During the Thanksgiving weekend Chucky pulled a fast one Saturday night and did a drive by performance of his minstrel show at The Connection. They waited until the last moment to publicize it, so by the time I was alerted it was going to happen we only had 48 hours to attempt to stop it. That task was next to impossible with most of the peeps who would have been front and center in any organized protest out of town dining on turkey.
However, once they did come home and catch up on their e-mails, they were incensed.
In the wake of the performance Louisville's Fairness Campaign organized a community forum on the issue that will take place at noon Saturday December 2 at the Fairness office. They also issued a statement expressing outrage over the performance.
But we have a long way to go in educating the GLBT community about the racist dimension of this show, much less combatting racism within the GLBT community.
This was a post on a Yahoo list I'm on that's had a very spirited discussion on the SQL issue over the last few days.
Whew! My kind of girl! I for one, am sick and tired of this
perpetuation of this cult of "Offensive" speech and actions. And
it's near relative, the cult of "Victimology". I'm sick of hearing
Black people crying about "Racism" when they are merely trying to
draw attention away from their own character flaws. I'm sick of
"Native Americans", telling me how everything is sacred to them and
that every thing has a "spirit". If I break a rock apart, does each
half have a spirit too? What happens when I pound it into sand? Is
a empty beer bottle, discarded by the road, on an Indian reservation,
an artifact? It is according to NAGPRA, the "Save Our History" law
that congress enacted that prevents legitimate archeology on any
land that the Indians owned. OOps "Native American" Hell some of
ancestors have been here since 1634. Am I not a Native? When do I
get "Native" status too? Oh I wanna be a native of my countryso bad!
As with most Americans, I am unequal parts of many ethnicities.
So I identify with my English, German, Dutch and lastly, the late
comers, the Irish. And yes I heard the stories of extreme poverty
that we went through. The hard times, the No Irish Need Apply
times.
The anti-catholicism. The stories about how the early farmers
valued
Black slaves over the Irish because they were worth money and the
Irish weren't. If an Irishman died on you, you only had to wait for
the next boatload. I heard of Olean Isle, in the St Lawrence. The
Auschwitz of the Irish. Huge numbers of Irish were held there in
isolation and huge numbers died there. I heard of the "coffin
ships"
that were used to transport them here.I could have very easily
assumed a "victim's" attitude. But it was crap and I knew it.
Victims don't do anything. They wait for someone to do thing to or
for them. Hence they never accomplish anything. I couldn't see
being
a victim as a way to anything. So I never went there in my
thinking.
And, I would advise no one else to either.
My response to this person and the tgusarights list:
I'm sick of people who discount the legitimate voicing of an opinion
contrary to their own experience as 'whining'.
Blackface is NOT funny. Blackface was and is part of the system of
Jim Crow oppression of Black people and has been around since the
1830's. A cottage industry of 'Darkie' products arose to support
that image.
For those of you who smoke, have you picked up your pack of
Niggerhair cigarettes today?
How many of you dined at 'The Smiling Coon' restaurants lately?
Did you brush your teeth with Darkie toothpaste? In Asia you could get that brand up until the mid-1980s.
There were Japanese department stores that used mannequins until the early 90's that had those ministrel show cartoon impressions of Black people with bulging eyes and exaggerated lips.
We always hear in this country how important it is to remember your
history. Well folks, slavery is a 400 year chunk of history. We're
sick and tired of white folks, especially in the GLBT community who
want to pretend that the last 200 plus years of American history
didn't happen. Slavery's post-traumatic effects STILL impact this
country today. For those of you who deny it, why aren't we talking
about Senator-elect Harold Ford today? One commercial with a white
woman whispering 'Call me Harold' and he goes from a double digit
lead to losing in the span of a week.
Before you try to give the African-American community a lecture about
responsibility and owning up to your deeds, why don't y'all start
with owning up to the slave trade?
I guess when Jewish people talk about the Holocaust that's whining,
too? Tell that bullshyt to somebody who survived Auschwitz and has a
number tattooed on their arm.
Every time I look at my family tree on my father's side and see my
great-great grandmother's name I have to remember the fact that she
was born a slave in Kentucky. Another one of my ancestors on my
mother's side arrived in 1810 at the Port of New Orleans in chains.
So don't you dare try to equate Shirley Q Liquor with a 'free speech'
issue when she is perpetuating and reinforcing racist stereotypes.
I'm gratified to see that the SQL defenders aren't even trying to use the spin line any more that Chuck is honoring the Black women who raised him. If you believe that I have some Louisiana waterfront property along I-10 between Breaux Bridge and Baton Rouge I'd like to sell you at a premium price.
No amount of spinning is going to cover up the facts that this is a minstrel show, Chuck's trying to make a buck off of it, and it is offensive to many groups including African-Americans and our allies.
The sooner some of you GLBT peeps get that through your thick heads, the better.