Yo Hallmark Channel, Black People Fall In Love, Too

Last Saturday after watching my Cougars win their game against Alabama-Birmingham and Oklahoma run over Texas, I was college footballed out.  I'd already compiled my post for Sunday morning and decided to step away from the Net for a few hours and indulge my other passion.

I'm an admitted romantic and love reading romance novels.   While flipping through the cable channels for something to watch other than the news or a sporting event I stumbled across the tail end of a romance movie on the Hallmark Channel that intrigued me called 'How To Fall In Love' starring Ugly Betty's Eric Mabius, Brooke D'Orsay and Kathy Najimy.

Mabius plays a shy photographer who enlists the aid of a dating coach to help him get over his wallflower approach to dating that has plagued him since his youth.   The dating coach (Brooke D'orsay) turns out to be a popular girl he had a crush on in high school that he hadn't quite gotten over a decade later.  

While I liked the movie, which actually premiered on the network back on July 21 (and I won't tell y'all how it ends)  the next two movies including the one I watched that evening had the same glaring issue in terms of being overwhelmingly vanillacentric.

Hallmark Channel, far from being as diverse as it claims, definitely isn't.  The next two made for the channel romance movies also featured white peeps falling in love in various scenarios.  

Hello Hallmark Channel, non-white people fall in love too.   Ever see the movie Hitch?   Ever read the books of one of my fave award winning romance authors in Kayla Perrin?  

Maybe y'all should give Kayla a call and turn one of her novels into a movie.

Yes, Black people fall in love, get married, buy romance novels, and like watching romance movies, too.   It would be nice to see ourselves occasionally represented in your made for TV romances especially since we persons of colors are part of the 87 million homes that have Hallmark Channel as part of their cable package.

So can a sister at least occasionally get to see a romance movie that features characters that look like them and share their ethnic heritage?   
   

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..
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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.

No, Patricia Carroll, This Racist BS Happened At The RNC Con For A Reason

Like other African-Americans inside and outside the blogosphere, I've been pissed about the ugly but not surprising incident happening at the just concluded Republican National Convention Klan Meeting in which peanuts were thrown at CNN camerawoman Patricia Carroll by RNC attendees with the comment "This is how we feed the animals."

Some of the comments Ms Carroll made in the one interview she has granted so far I agree with in terms of this incident being a wake up call to Black people.

But in her attempt to not politicize the issue, she unfortunately did precisely that by trying to claim that the incident could have just as easily happened at a Democratic convention. 

Yeah it could have- in any DNC convention prior to 1968. 

I have to call bull feces on that one.   The Democratic National Convention you will see unfold in Charlotte September 4-6 next week is not one in which you'll be able to count the non-whites in the convention hall.in each delegation on one hand.    At the 2008 DNC convention there were 1079 African-American delegates versus just 38 at the 2008 RNC one.   That was 24% of the delegate in attendance at the 2008 DNC.      

The Republicans have morphed into a monoracial party which has made it their racist mission to denigrate and disrespect the first African-American president, openly stated their goal was to make him a one term president and has executed Massive Resistance 2.0 to prevent him from getting anything done to help this country.   . 

It's a party that has the illusion of inclusion in terms of the speakers it parades on its stage but the only diversity it has is young white men, old white men, middle aged white men, Southern white men.young white women, middle aged white women....You get the picture

The racist crap repeatedly happens in the GOP ranks because since the late 1960's they have been the home of the Dixiecrats and have deliberately pimped white resentment, racist dog whistle code words and hatred of non-white Americans as a key component of their electoral campaign strategies.

That empowered the bigots in the RNC midst to feel their thought processes are validated and respected, no thanks to the race baiting of the Romney-Rayan campaign and the year long GOP primary one that engaged in it.  So now they're shocked, shocked and horrified that on cue the racist dogs heard the whistle and start barking accordingly.

So no Ms Carroll, I think it highly unlikely a racist peanut throwing incident would have happened to you in a DNC convention arena, and by trying to be evenhanded, you unwittingly fueled the false equivalency meme that conservatives will try to exploit to claim that racist incident never happened .    

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?

Tired Of Me Complaining About Trans POC Erasure? Stop Enabling It

If you non-persons of color transpeople get tired of me calling out the erasure of non-white trans voices in media appearances about trans issues every time it happens, then stop enabling it

I know some of y'all were muttering 'there she goes again' when I wrote the Sunday post blasting that vanillacentric Transgender In America panel on the Melissa Harris-Perry show and frankly I don't care.

I'm just as tired of pointing out the obvious to your clueless behinds. If you're going to claim that the trans community is a diverse one, then it needs to be reflected not only in the leadership of it, but its thought leaders and who speaks for it.

And I'm not the only Black transperson who feels this way as much as you peeps who wish to dismiss this commentary or fling the sour grapes accusation would like to think.   Far too often, we have media erasure incidents like what happened on the Melissa Harris-Perry show Sunday in which the trans talking heads are overwhelmingly white.  We all know there are more than a few non-white trans folks who are eminently capable of speaking on behalf of this community but are repeatedly erased, ignored and frozen out of media opportunities to speak for this community.

And if you think I'm going to be silent about it, y'all don't know me very well do you?

Bottom line is I along with POC transpeople are beyond sick and tired of being sick and tired of being erased from another cable media discussion on trans issues once again. 

If you want the support of cis minority communities and more trans people of color to join the trans rights cause, it is imperative that we non-white transpeople and our cis POC community members see the entire trans ethnic rainbow represented.  

As someone said on my Facebook page in the rant I posted that jumpstarted this post:: 

It's the unwritten rule.  Act like you don't see them or hear them and they will go away.  If no one says anything then we are irrelevant.

We are anything but irrelevant to the trans community and aren't going away.  We are makers and molders of trans history and we must be heard, especially in light of the fact we're taking the brunt of the anti-trans violence and discrimination.

You can decry that as 'identity politics' all you want, but you're doing the same damned thing when only white transpeople are deemed 'acceptable' spokespeople to go on the media talking head shows.

This erasure was even more infuriating because Melissa Harris-Perry is a Black woman as well.  It was a painful reminder to the Black trans community of how we got erased when Oprah finally got around to having transpeople on her show and never put one of her own people on her stage to talk about trans issues .

The bottom line of me going off about this Melissa Harris-Perry show erasure is not only am I tired of it,  I don't want to have to see the trans younglings who are transitioning now at ages 10 or less having to fight the same damn battles we're having to fight when they get to adulthood.

It's also about our POC transkids who not only need to see us and have role models they can look up to as they transition.   They need to also see us front and center fighting those civil rights battles with our trans oppressors and talking intelligently about those issues in the media.  

They not only need to see themselves represented, but know beyond a shadow of a doubt we trans elders are doing everything we can with every fiber of our beings to make life easier for those transkids when they get to adulthood.

Yep, this is about our POC transkids and I haven't forgotten how I felt growing up when I wondered if Black people even transitioned.  White transkids have had the benefit of an over half century old trans narrative that has an overwhelming vanillacentric scent. 

They have numerous examples of trans role models to point to and leadership ranks overwhelmingly dominated by transpeople who look like them while the people taking the brunt of the anti-trans violence and discrimination disproportionately look like us.

The trans human rights movement is making the same critical mistake the GL movement has in terms of the erasure and visibility of its non-white members. If you want support from cis minority communities for our cause, you have to show them that there are people in those non-white communities who are trans as well.  Those non white trans people need to be the ones primarily articulating the message that we exist and transpeople deserve human rights.

I'm talking about balance here.  I'm tired of us being stuck with the 'tragic transsexual' and 'unwoman' memes in this community.  Seeing transpeople of color eloquently speaking about our issues, especially on national media shows is an important part of the trans human rights effort and you white transpeople in a position to keep the erasure from happening need to redouble you efforts to stop enabling it.

If you don't, you can guarantee the next time it happens (and sadly I can count on like taxes and another transperson of color being killed somewhere) will probably be writing about another instance of media erasure.   And when it does, I damned sure will be calling it out.