Syimone, Syimone, Syimone....

TransGriot Note- This was going to be my September 2007 newspaper column. The column wasn't printed due to threats of legal action.

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To Syimone (And Every Black Female Illusionist Who Thinks Like Her)
“I’m not offended by Shirley Q. Liquor because my sexuality is more important to my sense of who I am that my skin color is, and I don’t see the so called Black community out there in the streets protesting for my right to love and fuck and marry who I want.”

That was a quote from Syimone, one of The Connection’s female impersonators. It was originally printed in a June Rolling Stone article about Chuck’s jacked-up minstrel show persona and was recently reprinted in the July 18 issue of the LEO. (the Louisville Eccentric Observer, a local alternative newspaper.)

While we African-Americans aren’t monolithic in thought and she has a constitutional right to her opinion, this comment is just begging for me to expound on it.

News flash for you, Syimone. Race overrides everything in the USA. The color line and the attitudes that accompany it predate the founding of our country by 150 years. So check that birth certificate of yours. It definitely doesn’t have a box to check for gay or straight on it.

There are also African-Americans working for the marriage equality you yearn for. Check out the website of an organization called the National Black Justice Coalition at http://www.nbjcoalition.org/

One of the things I’ve observed and disliked about the African-American illusionist community over the last twenty-five years is some of its members egocentric selfishness combined with Clarence Thomasesque hatred of their ethnic background.

Syimone, since you’re so quick to denigrate the African-American community about what they haven’t done for you, I’d like to ask what you have done FOR the African-American community?

That’s what I thought.

But let’s examine your comment that your sexuality is more important than your ethnic background. Since that’s what you claim (and I think it’s bull feces), where were you when the Fairness laws were under attack in 2004? Didn’t see you at Metro City Hall that night confronting the Reichers. Have you lobbied our legislators in Frankfort or Washington DC for the marriage equality you say is so important to you?

This hatred of your Blackness is not the only issue about you and some of your female illusionist sisters that irritates me and the African-American transpeeps who ARE doing thangs in the community. We get annoyed when we see y’all sit on your silicone-enhanced asses and constantly complain about what peeps aren’t doing for you, but y’all won’t step out of your show world cocoons to be informed or give a damn about issues that matter to the ENTIRE African-American community gay and straight.

So as the old saying goes, if you ain’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Syimone, I vehemently disagree with your misguided statement that your sexuality overrides your ethnicity. You may believe that fairy tale, but in the real world our dealings with white-dominated orgs such as HRC and GLAAD make a mockery of that. If sexuality overrides ethnicity, then why are there over twenty Black pride events scattered all over our country and around the world?

You chose Chuck over your people and you look like a Condoleezza Rice clone in the process. If you said that because you’re angry at the African-American community or were misquoted, then please contact me and I’ll give you the chance in a future TransGriot column to explain yourself.

But Syimone, if this is the prevailing sentiment of you and your female illusionist sisters, then y’all are as clueless as Chuck and it’s past time for all of y’all to check the alarm clock and wake up.

Miz Bones Makes No Bones About Her Schtick

By Betty Baye
Louisville Courier-Journal
August 2, 2007

Just when I thought the insulting of black women couldn't get any worse (think Don Imus, think Eddie Murphy), a recent issue of The Louisville Eccentric Observer brought news of Shirley Q. Liquor. The headlines said, "The Most Dangerous Comedian in America. Why in the world is a gay white man putting on blackface and performing as a boozing welfare mother who drives a Cadillac?"

Why indeed?

Shirley Q. is poor. She drinks malt liquor (hence her last name), has 19 "chirrun" with colorful names and talks "ignunt" about most anything that pops into her head.

Shirley Q. is the black-faced (yes, a minstrel) creation of a white, gay man named Chuck Knipp, who seems to leave no stereotype behind.

David Holthouse's Rolling Stone article, reprinted in LEO, said that Knipp "has emerged from the dive bars and semi-underground gay clubs in the South, and he has rapidly developed a second-tier celebrity cachet." Wealthy whites book Knipp for private parties, prompting him to tell LEO, "I can see that my being there as Shirley makes them feel it's acceptable to openly mock black people in a way they otherwise would not, and that does cause me to have second thoughts. If what I'm doing is truly hurtful, then I need to stop."

But he won't. His minstrel act pays, so Knipp soldiers on as Shirley Q., despite the protestors who dog his appearances.

Knipp has offered various rationalizations for his monstrous Mammy creation. He's compared himself to Dave Chappelle making fun of white people and to Eddie Murphy's Rasputia, the fat, black, over-sexed character in the movie "Norbit."

Knipp also has insisted Shirley Q. is a response to a higher calling. "I think God's plan for me is to get right in the middle of all the tension (between whites and blacks) and just make them laugh."

In response to my e-mail, he offered a different explanation, but he wanted me to know, too, that "most African Americans who have seen my show laugh heartily; they see Shirley Q. Liquor as a representative of the dirty laundry and 'down home ignunce' that embarrasses so many people of color."

He added that most African Americans have taken up Dr. King's challenges to excel "as individuals of excellence and character," but others have chosen "to revel in perpetual victimhood … and rather than deal with their own cultural choices, i.e., hip hop, neckboning and clowning, some in the Black community still find it easier to play the underfunded card to justify the more embarrassing aspects of black culture."

Knipp believes he's performing a public service. But for which part of the public? The Klan?

And to think, many of the same people who have contempt for fat, poor, black women have equal distain for fat, white, gay drag queens.

But everybody needs somebody to look down on, I guess.

Monica Roberts, a member of the Louisville Fairness Campaign's advisory committee, appealed to the owners of a local establishment that caters to gays to reconsider an invitation for Knipp to perform.


Roberts, an African American, described Knipp's act as a minstrel show using "blackface images" that, even in the 21st Century, "carry much pain, anger and historical baggage." Not only that: Inviting Knipp to perform in our city gives cause, according to Roberts, "for African-American GLBT people in Louisville to seriously question our place in this community if our concerns, as your supposed allies, are going to be cavalierly brushed aside."

Carla Wallace, also of the Fairness Campaign, often has made the point that there are "interconnections between racism, sexism and homophobia."

What these sustained hateful assaults on poor, black women in music, film, "comedy acts," and sometimes even on the floor of Congress, suggest is that the women's lib movement has left many poor, black women behind. Otherwise we should hear a greater outcry.

It seems that Knipp's southern upbringing has trumped any extra compassion or sensitivity one might have expected, or at least hoped for, from someone who surely knows how badly stereotypes can wound, or even provoke some people to violence. But what goes around comes around, and maybe one day the joke will be on Knipp.


Betty Winston Baye is a Courier-Journal editorial writer and columnist. Her column appears Thursdays. Her email address is bbaye@courier-journal.com

June 2007 TransGriot Column

Chuck Knipp + SQL + Minstrel Show = Racism
Copyright 2007, THE LETTER

Just in time for pride I’m calling out all you GLBT racism enablers.

Racism enabler? Moi? Yes, you!

You peeps who silently sit through racist rants that would make the local KKK Grand Wizard proud. It also includes you peeps who paid good American money to see and support a racist minstrel show like some of y’all did on May 5 during Derby.

A minstrel show mind you that perpetuates stereotypes dating back to the 1830’s and has as much humor in it as Don Imus’ April 4 ‘nappy headed garden tool’ comments that got him canned from his multimillion dollar radio gig.

Stop rolling your eyes and muttering under your breath ‘there she goes again.’ I’m just as sick and tired of ‘splaining to y’all why Chuck’s minstrel show is offensive to the African-American SGL community. For the record, it’s disrespectful on multiple levels to single mothers, economically disadvantaged peeps, women and African-Americans.

Spare me your latest ‘It’s free speech’ SQL defense line. With free speech comes responsibility and consequences as well. Free speech cuts both ways. Just as Chuck has the right to say things and insult my people in his ‘act’ I have a reciprocal right to protest and call him out for performing a 'show’ with stereotypes rooted in slavery.

And no, Chuck doesn’t get a ‘dodge criticism’ free pass because he’s gay. Isaiah Washington and Tim Hardaway didn’t (and still don’t) get them from the gay community for their one-time comments, so a serial offender like Chuck doesn’t get one either.

Let me also put an end to Chuck’s disingenuously fallacious statement that by performing SQL he’s fostering a discussion on race relations by getting us to laugh at them.

Bull feces.

Chuck is exacerbating racial tensions, not healing them. Using a blackface image with 400 years of negativity associated with it doesn’t exactly lend itself in African-American eyes as a starting point for a civil discourse on race relations. In 2002 we African-Americans had a major problem with those blackface images in Spike Lee’s ‘Bamboozled’ movie. You know we’re gonna be highly perturbed with someone standing on stage in blackface who is not only gay and should know better, but comes from the same ethnic group and gender that enslaved our great-great grandparents.

That little ‘12 Days of Kwanzaa’ ditty Chuck composed that’s posted on every white supremacist website on the Net also puts an abrupt end to that ‘I’m a racial healer' fallacy as well.

Finally, let’s get one thing straight (pardon the pun). The white community gay or straight doesn’t get to determine what we African-Americans should or shouldn't be offended by. The African-American community collectively does and it’s the height of arrogance for you to think that you do. Trotting out RuPaul, the mysterious African-American ‘friend’ who’s allegedly an SQL fan (yeah, right) or anyone else for Chuck to hide behind ain’t gonna work either. RuPaul has less credibility in the African-American SGL community nowadays than Condoleezza Rice.

It should be obvious after 5 years of protests, show cancellations, denunciations from African-American activists, African-American GLBT columnists and bloggers, GLBT organizations, our gay and straight allies and other concerned citizens of various ethnic backgrounds where we stand on the SQL issue. The more intransigent you get about SQL, the more you risk losing the African-American GLBT community as an ally
in the GLBT rights struggle.

Yes peeps, it’s that serious.

This was always more than just us complaining about a lousy minstrel show. This is being viewed by some in the African-American GLBT community as a litmus test to see just how serious the white GLBT community is about dealing with issues that we deem important.

And right now you’re in danger of failing that test.

January 2007 TransGriot Column

Cleaning Up Our Own House
Copyright 2007, THE LETTER


Happy New Year TransGriot readers!

This month marks the third anniversary of my column, the third year of the founding of Transsistahs-Transbrothas and the second anniversary of my TransGriot blog.
Thanks to all of you who have expressed to me during the year how much you enjoy reading TransGriot. That makes my editor Dave and I very happy.

Something that didn’t make me happy was the drive-by show that Chuck Knipp performed at The Connection during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The reports that I’ve received about it from several people that attended were that they didn’t find it funny and they observed people leaving during the performance.

While that is gratifying to hear, the differing race-based reactions to the SQL minstrel show controversy have exposed the need to have a conversation about racism in the GLBT community.

We are a microcosm of society at large. Since racism is prevalent in the parent society, then our subset of it is also contaminated and it is naïve and foolish to think that we aren’t. When we started planning the first Transsistahs-Transbrothas Conference back in 2005, we had a critic of it post a comment on a predominately white transgender Internet list in response to my letter explaining why we were having TSTBC that said ‘It’ll make it easier for them to service their tricks.”

The March 2002 NGLTF report entitled ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud’ highlights the problem. From April to September 2000 a survey was done at nine Black Pride events in an attempt to learn more about the African-American GLBT community. Guess what one of the issues was for the 2,500 respondents that cropped up?

When asked the question if the racism of GLBT whites was a problem for GLBT blacks within the community, 48% of the respondents agreed with the statement. The numbers were even higher among my fellow transgender survey respondents at 57%.

When asked about their interactions within white GLBT orgs, 39% reported negative experiences within those organizations, 29% reported positive ones and 39% of respondents reported both negative and positive experiences in White GLBT orgs.

When asked about their experiences in white GLBT clubs, 36% reported negative interactions in white GLBT clubs, 30% reported positive ones and 31% reported negative and positive experiences in those clubs.

I can cosign on that last one. I’ve been called the n-word by a white gay patron of one club back in my hometown and denied entrance at another one with the excuse that it wasn’t a transgender bar. However, I observed from the entrance door white t-girls not only inside the club but partying with the predominately white gay male crowd. I’ve had people in the pageant world report that even with equal status level in terms of titles, et cetera, they receive far less appearance money from promoters for performing in shows than their white counterparts.

Accumulations of those negative experiences over time and the frustration of dealing with white GLBT community indifference in tackling the problem head on eventually leads us to say ‘enough’. If you wondered why Black GLBT people have separate pride events, pageant circuits, and conventions such as TSTBC, racism in the community is a major component of why those organizations exist.

As GLBT peeps we are fighting for recognition of our constitutional rights. We need all sectors of our community engaged in this process. It is to our advantage to find a way to work together building a diverse, multicultural community that respects all of its members and face the reality that 40 years of post Civil Rights Movement education and policies did not magically erase 400 years of negative racial attitudes.

There needs to be a long-term commitment from all leaders in the GLBT community to aggressively tackle this nettlesome problem. However, it can’t be just people of color doing the grunt work on this issue. I’m glad to hear that Fairness will spend time in 2007 focusing on anti-racism work.

It couldn’t come at a better time.

Shirley Q Liquor: Round 3

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.

June 2006 TransGriot Column

Shirley Q. Liquor: It’s STILL a Minstrel Show.
Copyright 2006, THE LETTER


Out of all the TransGriot columns that I’ve written
over the last two years, the one that plucks the most
nerves and has generated the most criticism (and still
does) is the May 2005 one I wrote blasting Shirley Q.
Liquor.

Exhibit A: A comment on my TransGriot blog from
Marshall (who when I clicked on his profile was too
cowardly to leave contact info in it):

You really need to get a life! If you don't like it,
don't listen to it! Ever watched In Living Color? A
show produced by black folk who did it all the time
themselves. The reason racism is still around is
because people like you and the protestors in NY wont
let it! You are full of it!

My response:

Gee Marshall (if that's your real name) did I strike a
nerve?

Sounds like you're another one of Shirley Q's fans who
get their panties in a bunch every time ANYONE calls
him out for his 21st Century minstrel show which is
demeaning and racist to African-American women.

Racism is STILL around because your ancestors
encouraged and practiced it for 400 years.

And by the way, I still have the first four seasons of
In Living Color on VHS. Shirley Q ain't even in the
same league with the Wayans family, much less Jim
Carrey.

I’m bringing Shirley Q's racist act up again because
of what recently transpired on the Eastern Kentucky
University campus.

Someone in the EKU Pride Alliance decided that it
would be a wonderful idea to bring Shirley Q. Liquor
to Richmond for an April 29 on campus performance.
I’ve already documented in the May 2005 column what
African-American GLBT peeps think about Chuck Knipp’s
brand of comedy. To us it’s about as funny as a heart
attack.

After a firestorm of protests the event was canceled.
It didn’t help that Shirley’s visit was going to occur
just as the firestorm over Jason Johnson’s expulsion
from the homophobic University of the Cumberlands was
happening. It was a public relations disaster in the
making.

We already have major problem with homophobic Black
preachers. Once they had gotten wind of this
performance it would have poured gasoline on a fire
that GLBT African-Americans are already struggling to
try to put out in terms of gay-bashing from our
pulpits.

By the way Shirley Q. defenders, please spare me the
latest defense spin about her performance is just
honoring the Black women who raised her. I just ate.

I don’t know ANY African-American women who wear
blackface, an Afro, wear multihued eye shadow in the
colors of the African-American flag (red, black and
green) brag about being a ‘welfare mother with 19
chirren’ or name their children after venereal
diseases.

It ain’t performance art, it’s a minstrel show for the
new millennium. Trotting out RuPaul or any other
African-American to defend her ain’t gonna change
that.

And if y’all are trying to defend Chuck on the ‘he’s
not racist’ tip, then check out the ’12 Days of
Kwanzaa’ ditty that got played on several Deep South
radio stations. It’s a favorite tune of white
supremacists everywhere.

The point I’m trying to make once again is that
blackface images still carry a lot of pain for
African-Americans, even in the early 21st Century.
Spike Lee tried to satirically use them in his 2002
movie 'Banboozled’ to lampoon the way Hollywood
disrespects the images of Black people and he was
savagely criticized for it. The loudest protests came
from fellow African-Americans.

So if Spike Lee can’t get away with using minstrel
show images, what makes a white gay male named Chuck
Knipp think that he can?

EKU Pride Alliance Offends African-American community - Perspective

Less than 24 hours after I posted the Shirley Q. Liquor article to the TransGriot blog, I received word from friends matriculating on the University of Louisville campus that Shirley Q. Liquor was poised to bring her noxious act to the Eastern Kentucky University campus in Richmond, KY.

A team of activists and other concerned parties immediately mobilized to stop the show and at the same time educate people on why we in the African-American community were so upset about it.

We got the word last night that the performance slated for April 29 was cancelled.

EKU Pride Alliance offends African-American community - Perspective


There have been new developments since we got the word of the cancellation of the Shirley Q. Liquor show at EKU. The Director for Multicutural Student Affairs Zenetta McDaniel Coleman wrote a response to my orginal letter that was published in the May 4 issue of EKU Eastern Progress. She's African-American and seems to have the opinion based on her letter that Shirley Q. is performance art.

Shirley Q. Liquor show strictly performance

As Director of Multicultural Student Affairs, I am compelled to write this letter in defense of Pride Alliance and the Shirley Q. Liquor controversy. This is especially important having just concluded a campus observation of First Amendment Week, which included information about freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

The letter that was published in last week's issue of The Progress by Monica Roberts, who is not even a member of Eastern's campus community, had some misinformation. Pride Alliance did take into consideration the reaction of the African-American community in late February when it was considering bringing Shirley Q. Liquor to campus.

On two separate occasions, this topic was discussed with leaders of black student organizations at a biweekly meeting we have called the Meeting of the Minds. There was some discomfort expressed by a few of the members, but the majority of the membership felt it was OK to have Pride Alliance bring her to campus. This topic also was discussed with various students who frequent my office with very little dissent.

It would have been impossible to have polled every single student. One student went as far as to commend Pride Alliance for even approaching the black leaders since many student organizations could care less what other non-members think about their programming and/or events.

What we all need to keep in mind is that this is an institution of higher learning. Your purpose as students is to gain knowledge, have new experiences and hopefully develop a greater level of objectivity. I just wish that those who protested would have taken the time to see the performance and then decide collectively how to respond.

This is about culture, and drag is strictly performance. What if a student organization wanted to invite the Wayans brothers to campus? In the movie "White Chicks," the brothers portrayed black men who dressed up as white women. Still, I did not read much about any type of disturbance at the movie theaters because most of us were inside enjoying the show.

As it turns out, Pride Alliance canceled the show, a gesture the group clearly did not have to do. I want to say thank you to the members of Pride Alliance for respecting the feelings of others on campus. Most don't know that by canceling the show they lost a HUGE amount of money as Shirley Q. Liquor was already under contract and had been paid.

Lastly, some students who might be unaware of university protocol are under the impression that I "approved" Shirley Q. Liquor's performance. It is not my place to approve or disapprove anything student organizations want to do. It is my role to advise those organizations to which I serve as faculty adviser and to support every student on this campus.

That is what I am here to do and that is what I will continue to do.

Zenetta McDaniel Coleman
Director of Multicultural
Student Affairs

My Response to Ms. Coleman

To Ms. Coleman, The EKU Pride Alliance and the EKU community,

I had to respond to Ms. Zenetta McDaniel Coleman’s May 4 letter in the Eastern Progress.

While I may not be matriculating on your lovely campus, I am a resident of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the taxes I pay help support this institution. I visited the EKU campus for a recent fencing tournament a month ago.

Thanks for enlightening me to the fact that the EKU Pride Alliance consulted with African-American student leaders. You are correct in stating that the Pride Committee did a commendable job in consulting with non-members about bringing Shirley Q. Liquor to the EKU campus. That leads me to wonder whether they knew on some level that Shirley Q. Liquor’s appearance on campus would cause a problem and wanted cover so that they could say if things blew up “Well, we talked to African-American leaders and they said that it was okay.”

The Pride Alliance had to know that Shirley Q. Liquor’s appearance at EKU would cause drama. Performances in New York, Boston and Washington DC had been picketed and canceled. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has criticized the show. National gay newspapers have written articles on the controversy since 2002. Keith Boykin’s blog has an archived article about it. I wrote a May 2005 column in THE LETTER that talked about this issue and that article is on my TransGriot blog.

If the Pride Alliance wanted to bring a drag act to campus, I’m sure that the folks at The Bar Complex in Lexington or The Connection in Louisville would have been able to recommend someone either locally or nationally whose performance would have been more respectful to our culture.

And now, here’s a synopsis of the Shirley Q. Liquor show:

Chuck Knipp’s act caricatures an impoverished Black woman and draws from a number of stereotypes about African Americans. Shirley Q. speaks Ebonically, spends her days waiting for government checks to arrive in the mail, and has 19 children (some named after venereal diseases). The fathers of these children are unknown to her.

Is this the show you wished that people on the EKU campus could see, Ms Coleman?

Maybe you didn’t hear Chuck’s rousing song ’12 Days of Kwanzaa’. It’s a favorite Christmas ditty of white supremacists and was broadcast on several Southern radio stations last year.

I’m glad you brought up the Wayans Brothers and their ‘White Chicks ‘ movie. The difference between the Wayans brothers and Chuck Knipp is that the Wayans Brothers aren’t intentionally disrespecting white people with their one-time performance. They aren’t selling merchandise based on those characters in a section of their website entitled ‘Gifts of Ignunce’ or doing a performance tour based on those characters called the ‘Tour of Ignunce’.

I noticed you didn’t dispute my point that blackface images still carry much pain and historical baggage for many African-Americans even in the early 21st Century. The history of these images is linked with white supremacy. ‘Darkie’ products, theatrical pieces such as ‘Birth of A Nation’ and jokes arose to support those images that were used from the 1830’s through the early 20th century to demean, ridicule and lampoon African-Americans.

Sounds eerily familiar to Shirley Q. Liquor’s act.

The timing was also horrendous. Kentucky is in an uproar over a gay student being expelled from the University of the Cumberlands. Money is being cut from several Kentucky college budgets (including EKU’s) to fund a pharmacy school on a discriminatory campus. In the middle of all this turmoil a white gay man appears to perform on a state funded college campus doing an act that lampoons African-Americans.

Can you say PR disaster?

In the Spike Lee movie ‘Bamboozled’, blackface and minstrel images were used to satirize the way Hollywood misuses Black images and he was harshly criticized for it. So if Spike Lee couldn’t get away with using these images, what makes Chuck Knipp think that he can? .

I sincerely thank the EKU Pride Alliance for respecting the feelings of my community and making that painful decision to cancel the Shirley Q. Liquor performance.

I do have one final question, though. Is it too late for the Pride Alliance to put a stop payment on the check they sent to Chuck Knipp?

Monica Roberts
Transsistahs-Transbrothas Founder
Louisville, KY

Shirley Q. Liquor Is STILL A Minstrel Show

Out of all the columns that I’ve written over the last two years, the one that plucks the most nerves and generated the most criticism (and still does) is the May 2005 one I wrote blasting Shirley Q. Liquor’s 21st century minstrel show.

Exhibit A: A comment on my blog from Marshall (who when I clicked on his profile was too cowardly to leave contact info in it):

You really need to get a life! If you don't like it, don't listen to it! Ever watched In Living Color? A show produced by black folk who did it all the time themselves. The reason racism is still around is because people like you and the protestors in NY wont let it! You are full of it!

My response:

Gee Marshall (if that's your real name) did I strike a nerve?

Sounds like you're another one of Shirley Q's fans who get their panties in a bunch every time ANYONE calls him out for his 21st Century minstrel show which is demeaning and racist to African-American women.

Racism is STILL around because your ancestors encouraged and practiced it for 400 years.

And by the way, I still have the first four seasons of In Living Color on VHS. Shirley Q ain't even in the same league with the Wayans family, much less Jim Carrey.

Shirley’s fan base rose to defend the indefensible. They first tried to call it a comedy act. (Yeah, right) Then the defense line became, "It's satire and you don’t get it." Yeah, the '12 Days of Kwanzaa' was sooo funny white supremacists everywhere have turned it into their favorite Christmas song.

What you Shirley Q. fans don’t get is that minstrel shows and those images still carry a lot of pain for African-Americans and trotting RuPaul out to defend her doesn’t change that one bit.

But the latest defense line is the one I want to talk about in detail. The new spin is that Shirley Q. Liquor is honoring black women by doing her schticKKK. If that were the case, then why schedule a 2002 New York performance on Martin Luther King Day if Mr. Knipp is soooo sensitive to African-American culture and wants to honor the women who raised him?

There will be a short break while I roll my eyes and double over in laughter.

Okay, I’m back. We now return you to your regularly scheduled column

Honoring the black women who raised him? You got to be kidding. I don’t know any African-American women or transwomen who wear blackface, multi-rainbowed eye shadow, an Afro and brag about being a ‘welfare mother with 19 chirren’.

Wanna talk about drag portrayals that honor Black women? Let’s start with the late Flip Wilson’s Geraldine Jones. Even the ones that I have a mild dislike for such as Miguel A. Nunez’s Juwanna Mann,Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma and Shenehneh from his ‘Martin’ show have their base in our culture and aren’t done in a demeaning way.

You may also want to hop down to your local video store and pick up copies of any Tyler Perry play or the movies ‘Diary of a Mad Black Woman’ and ‘Madea’s Family Reunion’. Tyler Perry’s Mabel ‘Madea’ Simmons IS rooted in our culture and is also played in a way that honors Black women. She represents the family matriarch that takes no prisoners, zealously defends her family members when the world does them wrong and dispenses wisdom and sound advice to all that need it. She also ain’t afraid to administer the rod to unruly disrespectful children either.

But the gold standard for drag performances that honor Black women takes place at any pageant or various GLBT clubs. Legendary divas such as Tommie Ross, Stasha Sanchez and Domanique Shappelle exude beauty, class and dignity and there are other up and coming illusionists who strive to meet those standards that these ladies have set.

Those are cornerstones to living life as an African-American woman. It shows a nekulturny lack of understanding and disrespect for African-American culture and the struggles that we’ve had to survive in this country when you are trying to equate Shirley Q. Liquor with that.

Shirley Q. Liquor-Minstrel Show For the New Millenium

From a TransGriot Column I wrote in May 2005
Copyright 2005, THE LETTER
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Let me create a little scenario for you. What if an African-American GLBT person covered himself in white makeup, a la the Wayans Brothers recent White Chicks movie? Let’s say that this person toured GLBT nightclubs across the country as a character called Buford T. Moonshine and used every negative stereotype of Kentuckians or Caucasian people. Finally that person created a promotional website that posted those insulting stereotypes online and sold merchandise emblazoned with those images. How would you feel about that?

Well, you just got a chance to walk in the African-American GLBT/SGL community’s pumps. Many of us are angry with Charles Knipp, the white gay man who portrays Shirley Q. Liquor, a ‘black woman who’s a welfare recipient with 19 chirren’. I’m about to explain why.

Knipp’s show has been criticized and protested by a wide array of groups within the gay community since 2002, including NGLTF, The Audre Lord Project and the New York Black Gay Network. The latter two groups spearheaded a recent protest that canceled a Martin Luther King Day performance scheduled for a New York City nightclub.
In 2002 The National Association of Black and White Men Together said, "We find the Shirley Q. Liquor performance objectionable on three fronts. First, this performance resurrects distorted racist caricatures common to the blackface performances that became popular in 19th-century American vaudeville. Second, the Shirley Q. Liquor character is constructed on a negative and degrading image of women. Third, the character is based on the classist stereotype that people who need public assistance are fundamentally lazy. On all three counts, this act offends current sensibilities of what is appropriate."

It’s interesting (but not surprising) to note HRC’s silence on this issue. NGLTF contacted CafeShops.com and asked them to remove the Shirley Q Liquor merchandise from their website, but it’s still there. They did get rid of the offensive caption that stated ‘Welcome to my boutique of ignunce. Please do not shoplift while you is up in here!"

RuPaul has resolutely defended him since 2002. At a recent Southern Decadence he stated, "Critics who think that Shirley Q. Liquor is offensive are idiots. Listen, I’ve been discriminated against by everybody in the world: gay people, black people, whatever. I know discrimination, I know racism, I know it very intimately. She’s not racist, and if she were, she wouldn’t be on my new CD." RuPaul’s been complaining about the lack of GLBT support for it, but I don’t think he’s considered the fact that it may be the controversial company he’s keeping these days.

This goes much deeper than simply protesting a drag show. Blackface has been used to demean, lampoon, and ridicule the images of African-Americans since the 1830’s in order to reinforce white supremacy. A cottage industry of ‘darkie’ products from household goods, jokes and theatrical pieces such as ‘Birth of A Nation’ arose to support that image. Those images still carry a lot of pain for African-American people.

Shirley Q Liquor makes it harder for the GLBT civil rights movement to gain traction in the Black community. Some African-Americans are already upset about the comparisons to the 1960’s Civil Rights movement and some of that backlash fed into the gay marriage debate. Their impression is that the ‘rich white males of the GLBT movement’ have no understanding, sensitivity or concern for the historical and current obstacles faced by African-Americans.

I know that’s not true, but it’s difficult to argue to the contrary when Shirley Q Liquor’s on stage and Knipp’s GLBT southern white male fan base is hysterically laughing at his antics.