You Can't Show 'For Colored Girls' Or 'Hair Story' But 'The Help' Is Okay

The brilliant creative genius and editor of Womanist Musings with another thought provoking post

As many of you already know, I live in Niagara Falls.  This means that anything specifically related to Blackness is difficult for me to find in my area.  Just a few weeks ago, my best friend and I went to see the play top dog/under dog at the Shaw festival, simply because it was the only Black play they decided to show this season.  I go out of my way to support anything Black, in the hope that they will begin to cater to the Blacks more often.

When the movie The Help came out, I decided that even to write a scathing review of the movie, that I would not spend my hard earned money on it.  I am tired of seeing Black women play maids.  I am tired of the faux relationships that Hollywood chooses to present between White women and Black women.

To support Black art, whether it is movies, or plays, my best friend and I generally have to drive to Toronto, which is just under two hours away from where we live.  We do this because we realize that it's the only way to fight the notion that Black art is not bankable. To see For Coloured Girls, Precious, The Hair Story, The Miracle at St. Anna, Jump the Broom etc we have had to drive two hours.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the listings at Niagara Cinemas this week, only to discover that The Help was indeed playing there.  Even if I were inclined to spend my money on this movie, which I most certainly am not, the fact that they cannot show a Black movie except when a Black woman plays the role of a maid would be enough for me to boycott.  A Black woman in the role of a maid is not threatening to Whiteness, and is therefore acceptable in this small bigoted town. The one Black movie that aired out here was Dream Girls, but only after Dream Girls had proven that it was successful whereas; no White movie has had to live up to this standard. So much for the invisible hand of capitalism ending bigotry.

Incidents like this are why I find it hard to live in this area.  To be Black in a small town is to be erased at every available opportunity.  I have to buy all of my makeup on Ebay and order the shampoos for my hair online.  When I complained about the lack of foundation for Black women, I was told to buy a lighter shade and mix it with bronzer.  No, I am not kidding.  Think about how much shelf space a small bottle of foundation takes up, but that is too much room to sacrifice for Black women. I cannot see movies that reflect me and it is an everyday occurrence to go shopping and be shown the cheaper items, or get no service at all. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to tell servers at restaurants that I will not sit beside the bathroom.

But of course, it is me that has the problem.  I am angry and militant for not accepting graciously the absolute erasure of Black people in the area in which I live.  The only way that I would see The Help, is if the White woman was maid. One of my favorite scenes in Forrest Gump is watching how after receiving money from Forrest,  Bubba's mother went out and hired a White maid, after generations of Black women in her family working as maids for White families. If they want me to pay my hard earned money, they can show me something like that. Show me a movie in which White women are maids to Black families, or a movie in which the Black woman is subject and not object.

To be honest, I am done spending my hard earned money on portrayals that don't represent me and I certainly won't give a theater my money, when they cannot be arsed to show a Black movie unless it is in the Academy Award winning class and bringing in money hand over fist.  Any Black person in this area who lines up to see The Help, ought to be ashamed of themselves.  We may be a small percentage of the population, but if we do not demand to be seen and heard, we never will be, because Whiteness is more than happy with the status quo.

The tagline for this movie is that change starts with a little whisper, well here is my whisper: stop erasing Black people and stop giving us story after story of White saviors. 

Keep On Hatin' WWBT's

I see the WWBT's are still hatin.

I just spent a lovely two days at a conference in which the participants were laughing at y'all.  They noted the outright hatred you WWBT's have for lil old award winning chocolate me with the blog that 'nobody' reads.

Autumn Sandeen at Pam's House Blend just wrote a post that engages in piling on A.G.Casebeer.  Because of my now twelve year and continuing friendship with him, the WWBT's are trying and failing miserably to use it as a vehicle to attack me.

Okay, the man apologized for the comment and I posted it on this blog.  We all know what's going on here.  You're trying to deflect attention away from the unjust UN paper two white first world lesbians wrote that attempts to deny trans people around the world human rights coverage.   You don't want people paying closer attention to the fact that when it comes to 'equality', the rainbow community has people in it that don't practice what they preach at others.

They don't want people digging deeper into the fact that radical lesbian separatists have acted for over 30 years and continue to act as agents for the Forces of Intolerance when it comes to opposing trans human rights and are crying white woman's tears because they're being called on it.

And for once, it ain't just people of color calling their behinds on it..

In your zeal to paint me as a 'racist', you continue to deliberately ignore the fact I've been just as hard on my own people as a sector of you presume I've been on y'all.    The repeated 'racist' straw man is getting so old that my friends have turned it into a joke when they greet me.

But let me attempt to school you delusional WWBT's one more time.

Racism=prejudice plus systemic power.  That's something y'all should have learned and retained from Sociology 101 but obviously didn't .

No person of color has the power on an individual or group level to keep any white person from doing whatever they wish.  But as Brennan and Hungerford just proved with their unjust paper, by dint of their white skin and privilege, the opposite is certainly true.

And don't even try in the comment section to claim President Obama has that power.   If he did, he wouldn't have had to spend time doing a press conference in May over his fracking birth certificate because a group of white people led by an immigrant no less named Orly Taitz has falsely claimed for two years he wasn't a citizen.

Your WWBT calls  for 'stripping me on any positions in the trans community' smack of the same arrogance and white privilege the group of Republican white women who were pissed off at Oprah were drunk on and exercised in 2008.  They got huffy because she wouldn't violate her stated 'no political interviews during the election' policy and conduct one with Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election campaign  

They swore they would boycott and take down Oprah.   And how did that work out for them?  Those same ones loudly selling woof tickets then were probably begging for tickets to get into United Center for her last sold out shows.

And oh yeah, didn't you ubermenschen claim you weren't part of the trans community? 

You WWBT's are not going to hold me to a shifting standard that you don't apply and don't intend to apply to yourselves.  I'm not going to stop calling out you WWBT's about your hypocrisy, your racism and your selling out your transbrothers and transsisters of all ethnicities for your own selfishness and comfort.   I'm not going to stop pointing out that elements of this community like wearing white sheets under their dresses, or that the leadership ranks of it are as monoethnic as a Republican party meeting.

I'm also going to continue speaking my truth and looking at issues in this community through an Afrocentric viewpoint.   If you don't like that, you can go to Hades and catch the 666 bus to get there.

The more you attack me, the more you continue to prove everything I've said about you WWBT's and the worse you look to non-white transpeople and our allies.

And still I rise.     

I smell the grease from the Hater Tots you're cooking and the aroma of the Vanilla Ice flavored Hateraid you're consuming from 55 gallon drums.   So is everyone else who is peeping your game right now.


Go back to those radical lesbian separatist feminists you pal around with that are still uttering hateful disco era rhetoric about transpeople and have worked for decades to deny transpeople the very human rights coverage that they enjoy.

That's not acceptable and there's no justification for that either.

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PETA And Racial Appropriation

TransGriot Note: I just had a feeling the editrix of Womanist Musings would be putting PETA on blast for their latest racial hijinks (snicker, snicker) and shady behavior.   And now, Renee's take on it. 

PeTA has a terrible record when it comes to marginalized bodies.  From dressing up as the KKK, to employing the slogan "Are animals the new slaves," whenever possible, they have appropriated freely from Blacks. PeTA currently has a new exhibit across from the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.

The six double-sided panel display exhibits images of animal cruelty next to images of human cruelty. One panel includes Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and some images show elephants in shackles and overcrowded conditions for pigs and animals next to images of Blacks in similar conditions.

A PETA spokeswoman told BET.com "that the goal of the exhibit is not to equate nonhuman animals with African-Americans" but "to compare the oppression of certain groups of people in the past to the continued oppression of animals today. It points to the terrible level of suffering that has been inflicted upon various individuals throughout our history and points out some of the cruelty that still goes on in society today. PETA's message is that oppression is wrong, regardless of the race, gender, age, nationality or species of the victims," wrote PETA's communications director in an email. (source)

Uh huh, they didn't mean to refer to African Americans, and they just accidentally chose a quote from an African American civil rights leader.  How can anyone possibly give PeTA the benefit of the doubt given their history of racist actions?  They were absolutely making an analogy to the African American history of slavery and the struggle for civil rights. When Dr. King said those words, he was not speaking animals, he was speaking about the historical state of inequality between Blacks and Whites.

I will not deny that the condition of slaughter houses are horrendous, but the very idea that it can and should be compared to something as horrific as slavery, Jim Crow, etc., is not only racist, it is ridiculous.  By juxtaposing these ideas, they are suggesting that Blacks are the equivalent of animals, a suggestion by the way perpetuated by Whiteness to justify the outright inhuman oppression that they have historically engaged in. I know that biologically speaking we are all animals, but only people of colour have historically been labelled animals to justify White supremacy.

PeTA seems to feel that because their cause is just, that any damage that they do is unimportant.  After all, who could possibly object to wanting better treatment for defenseless animals?  Celebrities jump on board, because this seems like a harmless cause to support, and by doing so, they ignore that PeTA routinely attacks the most marginalized members of society to push their agenda. 

PeTA's goal is for humane treatment for animals and ironically, they often behave in the most inhumane manner.  No matter how many times marginalized people have spoken out against their tactics, they continue onward, because for them we are just the othered remnants of society.  You cannot fight hierarchy by perpetuating hierarchy, and this is a lesson PeTA has yet to learn.  Though there are members of PeTA that are undoubtedly of colour, their leadership, like many organizations is White. This is specifically why they refuse to recognize the damage that they have done to people of colour.  If you don't have to face the consequences for your actions, what is to stop you from continuing to harm beyond a personal conscience? This is why I can say without a doubt that PeTA is a white supremacist, heterosexist, cissexist, sexist, organization and anyone who supports them, is not defending the rights of animals, but defending the right to oppress at will.

PETA Racism Strikes Again

Y'all know I can't stand People Eating Tasty Animals, oops the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals fools.  It's not only because of their constant racist, sexist, transphobic, fatphobic, homophobic (pick one) fail in pushing their message, it's also run by Ingrid Newkirk who is best buds with FOX Noise's Bill O'Reilly.

Fresh off trying to pick a fight with Flavor Flav over his fried chicken restaurant in Iowa, the PETAoids have once again tried to appropriate African-American history and icons in order to pimp their agenda after we have repeatedly told their vanilla privileged behinds to refrain from doing that.

Flav's new yardbird venture is now closed because of some trouble back in April with some employee paychecks that bounced and disputes with his partner's business practices that resulted in its closure.

This latest episode of PETA failing badly has them according to BET.com putting up a six sided display across from the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. that compares animal cruelty to slavery, complete with images of cruelty to African-Americans and the Dr. King “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” quote 

The NAACP called PETA's azzes out in 2005 over a traveling exhibit entitled: "Are Animals the New Slaves?" that compared images of lynched African-Americans to slaughtered cows.  

They were also called out for wearing Klan hoods to the Westminster Dog Show in New York and comparing it to the Holocaust.

Come to think of it, they engage in this racist crap so often the Klan needs to make PETA an auxiliary chapter  


"Once again, Black people are being pimped. You used us. You have used us enough.” then NAACP president of Greater New Haven chapters Scot X. Esdaile said at the opening of that 2005 exhibit there that raised the ire of African Americans in the area.

The historical oppression of African Americans disrespectfully being used repeatedly in PETA campaigns needs to cease and desist.   Until y'all permanently quit doing so, KFC will continue to get my money.

On that note, off to the Colonel for a three piece..  

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