Respect This POTUS and FLOTUS Like You've Done The Other 43 White Ones

I was listening to a discussion yesterday morning on Rev. Al Sharpton's radio talk show about the disrespect aimed at the POTUS and FLOTUS, and the various callers chiming in with their thoughts about it.   

Now it's my turn.

Ever since Barack H. Obama won that historic 2008 election and was subsequently inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, it has been a brand new day in this country in terms of for all Americans in terms of flipping on the television to see the image of a confident and competent Black man staring back at them intelligently expounding on the nation's problems.

They have also had to get adjusted to his summa cum laude Princeton educated statuesque wife who grew up on the south side of Chicago and not Chicago's burbs like the wife of William Jefferson Clinton did,.and this couple's two teenage daughters.

But ever since they moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the African American community has seethed as white supremacy reared its vanilla scented head and disrespect for the President and the First Lady has come at them in subtle and not so subtle ways..

We've been pissed as vanilla flavored people on the left and right who hate this president refuse to give him the respect of calling him 'President Obama' in their barely disguised borderline bigoted critiques of him or disrespect the First Lady by calling her Michelle.  

It angers us even more because those same right wingers through the last eight years of a reprehensible mispresidency repeated like a mantra 'you lost, get over it' and 'respect the office'.

What, now that an African American president his wife, mother in law and daughters occupy the house our ancestors built with their unpaid labor y'all wanna trip?

We expected the frothing at the mouth disrespect from the sheet wearing sore loser bigots on the right who peddled in racism during the 2008 campaign.   It wasn't a surprise based on what they did to the last Democratic president and the last Democratic First Lady and their daughter that they would initiate an ongoing campaign to disrespect, delegitimize, and denigrate President Obama.   We expected the Right Wing Lie Machine to be cranked up to maximum volume and some poor and middle class whites to fall for the GOP okey doke like they have for years.  We even expected the spike in death threats aimed at this African descended POTUS from their pathetic fringes and their 'birthers' with their crazy conspiracy theories.

But what has us taken aback is the vitriol the POTUS is getting that is coming from so called liberals and elements of the gay community couched in 'criticism' of him.   Much of it comes from the peeps who are still hatin' because Hillary Clinton, the girl from the Chicago 'burbs lost the 2008 Democratic primary, the lukewarm peeps who jumped on the bandwagon, or the people who peddle the misguided bull feces that both parties are the same and want to see a third party take root in this country.  

Really?  After eight years of a near neo-fascist corporate dictatorship that y'all stayed silent in and yet some of you have the nerve to sulk and claim he hasn't done anything.   This is the most TBLG friendly president ever ensconced in the Oval Office, but all we hear is that he is the 'worst president ever' on gay rights or should be primary challenged next year?  

Buy a vowel and get a fracking clue.   You wanna bitch at somebody, start with the bigoted peeps who worship the elephant.   The Republicans have opposed every policy that he's tried to come up with to fix the mess he inherited from Junior, interrupted his State of the Union speech to call him a liar, and had a long list of Fox Noise pundits, conservative writers and right wing radio hosts disrespect him.  In the same week he was forced to reveal his long form birth certificate to shut up the birthers, he gave the orders as commander in chief for the covert op that took out Osama bin Laden.   

How fracked up is that?   Did you demand the other 43 white presidents prove they were Americans?

Would you be showing the same level of disrespect to a President Hillary Rodham Clinton that you have aimed at this POTUS?      We both know the answer to that question.


But yeah, because we were hopeful and giddy on that November 4, 2008 night and that January 20, 2009 inauguration day, we seriously underestimated the fear of a Black America that still is ensconced deep in your hearts or just how many of you agree with the words a former Supreme Court justice uttered over 150 years ago.   We forgot for a moment just how much fear and disrespect of African Americans has been ingrained into your psyche.

The African American community has had enough of this bull feces from y'all.    We also ain't liking the racist disrespect aimed at the FLOTUS either.   

But let's get real for a moment.  This president from the moment he took the oath of office has faced nullification tactics and massive resistance not seen since the days of the civil rights movement.   He has to deal with people in the GOP who are willing to take the whole country down just so you low information fools will blame President Obama and damage his chances of getting reelected next year.


And you know deep down that none of those all white neo-Confederate candidates on the GOP side are going to support any of the liberal progressive policies that you espouse.

So chill with the disrespect of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.   Respect this POTUS and FLOTUS like you have the other 43 white ones and expected African American and other POC's to do when the occupants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue looked like y'all.

The Advocate Erased Me From My Own Fracking Blog

If this doesn't put an exclamation point on why we're pissed about the erasure from this historic NAACP LG(bt) town hall....

Earlier today the Advocate's Neal Broverman wrote a post about the simmering controversy over African American trans people being dissed along with bi folks by not being included in this historic NAACP panel.    Imagine my surprise to hear I got quoted in the piece and erased at the same time.

"Not sure how the bi portion of our community feels about it, but I can say with certainty that the trans part of the rainbow community is not happy about the erasure of African descended trans people from this historic panel," writes Stephanie Stevens in the TransGriot blog. "NAACP, if your goal is to have a serious discussion of the issues that face African American LGBT people, then you can't erase the people who are taking the brunt of the casualties and discrimination."

This is my comment  

If you're going to quote someone, make sure you get it right.   TransGriot is the award winning blog of Monica Roberts, an IFGE Trinity award winning African American trans activist.

In this post you just encapsulated why we're pissed off not only at the NAACP over the trans-free town hall panel right now, but the GL(bt) movement as a whole in terms of the constant erasure of transpeople of color.   70% of the anti-trans casualties and discrimination is experienced by trans people of color, and many of those people share my ethnic heritage.

You just credited Stephanie Stevens with a quote that I, an African American transwoman wrote on MY own now five year old blog.   Gee thanks for the sterling journalism and erasing me from my own blog, Advocate.

That in a nutshell is why the African American trans community is so pissed about being erased from this NAACP panel discussion tomorrow.   

Then the Advocate, that paragon of GL(bt) journalism stenography comes along and rubs salt in the wound on top of it..


TransGriot Update:  It took them almost 24 hours, but the Advocate finally corrected the story...Guess if I'd been an unquestioning Equal Sign worshiping non-POC ally they would have corrected it in less than an hour.   And folks, this isn't Stephanie's fault, she's innocent in this deal.  It is the reporter in question not taking the time to get his facts correct.     She posts my blog entries to Transgender News to ensure that a trans voice of color is part of that historical archive of stories she's building up.