerance'?

Hell, any African-American on the street and yours truly could have told you that.


 

POC's Calling Out Problematic Instances Of Racist Behavior Doesn't Make The POC 'Racist'

And y'all need to chill with that crap, especially in liberal-progressive circles.

In fact, I and other POC social justice bloggers are tired of having to point out the obvious or make this ad nauseum point about race and countless others.  Far too often because of whiteness, white supremacy and vanillacentric privilege,  bigoted and racist crap happens that a person of color for their own sanity is going to have to call out    

Sometimes we're going to have to call you out when you do problematic things in the name of 'colorblindness' that cluelessly reinforces the dominance of whiteness.  

When we POC's do that, that is not 'racism'.   FOX noise got y'all twisted on that.   It is not what a pissed off white individual or a conservafool commentator hurls back at a POC who had the courage to speak up and point out a problematic situation so it doesn't happen the next time.

Racism=prejudice plus systemic power.   In fact, let Moni school you on this one more time.:

Racism is the systematic discrimination, denial of rights and benefits by whites against non-whites in all areas of human activity.  (economics, education, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war).

And naw, that's the Sociology 101 definition of racism.  Don't even try to pull out a definition of racism from Webster's (or any) dictionary and try to argue with me or any other person of color that everybody can be racist.  No, everybody cannot be racist and you are making the mistake that just about every white person does of conflating bigotry and prejudice with racism..      

Exhibit A of what I'm talking about is the voter ID voter suppression laws.   They were proposed by ALEC, written and sponsored by conservative white politicians, passed by conservative white politicians in white dominated state legislatures and vigorously defended by white conservatives.

They had the racist intent of suppressing the turnout of non-white voters and their ability to vote in elections for the candidates of their choice.

So in this example you had whites who attempted to deny the voting rights of non-whites in elections, an area of human activity that determines the outcome of the laws that govern society and how it's organized solely to keep political power and because they fear what will happen when white people become a minority population in 2040.  

Hint to the wise.  Better keep those affirmative action laws on the legal books.. Your kids, grandkids and great grandkids may need them someday.   

Everyone be bigoted and prejudiced.  Everybody can NOT be racist, because persons of color individually or in their respective ethnic groups alone do not have the systemic societal power to deny whites rights and societal benefits in any area of human activity.   

Strange Fruit-Racial Divisions & The TDOR

As a former Louisville resident I've been keeping up with WFPL-FM's latest show Strange Fruit, hosted by Niece and Nephew. (AKA Dr. Kaila Story and Jaison Gardner to the rest of y'all).

They were discussing on this latest show their experience of attending the local Louisville TDOR, noting that the names of the people being memorialized were Black and Latina, but having an event that was overwhelmingly white.  

All thirteen of the US transwomen killed in the November 2011 to  November 2012 period that we tracked for TDOR were Black or Latina.

So guess who they called to discuss the nature of race and class in the trans community and who was happy to discuss it, especially in the wake of my own not so pleasant experience at this year's Houston TDOR?

Yep, the podcast is up for the latest edition of Strange Fruit and y'all can hear it by clicking on this link. 

Texas Secede? Yeah, Right

As many of you long time TransGriot readers are aware of I'm a proud fourth generation Texan and native Houstonian. 

I've been amused and concerned to see in the wake of President Obama's overwhelming reelection victory last week pissed off white peepul rioting at the University of Mississippi, letting their inner Klansmen out on Facebook and Twitter, and Republican leaning 'bidnessmen' using the excuse of the Obama victory and expansion of the Democratic Senate majority to lay off workers.   

Now we have so called 'Real Americans' showing their love of this country by sticking petitions on the White House website asking to secede from the United States with the one from my beloved home state getting 80,000 nekulturny people to sign it.

Um people, we're in the middle of observing the 150th anniversary of the War To Perpetuate Slavery (AKA the Civil War) your ancestors jumped off because of that 'states rights' bull feces.  

The question of whether a state could secede or not was not only settled on the battlefield 150 years ago (and y'all lost that war) but was settled by an 1869 US Supreme Court ruling in the Texas v. White case that says no state has the right to unilaterally secede.  

I also find it ironic that the racist failed nation state you continue to romanticize that your ancestors founded that you claim was founded on that 'states rights' principle but was actually of and about perpetuating slavery, was a four year failure in nation building.   The CSA was never recognized by any other world power and hypocritically barred a proposed constitutional provision preserving the right of a state to secede.

So I'm chuckling over this post- election rhetoric from predominately white Texans who were asleep in their Texas history classes wanting to secede and reestablish the Republic of Texas.

If you were paying attention, the Republic of Texas that existed from 1836-1846 and whose capital for two years (1837-1839) was Houston had a tough time fending off Mexican Army and Comanche incursions, and racked up a $10 million debt that the US government agreed to assume once annexation of Texas was complete

So let's get to the real reason why the Tea Klux Klan is pushing this secession talk.   They have like everyone one else who is paying attention to current political developments in the Lone Star State known that Texas has become since 2009 a majority minority state population wise.   The four other majority-minority US states politically have become Democratic in political orientation and the only reason Texas hasn't gone that way is because of the 2003 Delaymandering and the gerrymandering of districts by the GOP legislative majority following the 2010 midterms 

It's inevitable that Texas will once again revert to being a progressive political state, and Republicans have pissed off Latino, African-American and Asian communities to the point that it's just a matter of time before the Texas Republican Party resembles the California one.   

President Obama carried four of the five largest Texas counties population wise in Harris (Houston), Dallas, Travis (Austin), and Bexar (San Antonio).  Tarrant County (Ft. Worth) went to Romney.    In addition to carrying those counties, he carried Jefferson County (Beaumont-Port Arthur), El Paso, heavily Latino South Texas and many of the counties along the Rio Grande.

A blue or even Purple Texas would be a disaster for the Republicans because they heavily rely in their presidential electoral vote calculations of having Texas' 38 electoral votes in their column.   If they were forced to compete for Texas, this state is bigger than France size wise and has expensive media markets in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.

We non Anglo Texans already know what's driving this need to secede.  Racism.  

In addition to the vanillacentric panic in conservacircles over the fact the United States will be a majority-minority population nation by 2050, that reality was driven home by the election of President Obama in 2008 and his reelection to another four year term last week.

Don't think we non-white Texans weren't paying attention when  Hardin County Republican treasurer Peter Morrison (who is also a  Ron Paul supporter) and author of a race-baiting Tea Party newsletter wrote this bigoted drivel:   

"Let each go her own way," Morrison wrote, demanding an "amicable divorce" from the U.S. and from the "maggots" who re-elected President Obama.

And you wonder why I can't stand the Republican Party, Ron Paul supporters, the Tea Klux Klan and libertarians azzholes like him not necessarily in that order and people outside of this state think we're all nekulturny yahoos. .

 more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/12/3908795/commentary-politician-wants-texas.html#storylink=cpy

Bottom line is 75% of the 25,145,561 people in this state like being American citizens just fine, and I submit the 13,582,879 of us who aren't Anglo like saying the Pledge of Allegiance and singing our national anthem.  We are quite aware that as long as the Stars and Stripes flies on flagpoles throughout the 268,601 square miles of  Texas turf, our human rights are protected under the laws of this country and the United States Constitution.

All bets are off on that in a white dominated Republic of Texas.  

Besides, without Texas as part of the United States, you conservafoools have no chance of ever regaining the White House, so chill with that secession talk.  You also by expressing your racist selves let us know through your actions just how much you really love this country and our state.. 

And yeah, you tried that secession thang already in 1861.  It was a miserable failure.
 

Putting A Conservafool On Blast

Yeah, had one feeling his oats yesterday and believing the conservahype that Mitt Romney will win tomorrow and stepped to me on my FB page.  So yeah, he went where he shouldn't have and I went into Maya Wilkes mode on his azz.

Name of conservafool in question has been removed to protect the guilty, but Moni damned sure does approve of this message.

***

Dude, you're blind and willfully ignorant, so don't even try to step to me with that typical white conservative male bullshit line of 'the libruls do it too'.

You also suffer under the vanillacentric privileged delusion that you are 'colorblind'   You conservatives like to claim that race doesn't matter, while your actions say the complete opposite.  It is you white conservatives who are far more fixated on race, and you have the unmitigated gall to get huffy when people of color call you on your bullshit and hold the mirror of truth to your asses where you have to confront yourselves and your nekulturny behavior in the mirror.

It is a delusion that people of color in America cannot afford to indulge you on for our own survival in a world hostile to us.   If you as a person of color try to act as if you are white when you cannot ever pass for white, it leads to internalized racism, self-doubt and confusion. The only healthy course of action for our own sanity as people of color is to own it, be proud of it and acknowledge that it is a part of us and our culture. 

Being Black, Latino, Asian, et cetera is not something to “not see” as if it were a matter of shame and it is a calculation we must factor into our political stances as well since y'all have whiteness and the maintenance of white supremacy factored into yours.

Enough of the Sociology 101 you missed in college and back to schooling your ass about conservatism and how it is the political arm of whiteness and white supremacy. 

Your claim that you are 'colorblind' does not insulate or inoculate you from the fact that the party and movement you support is an overwhelmingly white male one.  It engages in actions that are hostile and oppressive to my people's human rights and you and other conservative leaning white males have this nauseatingly repetitive pattern of not only trying to project your behavior on your opponents, you and other whites attempt to ignore and justify what conservatism is doing with the 'libruls do it too' false equivalency line

FYI, liberals do not engage in passing voter suppression laws designed to keep my people from either voting or standing in seven hour lines to do so.   Liberals have not disrespected or insulted an African-American president and his family by using racist rhetoric or ignorantly othering him.  That's all on you conservafools, so own every racist graphic, joke or birther conspiracy theory you've hatched over the last 4 years.   

When you vote for Republicans, you tell me and other African-Americans that you not only agree with that premise that my civil rights don't matter, all you care about is your vanillacentric privilege and your fracking wallet.  

Your votes for conservatives indicate not only your values, it says you support what the party platform stands for as a Republican.   Your vote supports people and a party that thinks it is okay to racially profile people, to force women to have a child conceived in a rape or incest situation to give birth to that child, keep non-whites from voting by any means necessary, eviscerate public education, and others anyone who doesn't look like you, the almighty white male. 

Thar's truth for your ass, and if you turn off Fox Noise and really open your eyes to what's going on you could see that. But sadly, you won't. 

Told Y'all The Republicans Were Neo-Confederates

I had a proud conservative ask me recently why Black people hated conservatism and the Republican Party.  He didn't like my answer when I told him because his party had become the home of racist neo-Confederate idiots and people like him were turning a blind eye to it.  

He tried to play the 'both parties do it' card that all conservatives resort to when they are confronted about their party's frequent bigotry eruptions, but I wasn't having that.   I pointed out that the Dixecrats have called the GOP home since the late 60's and long ugly racist history the Republican party has had since then.  

The recent events have only added an exclamation point to what I told this proud conservative. 

The firestorm hasn't died down yet from the comments that Arkansas Republifool state legislator Jon Hubbard made about slavery being 'a blessing in disguise for Blacks' and now another Arkansas Republican has put the pointed hood on, poured gasoline on the fire and co-signed what his KKKonservative KKKolleague has said.

Arkansas state rep Loy Mauch is the latest conservafool to go down the Lost Cause path by being outed by the Arkansas Times for being a pro-slavery pro-Confederacy defender in letters to the editor dating back over a decade.

Here's a sample of Loy Mauch's Greatest Hits:.

“If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861? The South has always stood by the Constitution and limited government. When one attacks the Confederate Battle Flag, he is certainly denouncing these principles of government as well as Christianity.”

Nowhere in the Holy Bible have I found a word of condemnation for the operation of slavery, Old or New Testament. If slavery was so bad, why didn’t Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?
This country already lionizes Wehrmacht leaders. They go by the names of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, etc. These Marxists not only destroyed the Constitution they were sworn to uphold, but apostatized the word of God. Either these depraved infidels or the Constitution and Scriptures are in error. I’m more persuaded by the word of God.

Yeah right, Loy Mauch.   You're still mad because the South (thank God) and your ancestors lost the War to Perpetuate Slavery their traitorous azzes started.   Get over it and the fact you can't own me or any other African-American much less treat us like crap because of it.  

The Arkansas Republican Party can say all they want or put out the canned press release that they repudiate those remarks and they don't support these people, but the campaign money flowing into their campaigns and the support from US Rep Tim Griffin (R-AR) says otherwise.

And you're on the list for this week's Shut up Fool Award.

The Trans Racial Political Divide Shows Up At SCC 2012

While I was owning my power inside I-495 AKA the Capitol Beltway, I thought about during some OUT on the Hill downtime that the Southern Comfort Conference was also going on in the ATL.   I've attended the 1999, 2000 and 2004 editions of SCC and it was undeniably a part of my trans activist evolution. 

Because at one point it was the largest trans gathering in the United States convention hierarchy, SCC has also been the backdrop of major trans political intrigue and drama.  The 2007 SCC convention was a major case in point of that . 

With its dates conflicting with OUT on the Hill and the increasing need for me to be in Washington DC for that event, it's highly unlikely I'll be back at another SCC unless I'm invited to do a keynote speech.

I've written SCC posts in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 but didn't this year.   I've talked about the irony of an overwhelmingly vanillacentric conference smack dab in a city considered the Black GLBT mecca.  I've noted the sincere attempts of the SCC board to diversify their attendance and one of their awkward moments brought on by that lack of diversity in 2008..  

My distinguished trans elder Cheryl Courtney-Evans attended the 2012 edition of SCC and reported in her abitchforjustice blog some of her observations about the sharp racial political divide that permeated this year's event over the looming presidential election.

So needless to say I was surprised, even shocked to find the reactions I got to my flier distribution...virtually every African American transgender person I offered one to, took it (some with the smile & "Obama in '12" comment). But I found that many of the Caucasians in attendance would refuse with a shake of the head (one telling me, "I'm not a fan of Obama's"), or just lay them down and leave them somewhere. It was during one of my 'smoke breaks' that I witnessed and heard comments from some Caucasian trans who were discussing a flier that was lying on a table between us from one of these "lay it down & leave it" occasions. "I really don't see what difference it's gonna make," she said, "they're both the same; they're gonna say one thing and do another after they're elected..."  WHAT??! Where have they been the last four years?? Hadn't they heard what one of their own had just said at lunch? (Also, I could see they were old enough to have seen at least three different presidents and their actions with regards to transgenders.)  Then I had to stop and think about who was talking...

Once again people, race matters, even in our little trans subset of society.  It's one of the reasons why NBJC and TPOCC exist.   Here's the rest of Cheryl's post for y'all to peruse.. 

Any Progress We Make As African-Americans Is 'Too Much'

Two things that CNN camerawoman Patrica Carroll said in her interview discussing the ugly incident that happened at the recently RNC convention resonated with me. 

"This is Florida, and I’m from the Deep South ... You come to places like this you can count the black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don't think I should do." 

She also said, "People think we're gone further than we have." .

Sadly it's a recurring theme in our four centuries of being Africans in America.   We African-Americans make any minor, major or groundbreaking progress and it's 'too much ' for whites and whiteness to handle.

After it occurs, you have the inevitable panicked rush of white supremacists to roll back that progress or work to create barriers to prevent further advancement for my people while stirring up resentment in the huddled masses of low and middle income white people.   When we overcome that latest created barrier or painfully get back to the previous point we were at evolutionary wise in terms of our development as African-Americans, the rush by whiteness to create a new way to roll our progress back begins anew.

We've definitely seen that distressing pattern play itself out over the last 150 years of American history.  After the spectacular progress freedmen made after emancipation from slavery in which they went from a 15% literacy rate to over 70% by the 1900's combined with an explosion of African-American elected officials, community building based on a solid educational foundation, entrepreneurial spirit and hard work, fearful and jealous whites began working to roll back that progress.

Klan terrorist attacks, mob violence, the shady 1876 presidential election that resulted in the Compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction, restrictive voter laws, boycotts, Jim Crow segregation and conservative Supreme Court rulings combined to shut down the first Reconstruction and our political participation in American society to the point in which we had zero members of Congress by the dawn of the 20th century.  We were knocked out of many professions we'd managed to enter or were dominant in such as the horse racing industry and recurring riots destroyed much of what we had painstakingly managed to build. 

It took decades of effort from a phalanx of civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, visionary leaders such as W.E.B DuBois, A Philip Randolph, Dorothy Height, Bayard Rustin, the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.and the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's before we could overcome Jim Crow segregation and jump off another period of spectacular progress for African-Americans which by 1980 was 'too much' for white people. 

The forces of whiteness and white resentment have reacted to the Second Reconstruction the same way they did to the first one in terms of flocking to elect conservative Republican politicians who pimped a message of racial resentment for electoral success in the once Solid Democratic South.   They combined it with a conservative Supreme Court, a phalanx of shadowy conservative organizations working behind the scenes such as ALEC, right wing conservative Christians and  in conjunction with the national and state level Republican Party orgs designing laws to retard or erect new barriers for us..
.
The fact you have people of color routinely doing things 'they' don't think we should be doing such as running Fortune 500 corporations, winning Nobel Prizes, walking fashion runways, winning major golf or tennis tournaments, being the governor of a state or living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue along with the news that whites will be a minority population in the United States by 2040 has made whiteness uneasy. 

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 has sent the bigots into a frothing at the mouth frenzy and doubled down on pimping the dog whistle message of GOP=white leadership.  When the GOP gained control of several state legislatures in the wake of the 2010 midterm elections one of the first things those Republican legislatures did was pass voter suppression laws designed to depress the turnout of African-American voters in the runup to this 2012 presidential election..

And the irrationality of the Massive Resistance 2.0 strategy the Republican party has deployed in order to deny him a second term speaks volumes to the level of racism in the GOP.  They are willing to bankrupt and destroy this country just to oust one Black man and his family out of the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave my people built with their unpaid labor.

So yeah, any progress we make as African-Americans always seems to be 'too much' for whiteness and white supremacy, and that pattern is played out.

NABJ Comments On The Lack Of Debate Moderator Diversity

I had my say about the problematic lack of diversity when the presidential and vice presidential debate moderator selections were announced.  So did the NAACP and Univision's president on behalf of the Latino/a community. 

It was appalling that in an election year which will feature the most diverse electorate ever in American history and has an African-American president running for re-election, those October debates with have no African-American, Latino/a or Asian journalists posting questions to the 2012 presidential and vice presidential candidates. . 

In case you're wondering, the last African-American male journalist to serve as a presidential debate moderator was CNN's Bernard Shaw in 1988.

Former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson was the last African-American female to moderate a presidential debate, doing so in 1992. 

Gwen Ifill of PBS has moderated two vice presidential debates in 2004 and 2008.  

The National Association of Black Journalists are definitely not happy about the vanillacentric debate moderator selections whitewashed by the Commission on Presidential debates either, and here's what they had to say about it on August 17:

NABJ is disappointed that the journalists chosen to participate in the presidential debates don't reflect what has become the most diverse electorate in U.S. history. 

While we commend the selection of the first woman moderator in 20 years, we find it unacceptable that no journalists of color will be involved. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which announced the selections this week, blamed the omission on "debate arithmetic." Frankly, the math doesn't add up.

There is no absence of qualified journalists of color, or those with experience as debate moderators, such as NABJ Hall of Fame member Gwen Ifill, of PBS.

By excluding journalists of color, the commission failed to satisfy an important public interest given that racial and ethnic minorities will contribute roughly one quarter of the votes cast on Election Day. Any credible analysis has shown that their turnout, or lack thereof, will be a decisive factor in the presidential contest. This year, both presidential campaigns and their parties are devoting more resources than ever to reaching non-white voters.

Yet the commission has minimized the significance of our nation's changing identity, as well as the role of minority journalists in informing an increasingly diverse public. We believe the commission wasted an opportunity to use its unique platform in a manner that encourages more citizens to participate in the democratic process.

"The commission had a chance to embrace the racial kaleidoscope that the American electorate is fast becoming, and chose instead to remain blind to it," Sonya Ross, chair of NABJ’s Political Journalism Task Force, said. "It is time to end this cyclical charade of treating equally deserving, equally capable journalists of color as if they are invisible, unqualified, or both. I would like to invite the commission, along with leading entities in political media, to join the task force in making a concerted effort to ensure a truly diverse set of presidential debate moderators for 2016."

So why is this lack of debate moderator diversity a big fracking deal to POC's?   In addition to the fact there has never been an Asian or Latino presidential debate moderator of either gender, non-white voters will be the decisive voting blocs in several swing states.

We need to hear the presidential and vice presidential candidates answer debate questions that are geared toward our policy concerns and issues as people of color. 

As NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous stated, “The lack of diversity among this year’s debate moderators is representative of the overall lack of diversity in news media. Whether it’s as primetime news anchors, debate moderators, or commentators on the influential Sunday morning political talk shows, people of color — and African Americans specifically — are strikingly underrepresented.”

That is what we POC Americas are complaining about, the lack of representation.

A debate setting is one of those times Republican candidates, who avoid non-white media outlets on a routine basis because they don't want to answer those tough questions from POC journalists, have to do precisely that, especially if the moderator is a person of color. 

Some of those issues and policy concerns (let's be real here) white journalists aren't culturally fluent in or it wouldn't immediately occur to them to ask those types of questions from our non-white points of view because we do live in two vastly different American realities.      

If you are going to run for president of the United States, then you have to be president for ALL Americans, not just a vanillacentric 63% slice of th population.   If you are setting up debates to ask the people running for the highest political offices in the land questions, the journalists asking those questions also need to reflect the diversity of our nation.

 

Univision President Decries Lack Of Debate Moderator Diversity

Looks like I wasn't the only person along with the National Association of Black Journalists that noticed the lack of debate moderator diversity in the upcoming October presidential and vice presidential debates.

Univision President Randy Falco wrote a letter that put the Commission on Presidential Debates on blast for their vanillacentric and major network centric selections of debate moderators.

"This November more than 20 million Hispanics could play a critical role in electing the new President of the United States and it is important that they make an informed decision," Falco wrote. "The debates announced yesterday presented an ideal opportunity to tap one of the two best journalists in the business who have a broad understanding of the domestic and international issues facing this country, understand the Hispanic community better than anyone else and are fully bilingual: Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas."

The other Latino journalists whose names were rumored to have been considered for moderator slots were CNN's Soledad O'Brien and Telemundo's Jose Diaz-Balart.  

As the fastest growing minority group that will make up by 2050 a third of the population of the United States, the 2012 presidential candidates should have to answer questions posed by Latino journalists in a debate setting just as they needed to answer questions from African-American journalists.

The importance of having POC journalists is magnified when one of the presidential candidates has been routinely ducking non-white journalists on a regular basis.

Falco also offered in his letter to the Commission to create a Latino forum for both presidential candidates to participate in.

"Since you have already made your decision on moderators for the debates and have neglected to have someone speak credibly to the concerns of Hispanics in America, Univision would be willing to create a forum for the presidential candidates to address this sector of our society."

Janet Brown, the Debate Commission's executive director tried to deflect the justified criticism coming their way about the glaring omission of journalists of color.   In addition to stating the Commission was not creating the requested forum,  she wrote this in response to Falco.

"We recognize that there are many organizations and individuals who wish they had been included in our moderator selection. Debate arithmetic means that it is impossible to accommodate all of them. However, we strongly believe that the four journalists we have named see their assignment as representing all Americans in their choice of topics and questions. The general election debates have always focused on issues of national interest that affect all citizens, including Univision’s audience.  We have met with Univision about joint efforts to get the largest number of people possible engaged in discussing and learning from the debates, and remain interested in working with you toward that goal."

Yeah, right.  This is a cop-out statement and a recognition the Commission fracked up by not adding journalists of color for these debates.  It also doesn't address the valid point that Falco made that the four journalists chosen as moderators don't have experience or cultural fluency with the issues the Latino community faces. 

It's also arrogant and insulting of Ms. Brown or the commission to presume that non-white journalists aren't capable of asking debate questions that would appeal to all American citizens, since it has been effortlessly done by Carole Simpson in the 1992 presidential debate and Gwen Ifill most recently in the 2004 and 2008 vice presidential ones. .

Debate Commission leadership, it's past time for you to recognize the reality that the 'all citizens' part of that statement Ms. Brown crafted also includes non-white Americans.    
 .

Damn, Can A Gold Medal Winning Sistah Enjoy It?

Gabrielle Douglas was a major part of the first USA women's gymnastics team Tuesday night effort to win the team competition gold for only the second time since the 'Magnificent Seven' pulled off that feat in Atlanta in 1996.  

Gabby then followed it up on Thursday by making more history.   She became the first African-American gymnast to win the all around title and the first American gymnast to win the team and all-around gold medals in the same Olympiad.

Serena Williams dominated the Olympic women's tennis singles competition field at 'Williams'-don so throughly she only dropped a total of 17 games and didn't lose a set.

In the gold medal match it took her a mere 63 minutes to win in dominating 6-0, 6-1 fashion over Russia's Maria Sharapova.

In the process Williams became the first tennis player ever to win golden slams in singles and doubles.

She and her big sister Venus go for a golden repeat title in Olympic women's doubles on Sunday against the Czech Republic's duo of Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in the gold medal match.in a few hours. 

But did whiteness and white supremacist addled people give these women or their proud African-American community a chance to celebrate their hard earned victories in peace?  

Hell naw.   Black female trailblazing athletes are always catching hell from somebody that has a problem with them on some level .

First came the snide comments from some quarters because reigning gymnastics world champ Jordyn Wieber failed to qualify for the all-around competition and her tears were beamed all over the world.   I'll admit I even felt sorry for Wieber for a moment until some of the online conversation and even the media started trying to minimize Gabby's contributions to that Fab Five's win.

Then I got pissed. 

That was rapidly followed by ignorant knee-grow Twitterverse peanut gallery obsessing about Gabby's hair which whiteness then picked up on.

It was folowed up on Thursday night by NBC's clueless running of a promo commercial for one of the fall shows it's heavily promoting called Animal Practice which featured a monkey doing ring gymnastics.

Cute commercial, only one major problem.   NBC ran it immediately after Bob Costas had just done a  segment commenting on Gabby's historic all around win that was tape delayed in the US to show in primetime.



What's the problem with that?  Plenty.  It may have been unintentional, but when Black people of both genders have been disrespectully compared to animals for over four centuries, that was a seriously problematic timing for that ad somebody in the production truck should have caught. 

Combine that with people already being pissed off about how far too much of NBC's televised coverage for the London games has been tape delayed.  

NBC apologized for it, but yeah, as much as I riff on Fox Noise for their racism and I'm about to do again, I have to call it out when questionable race related stuff happens even on networks I watch on the regular. 

Now moving on to Serena.  She celebrated in the aftermath of her microwave tennis win by doing the crip-walk dance before changing into her USA warmup suit and receiving her hard earned gold medal.

Cue all the Williams haters and the racist idiots at Fox Noise trying to stir some stuff up I've gots to call their  vanillacentric privileged hater tots chomping behinds on.



Fox Noise has been hatin' on Serena Williams for a while and took the opportunity to swipe at her again courtesy of a Reid Forgrave article posted on their website..

Seriously Reid Forgrave?  You conservafools are really trying to live up to your hatin' on Black folks reputation.

You GOP propagandists trying to claim that Serena's crip-walk dance celebration of her Olympic singles gold medal is 'embarrassing the USA in front of the UK and the world' is laughable.

Hell, even Gabby briefly danced the Dougie after her wins.

Let's be real for a moment. Your boy Mittbot caused far more embarrassment to the United States in front of the UK and the world on that travesty of a foreign trip last week to the UK, Israel and Poland than a few seconds of Serena happily dancing for a few seconds after celebrating her well deserved golden win ever will.   Serena's celebratory dance didn't inflame Middle East tensions, piss of the Palestinians, Prime Minister David Cameron, London mayor Boris Johnson, and cause multiple international incidents like Mitt Romney cluelessly did.

Y'all are just pissed off that the Williams sisters, despite injuries, the constant micro and macroaggresive racist drama y'all put them through continue to kick the butts of your eastern European tennis glamazons on the world tour on a regular basis and are unapologetically Black while doing so.

But damn, can a gold medal winning sistah enjoy it?

They Mad

Whether it's the African-American occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the Olympic all around champion and my favorite tennis playing siblings, the vanillacentric privilege that drives the hate, snide comments and animosity aimed at trailblazing African Americans is still prevalent in 'post-racial' America.

Sharon Needles' Clueless Bigotry

Why am I not surprised that a RuPaul's Drag Race winner doesn't have a clue why it is not fracking cool to sign a photo with 'Black is the new Black ♥ you Ni***r."? 

Especially since the creator of the show supports a drag queen who thinks (and the white gays who support the tired 'act') it's humorous to watch a obese gay white male dress up in blackface and portray 'a welfare mother with 19 'chirren' all named after venereal diseases and discount stores.

This time I'm not talking about Shirley Q. Liquor, but 30 year old Sharon Needles, AKA Aaron Coady.

There's been an increasing firestorm of criticism being aimed at Needles from the rainbow POC court of public opinion  who considers that autograph in the photo problematic.

The vanillacentric circling the rainbow wagons around Needles is only pouring gasoline on the smoldering anger of African American rainbow peeps and especially when we hear the tired 'lighten up' comment come of the mouths of Sharon Needles fans.

The anger of the African American SGL community went up a few more notches after this YouTube video surfaced with Needles trying to gaysplain it.

The other night me and a couple of my friends went out to have a good time, and there's this young thing. I call her a "thing" because, you know, I don't know how to tip-toe around gender rules or queer politics. I'm 30 years old, rich, and famous; I don't have to deal with that shit anymore, you know what I mean? So we'll just call them "him"/"her"/"thing," whatever. And you know she really finds my shows offensive. ... So anyway she got upset that I paint myself brown, that I would use language that she found offensive. ... She made me an unnecessary poster child for post-racial change."

  
Sniff sniff, I smell industrial strength vanillacentric privilege in the rainbow air from Coady.   And yes Aaron, whether you and your vanillacentric fan base think otherwise, you exist with white privilege.  If a POC is telling you that your show is offensive and why, maybe you need to stop and think about that for a moment and then correct you behavior instead of trying to defensively justify it.

Let me say this once again for you peeps to understand.  Just as you hate being called the f-word that rhymes with maggot, we don't like the n-word.
It is not okay to perpetuate negative stereotypes and problematic language and flying the rainbow flag doesn't change that or give you a pass on that. 

And Aaron, you can best believe I will address the transphobic nature of what you said in that YouTube video in another post

It is NEVER okay for you white peeps inside or outside the rainbow community under ANY circumstances to say the n-word.  When it comes out of your mouth we're instantly thinking about all the four centuries of negative history behind that word and the cuss out (or beatdown) that results from you doing so will be swift and sure.

Once again it is highlighting an issue that needs to be addressed in the overall rainbow community in terms of racism in the rainbow community ranks. 

It doesn't help and pisses us off when white BTLG people not only knee-jerk circle the wagons around the people we POC's call out for the offensive bigoted behavior, but arrogantly try to tell us trans and SGL folks of color what we should and should not be offended by.

Non white LGBT people are aware that we can't eradicate racism in our rainbow ranks unless we can have a serious conversation about it and the will to do so.  

We also know much of the heavy lifting on this issue has to be done by white GLBT peeps since they still are reluctant to come to grips with the fact or play the 'if we ignore it it'll go away' game there is a rainbow community race problem.   

And Sharon Needles, you definitely need to check yourself before you end up walking in your idol RuPaul's and Chuck Knipp's pumps and find yourself becoming a community pariah and your shows being consistently protested

Duh, We Non-White Peeps Already Knew That About KKKonservatism

Addictinginfo.com published a very interesting article that discusses Pat Buchanan wannabe John Derbyshire's latest waste of bandwith for a white supremacist site.

In that post he declares white supremacy as one of the "best arrangements in history.'

“The enemies of conservatism are eager to supply their own nomenclature. “White Supremacist” seems to be their current favorite. It is meant maliciously, of course, to bring up images of fire-hoses, attack dogs, pick handles, and segregated lunch counters—to imply that conservatives, especially non-mainstream conservatives, are cruel people with dark thoughts. Leaving aside the intended malice, I actually think “White Supremacist” is not bad semantically. White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with. There have of course been some blots on the record, but I don’t see how it can be denied that net-net, white Europeans have made a better job of running fair and stable societies than has any other group.”

Some blots on the record, John?   Really?  I can think of more than a few such as the Atlantic Slave Trade, Jim Crow segregation, Nazism, the Holocaust, apartheid, wiping out the Central and South American Indian empires, the Caribbean native peoples, nearly wiping out the First Nations and Native Americans in the United States and Canada... gee y'all help me out here 

What, you still pissed because your racism got you bounced from the National Review?   Then again, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. was right in admonishing us African-descended peeps and our allies to be more concerned with the racists wearing Brooks Brothers suits and Gucci pumps than the ones wearing pointed hoods and white sheets.

But duh, every non-white person on Planet Earth and in the United States with the exception of brainwashed souls like Clarence Thomas, Jesse Lee Peterson, Allen West, Janice Rogers Brown, Angela McGlowan,  Herman Cain and whatever Oreo-cookie chomping knee-grow du jour the conservafools trot out as a 'we're not racist' human shield can tell you from painful experience and perusing our history that conservatism only benefits white people.

You white peeps who call yourselves 'proud conservatives' are when we start telling the truth about this fracked up situation nothing more than racism and oppression enablers, and you're either too obtuse to see it, don't care or like the status quo. 


Do you really think that African-Americans voting at 90-95% clips for Democratic Party candidates at every level of government occurs in a vacuum? 

If you do wake up and stop smelling the vanillacentric privilege and trying to justify the ALEC inspired voter suppression laws.

You damn skippy for mine and my people's survival I despise conservatism.  It is a political system I learned early in life to have no love for that is as Derbyshire let slip out and has been reinforced lately with the foaming at the mouth displays of Obama  Derangement Syndrome courtesy of the Tea Klux Klan and Republican Party is rooted in white supremacy. 

Why would I or any self-aware and conscious African-American cast votes that you're busy trying to suppress for conservative politicians that seek to oppress and repress my community?

To expand and remix a Lani Guinier quote, in a racially divided society, we have to always be on guard for our own survival that majority rule doesn't become majority tyranny.

But duh, we already knew that conservatism=racism and white supremacy.  We non-white folks in liberal progressive circles wonder how long it was going to take for you to see that and not have the conservafools mean spirited statements, writings and jacked up governing policies spell it out for you?