We gays could learn a lot from Asian-Americans

From CNN:

Asian-American leaders are calling on a weekly newspaper to apologize and cut ties with a writer who penned a column titled "Why I Hate Blacks."

In the piece, which appeared in the February 23 edition of San Francisco-based AsianWeek, contributor Kenneth Eng lists reasons why he supports discrimination against blacks, writing, among other things, "I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years."

An official at the nationally circulated paper apologized and called the column's publication a mistake.

Leaders at the Asian American Justice Center, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Coalition for Asian Pacific Americans and other groups are circulating a petition denouncing the piece as "irresponsible journalism, blatantly racist, replete with stereotypes, and deeply hurtful to African Americans."

The petition calls on AsianWeek to cut ties with Eng, issue an apology, print an editorial refuting the column, and fire or demote the editors who published it.

Notice how the response from Asian community leaders to an Asian person in an Asian publication insluting Blacks was swift, unified, and unrelenting.

Compare that with the reaction from gay community leaders to a gay man performing a character in gay night clubs that's pretty hard-core racist against Black people. The NGLTF released a statement about Shirley Q. Liquor a couple of years ago. GLAAD jumps in several years too late. Yup. And after that a mainstream queer publication questions whether our advocacy groups should have gotten involved at all. (Jasmyne Cannick answers the line-by-line).

It's frustrating to me that GLAAD could not have seen on its own that Chuck Knipp's act helps fuel stereotypes that Black gays and lesbians have to experience every day and that it doesn't reflect very well on the rest of the GLBT community. More importantly, they should have realized their unique position to help bring about an end to this act.

Imagine being in Kenneth Eng's position. Since he works for an Asian-American cultural magazine, I'm going to guess that he has a love for his community. When he was told by a united front of Asian-American advocacy groups that what he did was wrong, I'm sure that he was more affected than he would have been by any other community group.

I would think that a person like Knipp would be more likely to change his ways if the GLBT community took such a stand on his act. It's one thing to have a group of people for whom he has little respect say that he should change; it would be quite another for a coalition of LGBT organizations to tell him to stop the act. Since he identifies with the latter, I could only imagine the pain of being ostracized from one's own people in that way.

Imagine receiving letters from the HRC, GLAAD, the NGLTF, the NCLR, the NBJC, and GLAD all in the same week telling you personally that something you were doing was deeply offensive and hurtful. I know I'd have to have a lot of chutzpah and a pretty good reason in order to stay the course, and whether I did or not, I would still feel the pain of ostracism from the community that I love deeply.

And it's that power and that sense of duty that the Asian community demonstrated in reacting to Eng's column. What makes that so difficult that we can't understand it?

This Week in Pink - January 26, 2007 to NOW

Here are some great posts by LGBT bloggers from this past week:

• Pam Spaulding covers the current presidential candidates' positions on Don't Ask/Don't Tell. Interesting read, as 55% of Americans don't like it, and it's hurting America, why do we still have it?
  
• Joe at Joe.My.God solves the mystey of Donnie Davies. Spoiler: It was a hoax.
  
• Don Sherfick found out that Colts coach Tony Dungy is fundraising for a heterosexist group, the Indiana Family Institute. All I can say is: Go Superbowl!
  
• Oh, you just have to see this post about the Connecticut marriage bill from the kids at Good As You.
  
• Jasmyne Cannick blogs about her time working at GLAAD.

This Week in Pink: An Ode to my Sugar Daddy

This week's queer musical interlude: Final Fantasy's cover of Joanna Newsom's "Peach, Plum, Pear".


And what we have to remember this week by in queer blog posts:

• The kids down at Good As You obsess over Donny Davies, internet star extraordinaire.
  
• Bil Browning's out to take down some gay-ish Indiana lawmakers. The question remains: will he catch my heroin-addicted, orgy-lovin' sugar daddy on the IN House judicial commit... oops! I said too much!
  
• Pam Spaulding raises some interesting questions about the legitimacy of Hillary's stand on GLBT rights. She'll answer your questions, Pam, once she's finished her national polling on them, analyzed the results according to respondent's current likelihood of voting for her in the primary, and then triangulated her position with likely Republican cross-overs and found the right framing for swing voters. Gosh! Give her a minute!
  
• Jasmyne Cannick defends Isaiah Washington and tells gay community to look in the mirror when it comes to discrimination.
  
• Jim at Box Turtle Bulletin points out that Americans are exporting homophobia to Europe. And I still can't find a bottle of Ranch dressing in Paris!
  

Knock it off, Chuck Knipp

I found this video on YouTube after a Jasmyne Cannick post prompted me to search there. (I was going to embed but the freeze-frame happens on an ugly scene, I really don't want that up here, so you're going to have to follow the link).

If you haven't seen this Shirley Q. Liquor act, it's done by Chuck Knipp, a white gay man who dresses up as a straight Black woman (in blackface). This character is an "ignunt" "happy-go-lucky mother of 19 children" who, according to Knipp, "is not afraid to embrace every cultural stereotype and subvert them for her own purpose". Knipp portrays her as an irresponsible, incoherent alcoholic, and if you look through the rest of the YouTube library of Shirley Q. Liquor, there's a whole lot of grossness involved. Read a good article about the performance by Keith Boykin.

I seriously hope Knipp isn't ignunt enough himself to think that he's doing any sort of favor to the Black or the gay communities. As a gay man he should understand thing or two about context. When such a performance is done (in fact, when any performance is done), every joke, every line, every word is itself a symbol designed to bring certain images to the audience's mind. This applies to simple words like "banana" making people think of the fruit (or a penis, I guess) to the symbol of blackface making people think of those old Vaudeville acts that used it to demean Black people. It applies to Eddie Murphy's homophobic "comedy" in order to justify every negative stereotype of gay people out there to Knipp telling jokes that sound like pages out of the Republican's old Southern Strategy.

Moral of the story is that Knipp is bringing more baggage into his act than he chooses to acknowledge. While it's theoretically possible that it could be funny to speak poorly, wear bad make-up, or make tired jokes about waking up late, when done by a white man performing in blackface, its subtext is white supremacy. Keith Boykin says:

If the results are to be believed, just 4 percent think the site needs "less offensive" humor. That may tell you a lot about Knipp's audience.

And this isn't helping out the pervasive stereotype that gay people are rich, white, elitist racists, either, which is probably why the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is against the performance as well. It's not to hard to see the effect of something like this on the ability of voters, judges, and Congress members to buy into silly arguments about how gays are too rich to need equality, too snooty to condescend to give back.

Take a minute to sign the petition against Knipp's performance.