One of the memes that has irritated many Black people gay, transgender and straight since the Prop 8 debacle has been the ‘Black people are more homophobic’ one.

You’re kidding, right?

Every time I’m watching TV I see predominately white ministers such as James Dobson, other white fundamentalists, white dominated anti equality orgs and peeps like Tony Perkins leading the anti gay charge. Fred Phelps checks the ‘white’ box on his census forms, and the megachurches bankrolling these rights rollback or anti same gender marriage amendments have membership rolls of predominately European ancestry.

I’m not saying we don’t have ‘phobes in our midst. The peeps who are selling out to the white fundies like the Hi Impact leadership Coalition come immediately to mind along with the homophobic pronouncements of people like Rev. Gregory Daniels, Donnie McClurkin, and Rev. Bernice King.

But it was the Mormon church who provided the cash to fund and provided the foot soldiers for the Yes On 8 Forces of Intolerance. Last time I checked, the Mormon church ain’t exactly chock full of members who look like me.

I find it laughable the Blacks are ‘more homophobic’ charge when the number one blog for almost a year in the Afrosphere’s BBR’s (Black Blog Rankings) has been the GLBT oriented Pam’s House Blend. I and my transsisters have received much love, support, hands of friendship and sisterhood from womanists, but the predominately white dominated rad fem ranks have shown me and my transsisters nothing but hostile vitriolic hatred for three decades.

Even our civil rights icons such as Rep. John Lewis, Julian Bond and the late Coretta Scott King have consistently stated that GLBT rights are not only civil tights but human rights.

And if Black people are so homophobic as was scurrilously charged in California based on a flawed exit poll in Los Angeles County, explain why Prop 8 was defeated in Alameda County, which has a 13% Black population?

The major problem I have with the ‘Black people are more homophobic’ meme is that the peeps that keep spouting it are not only overwhelmingly white gays such as Dan Savage and others, but it deliberately ignores the fact there are Black SGL people as well.

If you want to eventually win the fight for same gender marriage, you can’t continue to write off large chunks of the electorate because you have this false belief that our community is ‘more homophobic’, won’t be receptive to your message and won’t even try to be in my community to win it. You have to find a message that resonates with us just like you do any other community, and you’ll need the help of the Black SGL/transgender community and our allies to do that. Failure to engage my community means failure to win at the ballot box.

So just as the white community has not only ‘phobes but supporters and allies, so do we. It’s past time you stop demonizing us with this disrespectful discredited meme and start humbly asking what can you do to win our support.

I found it interesting last year that a young Indian transwoman has gone somewhere that transpeople in the States haven’t. But what else is new for us here?

Last year Karpaga made history in India as she became the first transwoman to be cast in a lead role in a commercial film. She was cast as the lead in a Tamil language film called Paal, which means gender in the Tamil language.

While Indian transpeople are justifiably proud of this cultural step up since they have been dissed for far too long in movies like their American cousins, at least they actually have transwomen playing transwomen in their films.

And based on the plot synopsis for this one, Paal looks pretty interesting. She’s playing an intellectual filmmaker who falls in love and faces the ‘do I tell’ dilemma.

What we’ve gotten here in the States, be it the silver screen or television is cisgender actresses scooping up those role. The recent announcement that Nicole Kidman is set to play pioneer transwoman Lili Elbe in the indie film The Danish Girl only heightens our annoyance about this.

It’s not like we don’t have transgender actresses in Hollywood. Candis Cayne, Calpernia Addams, Aleshia Brevard, Jazzmun and Alexandra Billings are some of the ones that come to mind. Candis recently had her groundbreaking role in the now cancelled Dirty Sexy Money that ended predictably in her death, but that’s another post.

It would be nice if Hollywood would actually put a transwoman in a transgender role, but they still can’t get it right with cisgender women of color either.

What’s going to have to happen is that transwomen are going to have to write, produce and direct their own stories, and one of those indie films is going to have to make enough money and garner enough awards to get the peeps in Hollywood’s attention.

As for Paal, here’s hoping it’s an artistic and commercial success in India and beyond, and it leads to a nice career for Karpaga and other Indian transwomen who follow in her pumps.

Japan is a giant in terms of its economic, technological, industrial, and medical prowess, but when it comes to treating transgender people lagged behind the rest of the world. The first sex reassignment surgery in Japan (for an F to M) didn’t take place until 1998 and was followed up by the first M to F surgery a year later.

If you’re an anime fan there are numerous titles that have transgender characters such as my fave series You’re Under Arrest which features transgender Tokyo police officer Aoi Futaba. But unfortunately real life transgender people in Japan have been reluctantly hiding in the shadows in a culture that prizes conformity.

Things are changing in Japan as it make moves to grant more personal freedom to its citizens, and the Japanese transgender community is a beneficiary of this openness.

It’s estimated that there are 7,000 to 10,000 transgender people in Japan, and while it seems that the ascension of Japanese transpeople has been meteoric, much of what has happened was the result of years of behind the scenes work.

In 2003 Aya Kamikawa became the first (and so far only) transgender person elected to public office in Japan when she won a place on the local assembly for Setagaya, one of Tokyo’s biggest local government areas. She has played a key role in lobbying for changes at both the national and local levels, including the 2004 gender change law. Kamikawa has also successfully lobbied to eliminate unnecessary mentions of gender in public documents and was reelected in 2008 to serve a second four year term.

Following on the heels of Kamikawa’s historic political victory were groundbreaking legal reforms in 2004 that allowed some transsexuals to change their officially registered sex. Unfortunately the law only allows unmarried, childless applicants to change their official gender. In addition, applicants also must have had SRS and been diagnosed by two doctors as having gender identity disorder.

That has resulted in only 151 people officially changing their gender codes between July 2004, when the law took effect, and the end of March 2005, according to Japan’s Justice Ministry.

Despite the victories, there’s still some stigma attached to being transgender in Japan, although that is slowly being overcome. “As long as we keep silent, nothing is going to change,” said Kamikawa. “We need the courage to make a society which respects diversity.”

I love series finales–even the not-so-good ones, even the ones tied to shows in dire need of being put out of their misery, even ones for shows I never really watched in the first place. Series finales evoke this nostalgic, high school graduationesque, joyous/sad feeling of tying loose ends, wrapping up and moving on. They are like little gifts to loyal watchers of a program. A chance to achieve closure with beloved (or not-so-beloved) characters. But with its finale last night, the groundbreaking show “The L Word” once again managed to conquer new territory, by being the most annoying and unsatisying television series finale in recent memory. (After Ellen called the debacle “lame, lacking and legacy tarnishing.” Bwah!)

I came to the show during season two, after deciding to watch some episodes On Demand to see what all the fuss was about. The fuss, of course, was about the first mainstream television program to center around lesbian characters and relationships.

Wikipedia describes “The L Word’s” first season thusly:

Season 1 was first aired in the United States on January 18, 2004, on Showtime and featured 13 episodes presenting several entwined storylines. Set in West Hollywood, the series first introduces Bette Porter and Tina Kennard, a couple with a seven-year relationship who want to have a child. Tina eventually becomes pregnant through artificial insemination but has a miscarriage during episode 1.09: Luck, next time. Later in the series, Bette develops an affair with Candace Jewell, which Tina learns of during the season finale. [5]

The pilot introduced a coming out/love triangle storyline involving Tina and Bette’s neighbor, Tim Haspel, his new-in-town girlfriend, Jenny Schecter, and Marina Ferrer. Marina is part of Tina and Bette’s circle of friends, and owns the neighborhood café, The Planet, which serves as the group’s hang-out and focal point for the show. The season also introduces Shane McCutcheon, an androgynous, highly-sexual hairstylist and serial heart-breaker; Alice Pieszecki, a girly, bisexual journalist looking for love in any way she can, and Dana Fairbanks, a professional tennis player who is still in the closet and torn between pursuing her career and finding love. In the first season, Dana falls for a sous-chef named Lara Perkins whose
sexuality is questioned by the group until Lara has an unexpected meeting with Dana in the locker room.

I’m a straight girl, but I couldn’t resist the great, soapy plotlines of this show. (Betrayal, intrigue, kidnapped babies, fatal illnesses, lost fortunes…Dallas and Dynasty have nothing on “The L Word.”) Add to the high drama (and comedy) awesome fashion, and I’m hooked. “The L Word” was a great, guilty pleasure.

That said, I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the show. Increasingly, as the show wore on, camp crossed the line to fantastical. The writing was often sloppy and continuity was lacking (Whatever happened to Helena’s two children?) The show’s creators weren’t afraid to kill off a cast member just for the hell of it.

When “The L Word” introduced a transgendered character, Max, it could have been compelling to follow him through his transition, if he wasn’t treated with such obvious disdain by the writers and characters–more an occasional sideshow than part of the actual show.

Just like most Hollywood writers, “The L Word” team couldn’t write black women for shit. Kit was Bette’s straight, alcoholic, musician sister. The character, played by the legendary Pam Grier, was drawn like a cartoon. In recent seasons, Kit’s every utterance was prefaced by “Girl!”…”Honey!”…”Baby!”…or it could just be that the crappy dialogue and Grier’s delivery made it seem so. You could almost hear a director suggesting “Can you deliver that line with a little more blackitude?” With seemingly little life of her own, no friends outside of her sister’s orbit, and apparently unable to find a suitable man in all of Hollywood, Kit was reduced to the sassy handmaiden to all the pretty, white girls with problems. (Yes, I know that Jennifer Beals is biracial, but for the most part, in this show, she was portrayed with more cultural connection to the white characters than her black half-sister. Grier filled the role of the resident black chick.) The wardrobe department couldn’t even bother to give poor Pam awesome clothes like those proffered to her castmates. She was always stuffed into some ill-fitting, bootleg get up more suitable to a 20-year-old. Guess it’s too much work to properly outfit a still-pretty-damned-fine black, middle aged body. This is fricking Pam Grier people! Show some respect.

All that aside, I was still looking forward to last night’s series finale, the culmination of a peculiar
sixth season that centered around a murder mystery: Who killed the manipulative, self-absorbed, over-the-top, loony (and, yeah fabulous) Jenny Schecter.

The direction of the ultimate season seemed misguided. Rather than demonstrate the evolution of characters and the show’s story, walking them to some reasonable close, “The L Word” careened wildly in service of an Agatha Christie-like plot. Apparently, “L Word” creator Ilene Chaiken belives, like Hercule Poirot, that anyone is capable of murder, given the right impetus. And so, she set about creating a host of reasons for characters to want to kill someone who had been a friend and integral part of their circle for years–stolen movie treatments, missing film reels, videos of supposed infidelity, general obnoxiousness. It all seemed awfully silly, stretching the bounds of the imagination and requiring characters to do things that in previous seasons would seem unlikely. If Jenny’s divatude was getting too much for her “framily,” couldn’t they, just, I don’t know, de-friend her? Sure, murder seems like fun, but…

Told through real-time scenes interspersed with snippets of from police interrogation in the aftermath of Jenny’s death, last night’s season and series finale opened more doors than it closed. It is still unclear whether Jenny was murdered, committed suicide, or tripped over the anvil the writers left lying around the episode (Characters made repeated references to a broken railing on a new balcony, cautioning anyone who came near it to be careful.) We don’t know why the police think Jenny’s demise was anything but an accident. (Hell, we don’t even know what happened, since the character’s death takes place off screen and is only hinted at.) We have no idea why police interrogations in Hollywood involve endless questions unrelated to the crime in question. (Hint: It let’s characters spill information that writers weren’t able to reveal any other way.) Even the few non-dead Jenny-related storylines started in season six were left open. (Was Tasha really coming back to Alice in the end? Will Shane go after Molly and tell her that Jenny hid her letter?)

Sometimes while watching “The L Word” you could clearly see the show’s writers wanting to break convention and try something daring and never-done-before. Last night’s episode is a perfect example. Of course, wanting to innovate certainly isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes things have never been done, because they don’t work. And sometimes the conventional way is the easiest and most successful way to get a thing done; innovation just for the sake of it doesn’t work.

“The L Word” series finale didn’t work. It created an inglorious ending for what was a really fun, enjoyable show that meant something to a lot of people. I liked it for the clothes and drama, but I’ve read some really moving stories online today by lesbian women who were able to see themselves and their relationships portrayed on television for the first time. Why not honor that?

Really, if the best the writers of “The L Word” could give loyal fans is an hourlong “eff you,” then they should have gone whole hog. Lead actress Jennifer Beals could have awakened in a Pittsburgh bed to find that the whole, six-year, Bette and Tina lesbian uber couple with a quirky satellite of friends thing was just a dream, and that it’s really 1983 and she’s a dancing welder with a hot steel mill owner boyfriend and a closet full of riped sweatshirts. Or, a la “The Sopranos,” they could have just faded to black.

Pecah Lobang is a documentary by 24 year old filmmaker Poh Si Teng about Muslim transgender sex workers.

Pecah lobang means ‘busted’, and Malaysian transwomen because of Sharia law increasingly find themselves harassed by fundamentalist adherents to the faith and negative attitudes from Christians as well.

One of the reasons is that crossdressing became a crime under Sharia law with severe penalties to match, but that wasn’t always the case.

Teng’s award winning documentary not only focuses on Natasha’s struggle to honestly live her life, but explores why Malaysian society has turned repressive on transwomen through interview with a religious scholar, a physician who conducted sex change surgeries, a sociologist, three attorneys and an outreach worker.

It’s also another reminder for transgender people all over the world that no matter what part of the planet we inhabit, we still fight the same battle for acceptance.

An ugly blame game ensued after the passing of California’s Proposition 8, which restricted the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman. With exit polls reporting 70 percent of Blacks and 53 percent of Latinos/as supporting the ban on gay marriage, many white members of the LGBT community blamed people of color for the ban’s success.

The December issue of gay news magazine The Advocate stepped into the fray. The cover of the issue provocatively announced, “Gay is the New Black.” Although the cover story’s author, Michael Joseph Gross, dismissed blaming Black voters as a “false conclusion” and a “terrible mistake,” comments posted to the site took him to task for other reasons. Most comments strongly disagreed with Gross’ Black/gay comparison, but many others asked why communities of color and queer communities are still considered mutually exclusive in the mainstream LGBT rights movement.

A comment posted by “Greg J,” pointedly charged, “Gays of color, transgender, and yes, even lesbians are missing from the larger discourse of the gay rights struggle – primarily the gay marriage issue. The gay right’s movement was and remains the ‘gay, white, middle class’ movement!”

The Prop 8 fallout shows how much work remains to be done to connect the LGBT rights movement with other struggles for social justice across a spectrum of issues. Unfortunately, it may have taken the brutal murder of Ecuadoran immigrant Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhañay to highlight the invisibility of queer people of color – particularly queer immigrants – in LGBT rights discourse. His murder will hopefully provide an impetus for coalition building.

Jose Sucuzhañay and his brother Romel were attending a Sunday evening church party on December 7, 2008. They later decided to end the night with some drinks at a local bar in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. The two brothers left the bar at 3:30 a.m. and walked home arm-in-arm to support each other. Three men drove up to the Sucuzhañay brothers, one man got out of the car and began to shout anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs at them.

The man then attacked Jose Sucuzhañay and broke a bottled over the back of his head causing him to fall to the ground. His brother Romel ran to call the police. Romel saw the attackers kick his brother’s prone body and beat him with an aluminum baseball bat. The beating stopped when Romel returned and told the attackers that he had called the police. Jose was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital and remained in critical condition until he passed away five days later. He was 31 and left behind two children.

Sucuzhañay’s killing comes a month after a group of Long Island teens fatally stabbed Ecuadoran immigrant Marcelo Lucero; it also follows the murder of Luis Ramirez, who was beaten to death last July in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

The increased violence and surveillance against immigrant communities has coincided with violence against queers of color, including the murder of Duanna Johnson, a Black transgender woman. Johnson was beaten by two Memphis police officers last February. Nine months later, she was found shot to death in North Memphis.

Blogger Angry Brown Butch reflected on Johnson’s murder: “Just to be trans, just to be a woman, just to be a person of color in this country is enough to drastically increase one’s exposure to hatred and violence; when oppressions overlap, violence tends to multiply.”

Although Sucuzhañay was not gay, his murder represents the danger and uncertainty facing queers, people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized communities. For the most part, however, both mainstream LGBT rights groups and immigrant rights groups have failed to recognize the potential for collaboration and coalition, even in the wake of Sucuzhañay’s murder.

Immediately after the attack, media outlets discussed the homophobic and xenophobic nature of the attack against the Sucuzhañay brothers. But as time went on, reports began to only highlight either the anti-gay or the anti-Latino/a nature of the attack rather than seeing the two as joint-causes.

“I have seen some members of the Latino community express indignation at some outside the Latino community using the attack for political gain,” notes Andrés Duque of the Latino/a LGBT site Blabbeando. “I have also seen a Queens-based Ecuadorian community organization put out a call for a vigil highlighting the xenophobic nature of the crime while not mentioning that it might have also been a homophobic crime.”

Indeed, rather than illuminating the vulnerability that both Latino/a and LGBT communities face and interrogating the systemic inequalities that enable that marginalization, some are more concerned with shaping how the incident is described and remembered in the media. One example of this is Diego Sucuzhañay’s denial that the attack on his brothers was homophobic in nature. Although Romel told the police that anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs were shouted at them as they were assaulted, Diego denies that homophobia was an aspect of his brothers’ attack.

Diego told New York’s El Diario/La Prensa that, “My brother Romel told me that they shouted insults against Latinos, that they shouted ‘Hispanic sons of bitches,’ but not anti-gay insults.” But Romel has not publicly retracted his statement regarding anti-gay slurs. And other family members have spoken about the murder in terms of homophobia also being a motivating factor. So some observers following the case wonder whether Diego’s statements to the press are an attempt to disassociate his brother’s murder from any implications of queerness.

Still, many others are people speaking out against Sucuzhañay’s murder by clearly connecting issues of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. At his brother’s funeral in Cuenca, Ecuador, German Sucuzhañay told the Associated Press, “The brutal killing of my brother Oswaldo is the result of xenophobia, of homophobia and racism that our compatriots are experiencing in these times.”

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa condemned the xenophobia and homophobia behind Sucuzhañay’s tragic death. Correa told the press that Sucuzhañay was “vilely murdered because of xenophobia and homophobia. They confused him for a homosexual…” The President called on the public to fight against “xenophobia, homophobia and all types of phobia, all types of discrimination, all types of violence.”

While a number of U.S.-based organizations including Bienestar, The Audre Lorde Project, People of Color in Crisis (POCC), and Incite! have all been working to address the intersections between multiple forms of oppression, both the mainstream LGBT and Latino/a rights movements remain remarkably single issue oriented.

The killing of Jose Sucuzhañay, however, challenges Latino/a and LGBT leaders to build a broad-based vision for social justice that acknowledges the linkages between various communities and struggles. Hopefully, both immigrant rights group and LGBT rights groups will begin to see the parallels between a number of these ballot initiatives sponsored by right-wing groups – whether they are anti-immigrant, anti-choice, or anti-gay.

The fight in 1994 to repeal California’s Proposition 187, which sought to prevent undocumented immigrants from accessing state benefits, can perhaps serve as inspiration for those working to overturn Prop 8 and provide an in-road for collaboration between these intersecting struggles. Though not identical, these grassroots struggles provide a crucial space for collaboration between marginalized communities.

Editor’s Note – While checking out tips from readers, evaluating episodes of Daddy’s Little Girls, and checking up on The Real World, something kept grating on my nerves. The heavily promoted Bromance dances into decidedly homo-erotic territory – but the wink and nudge protestations from the cast members (complete with “Dude, that’s so gay” remarks to keep people in check) I started to wonder what was up. I asked Arturo to take a quick peek at the show. – LDP

The question of male friendship and how “gay” it may or may not be is getting a little extra scrutiny these days, with new projects from Brody Jenner and Paul Rudd.

In the wake of Prop. 8′s passage in California, Jenner’s Bromance is taking MTV’s new approach to dating shows: same-sex humiliation. Produced by Momma’s Boy’s mastermind Ryan “I was Metro when that was still another word for subway” Seacrest, the show is Entourage by way of The Bachelor, with several dim-witted if sort-of-well-intentioned young men competing for a spot at Brody’s side. And really, who wouldn’t want to hang out with a professional do-nothing and his friend Sleazy T and Frankie Delgado — especially after their “initiation” involved getting dragged out of their beds wearing nothing but their boxers (or less) and a black bag over their head? My buddies and I play Gitmo Gotcha all the time!

The show’s challenges answer that question: money, and random women. Each of the show’s skill challenges features two or three random white female ornaments. The lone exception, of course, was the “Dating Game”-style game which cross-promoted Lauren Conrad – she’s random enough on her own. The contestants’ first task, in fact, was to bring “hot chicks” to a lingerie party. (It also should be noted that seemingly 75 percent of the women who were convinced to go were Caucasian blondes.)

Interestingly enough, one self-identified gay man, Michael, was selected to compete on the show. But though he’s treated (surprisingly?) well, based on the footage we were allowed to see, Michael bows out on his own, saying, “I thought it was gonna be like an episode of The Hills.” Man, seeing the boys pal around with LC later in the season had to have hurt.

As the show continues, we’re treated to disturbing images of several of the young men crying during conversations with Jenner, or after various blow-ups around the house. These instances aren’t weird because it’s “unmanly” or whatever, but because it just doesn’t make sense for people who seemingly barely know each other to be reduced to tears at the first hint of crisis. Then again, this is “reality” television.

The show’s not over as of this writing, but it’s already become clear that the posh apartment the winner receives will be worth more than any “friendship” he receives with Jenner. Whichever one wins is almost going certainly going to be low-man in Jenner’s “posse,” Turtle to Brody’s Vinnie Chase. Judging by Jenner’s other friends, it’s clear that Brody, who appeared on the national radar by riding on LC’s own coattails, is looking for his own band of sycophants. That transcends sexuality – it’s just sad.

********

Whereas Bromance is cloying about the question about male sexuality vis-a-vis friendships, scheduling group talks in hot tubs and such, the trailer for the upcoming I Love You, Man goes the rom-com route. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel have a meet-cute. Rudd’s character, Peter, is immediately coded as being “not as manly” as Segel’s character, Sydney; Peter has no male friends (named on Bromance as a gay characteristic) and “loved” The Devil Wears Prada. He has a white-collar job and dresses well, though not “Metro”-well. In fact, after dinner with similarly clean-cut Doug (Thomas Lennon), Doug kisses Peter – after all, since they dress “alike,” it’s only right for Doug to assume Pete’s gay. Hilar! Meanwhile, Sydney dresses down and is kind of a dolt, reassuring the viewer that he’s “a bro.” One can only presume that hilarity will ensue.

It’s all rather innocuous, but the mention of the term “man-date” by Rashida Jones’ character, Zooey, threw me, in its’ teasing manner, as did the pressure for Sydney to immediately ascend to the rank of best man at Peter and Zooey’s wedding. If Peter’s best friend were a woman, or a gay man, would that “cheapen” the nuptials? Couldn’t Peter’s father or brother perform the same function? One can only presume such questions will be glossed over, if addressed at all.

In a post-Brokeback world, it seems the latest addition to the Battle of the Sexes tropes is the need to reassure audiences that depth in male friendships is strictly accidental – unless, of course, it’s forged while pursuing interests like military action or athletic competition. Then you can use phrases like “trust your life to another man” and not worry about, as the Ghostbusters might have put it, “crossing the streams.”

Yesterday the internet was abuzz with the fact that Prince might be homophobic.

Carmen from New Demographic commented on Twitter that this didn’t make sense. She wrote ,

“I’m still amazed that Prince is a homophobe. I mean, isn’t there a good chance he’s been gay-bashed in his life? (Even if he’s not gay).

I responded back saying that she presumed that possessing a “fringe Black masculinity” would make him more likely to be tolerant. I added that tolerance, like hate is taught. She responded saying she agreed, but it was still sad.

I agreed.

Even before I read the evidence of what Prince said, I suspected that if Prince was being intolerant, then perhaps may have something to do with his interpretation of the tenets of his faith practices.

This Prince moment also reminded me that our generation has a hard time accepting the fact that victims can be perpetrators.

The question of whether victims can be perpetrators has been on my mind for a while. A couple of weeks ago, I was having conversation with Krisna Best, of the Hip Hop and Democracy Project, which grew from my review of Byron Hurt’s film, Barack and Curtis.

Below I provide two quotes, which in my opinion get to the issue of our discussion of whether victims can be perpetrators.

Krisna wrote,

Your example of the white woman reminds me a lot of the whole “black on black crime” thing. This is where I start to disagree with you. There’s a white supremacist tinge to the black-on-black-crime concept because it pathologizes, if you will, black behavior. Black folks commit crime not because of a pathology or because of false consciousness, but because of much larger structural circumstances and is related to my point about this generation breaking with the conditions of work. They see the old arrangement as providing no road out of the circumstances of our society, not because they believe in their inferiority or whatever the conclusions of this bogus psychoanalysis are.

I responded,

Aren’t you pathologizing them into permanent victimhood?

They have agency. They can choose. We all choose to sell crack, blog, have children, vote, join the army. I am completely aware of the fact that our choices take place within the range of options available to us, and that often times our parents class status dictates exactly which options we just may have.

Let me ask you this? Do you think that D-boys/Pimps have agency?

While he didn’t respond at the time to my question, he has done so since I posted this.

The notion of victims being perpetrators weighs heavy on my mind, as I have been reading a lot about the Black Power Movement, Gender and Sexism for the past few weeks. You may be surprised, but, there were folks who felt that Black men weren’t capable of being sexist because they were victims of racism. Somehow, they some folks to believe that being a victim, they couldn’t be a perpetrator.

Now this of course makes no sense.

For example, Black folks who have been victims of racism can be prejudicial towards other Black folks regarding skin color. Paper bag party anyone?

That’s the horror of racism. It corrupts. It poisons.

Once we decide to refuse to look at people solely as victims who have nothing to contribute, and to see people as subjects who have agency and a will to change, the path will be laid for us to have personal transformation on an individual and societal scale.

Dear Friends,

I am writing because I am disturbed by the string of articles, blog entries, and list serve threads that have come out in the last few days suggesting that the high turnout of African American and Latino voters for the presidential election was responsible for the passage of California’s proposition 8, which dealt a heavy blow to LGBT families by banning gay marriage in the state’s constitution.

These articles mistakenly imply that the struggles for civil rights for LGBT people and communities of color are separate or even at odds with each other. They deny the work that LGBT people of color do to combat homophobia and transphobia in their families and communities, often while facing racism within the queer community as well. These articles deny homophobia among white people. They displace blame away from those who actually have the power to consistently deny others civil and human rights, and instead, charge that when communities that have long been disenfranchised and alienated from political processes participate, that the results with be negative for LGBT people.

I believe all communities need to be held accountable for their homophobia and transphobia. I want to acknowledge the suffering and hardship that the passage of Proposition 8 has caused for LGBT couples and families. But, while the media casts blame on communities of color for the passage of Prop 8, it is imperative that we struggle against the logic that tells us that struggles for LGBT civil rights and racial justice are separate—that we re-examine our strategies for advancing LGBT civil rights and gay marriage and, in particular, look at places where LGBT communities have failed to align our struggles for civil rights with ongoing struggles for racial justice.

Californians live in a state that has one of the highest incarceration rates in a nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Studies have estimated that at any time, 40 percent of black men in their 20′s in California are under the control of the correctional system. Criminalization affects many LGBT people, in particular, those that may be experiencing addiction or who, lacking familial support, move to expensive cities where they may have a hard time accessing affordable housing and legal or living-wage work. I write from San Francisco, where, in the months leading up the election, I saw a massive mobilization within the queer spaces in which I spend time to get people to vote no on 8, but I saw little or no public discourse among LGBT people about very important state propositions: 5, 6, and 9—all of which potentially impacted things like funding for prisons, drug crime sentencing, or the trying of minors as adults in this state.

In the last months, we have seen raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throughout the state and in San Francisco. Many people immigrate here for work as a result of a US foreign policy that destabilizes foreign economies. Additionally, San Francisco is home to many LGBT immigrants who may have come to the country seeking safety and asylum. While my inbox was flooded with emails pertaining to Prop 8, I heard from very few queer people who were seeking to mobilize around the October 31st demonstration to protest ICE raids, other work pertaining to ICE raids, or San Francisco’s establishment as a sanctuary city.

The November ballot contained several important city initiatives that could have affected the livability of our city both for low-income people of color and for many queer people:

Proposition K, an initiative to decriminalize prostitution, would have helped sex workers in this city to make major strides in their ability to organize for their rights and safety, allowing them to better protect themselves against violence and police harassment. Despite the fact that many, many young LGBT people in this city earn their livings as sex workers and daily face risks to their safety, and that trans women working as sex workers have lost their lives while working in the city within the last two years, I saw shockingly little effort among LGBT people to educate themselves on the realities facing sex workers or the background on Proposition K—Let alone to spread any word about it.

Similarly, proposition B, which would have mandated that the city set aside part of its budget for affordable housing was defeated by SF voters. We live in a city with a history of racist schemes of redevelopment and displacement: SOMA in the 60s, Justin Herman’s redevelopment of the Fillmore, illegal evictions in the Mission in the 90s, contemporary cuts to county welfare, and most recently, the gentrification of the Bayview—to name a few examples. And yet, San Francisco voters have failed to stand up for working families’ ability to live affordably in this city—a city where remaining working class communities of color face major threats of displacement.
Despite the fact that white LGBT people often play complicated roles in the gentrification of the city and displacement of communities of color, I saw no media reports released on November 5th scrutinizing the voting trends of white LGBT San Franciscans on Propositions B, N, K, 5, 6, or 9, as juxtaposed to the numerous articles scrutinizing the voting habits of Black and Latino voters on Prop 8. And despite the overwhelmingly negative outcome of several important local and state propositions, outcry among the wider LGBT community seems to have been reserved solely for the passage of Proposition 8.

As a young, queer woman living in San Francisco, I feel very strongly that affordability is vital to the creativity and well being of the city’s LGBT community. And as a white person living in the Mission, I have to think and act critically in regards to the complicated role I play in the gentrification of this neighborhood and the larger schemes of displacement within this city. I love my queer life and love living in this city. I get to witness the ways of living and congregating, making new families, new cultures, and envisioning new worlds that are possible living around so many other brilliant and creative queer people. While I would like to lend my support and compassion to people who lost the right to marry this week, I also question the logic that tells me that my only struggle as an LGBT person centers around my right to marry. While I sign petitions to support marriage as a civil right, I would like to see LGBT Californians take a serious look at the fact that housing, healthcare, employment, and freedom from police harassment and incarceration are also civil and human rights.

I would like to see LGBT Californians talk not only about how marriage rights could affect their ability to receive their partners’ health benefits, but about universal healthcare. I would like to hear us talk not just about how a lack of marriage rights separates couples where one member lacks citizenship, but connect this to struggles for immigrant rights. I would like to hear LGBT people not only talk about how their families are discriminated against, but link their struggles to those of the many California families where children are being raised by people other than their parents due to the mass incarceration of parents with children.

The passing of Proposition 8 is a sad day and indicative of the work that lies ahead. As we heal from these blows, I would like to challenge us to consider how our struggles are bound up with struggles for racial and economic justice, and how our fight for civil rights, and the health of our communities could be strengthened by taking these connections more seriously. Above all, I would like to challenge us to resist racist media schemes that, during our moment of need and an even greater moment of possibility, are attempting to pit LGBT people and their supporters against communities of color in California.

I apologize for the hasty construction of this, but time is of the essence. I welcome your thoughts.

In struggle,
Adele Carpenter

Well, look at what slipped under the radar.

In the midst of the election run up, the results, and the waves of discussion about proposition 8, Logo launched a movie based on their popular (yet mysteriously canceled) series Noah’s Arc.

The New York Press’ Armond White has a thought provoking review on the significance of the movie, titled “MEET THE BLACK CARRIE BRADSHAW – LOGO’s Noah’s Arc makes the jump to the big screen—showing a completely different African-American experience”:

Noah’s Arc’s quartet of young black men counteracts the prevailing image of gayness as a young, rich, white male phenomenon. The title refers to Noah (Darryl Stephens), an L.A.-based aspiring screenwriter whose love and social life resist Hollywood storybook cliché. Noah may dress in couture like Carrie Bradshaw (he enters Jumping wearing a Russian toque, cape and calf-high boots) but his style is provocative; he flouts ideas about masculinity, blackness and class. If you accept Noah (his gentle, gazelle-like demeanor stresses effeminacy), his friends still test your tolerance: Chance (Doug Spearman) is a snooty, over-enunciating university professor; Alex (Rodney Chester) is a plus-sized drama queen who likes to cook when not dispensing counsel at a gay men’s health center; and Rickey (Christian Vincent) is incorrigibly promiscuous.

All these characters are dark-skinned except for Ricky, whose light (possibly Latino) complexion gives him social advantages—such as racially determined sex appeal, which he squanders in self-destructive ways. Yet Polk’s affection for these characters equals his determination to validate them. (The performances have gained substance; even a “voguing” sequence is in character.) Like ABC-TV’s 1977 production of Roots, Noah’s Arc acquaints viewers with aspects of African-American character and experience that are usually hidden or ignored. Noah and friends inhabit a parallel universe to the whites-only stereotypes of West Hollywood and Chelsea. When they discuss the image tyranny of pop figures Terrell Owens and Fitty Cent, they articulate stress all men feel. Ethicized pioneers always perform this breakthrough in the arts. Disrespect and discredit is the price they pay—whether it’s Noah’s Arc being screened like a B-movie, or Wong Kar Wai’s profound gay Asian love story in Happy Together being denied the acclaim given Brokeback Mountain. [...]

Basic questions of human happiness have a different ring in this context than they did in Boys in the Band (1970) and Love! Valor! Compassion! (1999) because Polk and Brocka don’t take social privilege for granted. Their humor poses a radical re-take on mainstream virtues: Wade complains to his shocked bourgie mother, “It’d be easier telling you I was an axe murderer,” which connects to the campy defiance of Alex calling his African foster child “O.J., short for Ojomodupe.” Polk uses different (radical) examples of love, valor and compassion. That these marginalized men don’t acquiesce to the mainstream’s oppressive morality is confirmed in the measured vows Noah and Wade exchange. They seek an answer to male companionship that redefines love and sex. Describing “a fear and yearning beyond lust,” Noah breaks past the superficial blandishments typically used to attract, sell and distract gay audiences from their truest well-being.

Polk has more in mind than the LOGO idea of placating a potential market. Jumping the Broom exalts an underserved audience yet Polk’s discussion of the socio-economic connection of slavery and contemporary gay politics doesn’t patronize them.

The IMDB message boards report:

by thebigham69 (Sun Oct 26 2008 18:35:08)
Noah’s Arc had the second highest per screen theater average ($32,200) at the box office over the weekend.

It came in second to Angelina Jolie’s Changeling.

I think this bodes well for the movie. Hopefully, it will convince Logo to put the movie in more cities

The movie opened on five screens.

Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom is currently playing in nine cities.

Zane sells because her fiction allows Black women to be sexual in a culture that refuses to acknowledge that we are sexual, a culture that calls us hos if are so inclined to be sexual, talk about sex, or even look like we are human and have a sexual appetite.

When was the last time you saw a Black woman have a love interest and sex in a movie?

Or a tv show?

Yesterday, I was doing all this reading of Hortense Spillers, Tricia Rose and Hegel (whom I struggle with tremendously), as I am developing an outline for a writing sample.

When instantly, Zane’s popularity clicked for me.

Professor Spillers essay titled, Intercises: A Small Drama of Words discusses, the position of Black women’s sexuality in American culture.

She writes,

Our sexuality remains an unarticulated nuance in various forms of public discourse as though we are figments of the great invisible empire of womankind.

If I attempted to lay hold to any fictional text-discursively rendered experience of Black women, by themselves- I encounter a disturbing silence that acquires paradox, the status of contradiction.

Granted, the essay was published in 1984, so there has been some work published on Black women and sexuality such as Naked, Traps, Black Sexual Politics and Longing to Tell: Black women talk about Sex and Intimacy and I would imagine many others.

However, this profound silence still rings out loud in light of the presence of aspiring video vixens in rap videos, the desire of our little girls to be video vixens and our culture’s obsession with pimps and strip club culture in general.

This silence is deafeningly loud in the light of the fact that Black women were brought to the United States specifically to perform as laborers and to produce, via sex, more laborers.

As enslaved Africans residing in America, we held a very particular status, we were the Capital that Produced Capital, with capital being productive property.

This brings me back to why Zane sells. Zane sells because the women have sex in those books. They have affairs, they have sex with their husbands, some are lesbians, and dare I say it, some have sex with other women.

Speaking of sex with other women, I was very intrigued when I learned while researching this post that Zane’s latest title, Purple Panties, was being boycotted because it is about lesbian erotic fiction and it features two clearly Black women on the cover.

Welcome to the world of heterosexism.

Think about it like this.

If Black women aren’t allowed to have sex, then TWO most definitely are forbidden from doing so.

Even in the face of this boycott, Zane’s work stands a testament to the fact that erotic fiction, written by Black women, and arguably some Black men, is the place where we have found that we can have sex and not just simply produce capital or be called hos.

The highly anticipated debut of America’s Next Top Model Cycle 11 premiered last night on the CW with all eyes on Isis, the show’s first open transgender contestant.

She was featured in the background of a photo shoot in a previous cycle and is a legitimate contestant competing in this one. Y’all know I’m rooting for sis to win.

The fact that Isis is competing became big news to most of the world, but it’s not a surprise to me. Top Model has long had rumors of possible stealth transwomen contestants and they decided to come out of the closet with a secret that fashion industry insiders have long known.

A few of the girls strutting their stuff on the catwalk are transwomen.

Top Model judge and noted fashion photographer Nigel Barker stated in a recent interview, “One of the things about the fashion industry, is that there have been many transgender models over the years. It’s very legitimate in our industry. It’s a bit shocking for prime-time TV, but it opens peoples’ eyes.”

During the 2003 Cricket World Cup that was hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe was allowed to compete despite its horrendous human rights record and some protests against human rights violations and homophobic statements by its president Robert Mugabe.

When the month long event opened with a globally televised Olympic style opening ceremony in Cape Town, each of the 14 participating teams was led into the stadium by a model. Zimbabwe was led onto the field by a Senegalese born model who worked in South Africa and Italy named Barbara Diop. During the first week of competition it got leaked to the press that Barbara was a transwoman. That prompted outrage from Zimbabwe’s head homophobe and threats to pull out of the competition.

It’s no shock to people who follow the ballrooom community either. FYI, one of the ball categories is called runway, and as Isis Tsunami she was wrecking nerves and making a name for herself. It’s been rumored for years that ballroom legend Tracy Africa went from walking balls in the 90′s to getting paid walking the runways in New York and the fashion capitals of Europe.

Isis is the one who is fortunate enough and has the God given opportunity to break through to mainstream modeling success.

But back to Top Model. I applaud Tyra and the show for taking the bold step to include her. I haven’t had a chance to look at the replay, so I’ll judge later on whether the show is handling Isis with grace and sensitivity.

I know some of the transgender haters have already come out of the closet, and we’ll probably see the same from some of Isis’ fellow contestants. I hope she continues to handle this with style and grace even in the face of nasty and ignorant comments from some of her competitors and the Faux news masses.

But this is nothing less than a Jackie Robinson moment just as it was when various African-American models did things in the fashion industry that no one else had done before, including Ms. Banks.

Yeah, it’s a reality TV show. But it’s what we African-American transpeople have to work with until we get mainstream media to actually interview African-American transgender people who are opinion makers and leaders in this community.

Isis is breaking down stereotypes, and as any minority group member can tell you, old stereotypes die hard. It’s an evolutionary step in our ongoing coming out process to first class citizenship and taking our rightful place at the African-American family table.

Even though Isis may look at it as if she’s doing this alone, doing it for herself and fulfilling a dream to become a model, she’s not.

Like Jackie Robinson fifty-one years ago, she’s got the hopes and aspirations of many African-American transgender people and the ballroom community walking with her.

Edited: I know we are new dealing with trans-issues here, but please do not make disparaging comments about thin women, trans models, or gay men. We know the modeling industry promotes standards of beauty that are unattainable to most – but that is not the purpose of this article. The purpose of this article is to discuss Isis breaking barriers on television. – LDP

Warning: Explicit Language.

Saying that this interview blew my mind is an understatement. Reading “It’s All One: A Conversation between Juba Kalamka and Tim’m West” in the Total Chaos anthology was an illuminating experience in reference to queerness and hip-hop culture. There were so many pieces I wanted to type to share with you all, but couldn’t do so without feeling like I was taking money out off Jeff Chang’s wallet. So here are a few snippets of the conversation that made the largest impact on me and hopefully many of you will try to locate the full interview (or even buy the book).

[...]

Juba: It wasn’t until commercial viability became an issue for the record industry at large did the need for a categoric and hard-line heterosexualization and hypermasculine posturing come front and center. Hip-hop’s racial contextualization has been similar to that of early rock ‘n roll – the sale of scart, titillating, and ultimately Otherizing fantasy images of nonwhite people that fit into that same old boxes of “frightening yet sexy.” So, no, maybe a “gay” identity wouldn’t fit as a component of a “hip-hop” identity if you understand “gay” as a code for “weak” or “feminized” and therefore undesirable to a media machine selling a particular kind of Scary Negro Drag, or someone who’s performing it and unable or unwilling to interrogate their positionality.

At the same time, there’s the issue of “gay” or “Queer” being yet another identity marker that had already been co-opted by white middle-class institutions by the time hip-hop was beginning to receive mainstream attention. An authentic b-boy (read: Black) would have had a difficult time integrating a gay or bisexual identity into his pose, as “gay” was something he would know he was racially, economically, and socially excluded from.

Tim’m: But even this undermines a rich legacy of gays and lesbians in Black communities that had little to no interaction with white gay culture. Culturally speaking, Black gays have always preferred to abide alongside their Black communities rather than “ghettoize” their sexualities into geographic “safe spaces.” This isn’t a criticism, just an observation.

Juba: I agree. There is the assumption by Black straights and white gays that Black Queers were somehow automatically interested in participating in white gay culture – which also assumes an uncomplicated relationship to being “out” in the way most people understand that. That is extremely problematic and, as you have said, lazy thinking.

Growing up in Chicago and attending high school in the early and mid-1980s there was no real distinction between straight and gay in the house music scene, though it was overwhelmingly Black and Latino. My high school reflected this dynamic as well as that of the white gay kids never really expressing any interest in what we were doing.

[...]

Juba: Don’t get me wrong. I’m not using the notion that critics have largely ignored nonwhite gay aesthetics inside of hip-hop culture as an excuse for the homophobia I or others have experienced within the African American community. I just think it’s a much more complicated conversation than Black people – especially Black men, critics, artists, and consumers alike – want to have because it would require an examination of the way partiarchy functions intracommunally. Open conversations about homophobia as an extension of sexism and misogyny would put a lot of stuff on the table that gets dismissed in the name of silencing and the erasure of inappropriate faggotry.

Tim’m: You said “inappropriate faggotry.” Let’s not get it twisted. Hip-hop heteros rely heavily on the inappropriate faggot in order to even exist. In a really twisted sort of way, they rely on the verbal bashing of fags in order to substantiate their manhood. Which backpacking love, peace, and justice MCs have ever been regarded as “hard?” None. In fact, many of them are so often suspected of being “fags” that they go to sometimes great and awkward lengths to say: “Hey, I’m for peace and love but fuck a faggot.” It’s really funny, actually. Sadly, hard edge and masculinity almost always means you hate fags. We can imagine Eminem doing a song on stage with Elton John, but that’ll be the day when Dre kicks it with Little Richard, “good lawdy.”

I think there’s also an assumption that people who seem to fag-bash in their lyrics are necessarily homophobic in the ways people normally think about homophobia. It’s one thing to say you “don’t like faggots” or “that’s so gay,” but, in reality, you love your lesbian mother or look out for your baby brother or cousin who you know ain’t never had a girlfriend. It’s another thing altogether to be raising megabucks to stop gay people from getting married or finance the Republican candidate for president. Sometimes I think I prefer the homophobic remarks I can strategically counter over the subtle, polite, smiling-in-my-face white (or Black) Christians who want to relinquish my most basic human rights. Generally, I just don’t think there’s ever been a thorough assessment of Black people’s perspectives on Black people in their community who are gay or lesbian, unless produced by the Christian right as a political scare tactic. Nobody’s interviewing my mama or straight brothers. They aren’t talking with the first (straight) emcees I ever rhymed with or people I collaborate with who still don’t care ’cause they see talent. This may sound a bit off, but I’ve been in a lot of Black setting where people know I like boys and ain’t a damn person tripped. [...]

Juba: Thanks for touching on something I hadn’t addressed directly – power, specifically the institutional power or the ability to create and effect public policy around one’s prejudices, global, white-supremacist, patriarchal capitalism – something that Black people do not possess. People do indeed get it twisted. Hip-hop didn’t draft the Defense of Marriage Act, or create “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” or murder young folks like Sakia Gunn, Matthew Shepard, Gwen Araujo, Brandon Teena, and Rashawn Brazell. What happened to those young people was allowed to happen, and encouraged. I too get tired of the onus and responsibility for interrogating and eradicating homophobia being laid at the feet of poor and/or nonwhite people.

The hypocrisy on both Black and white media outlets is so glaring as to be comical. Even the majority of white LGBT media outlets are steeped in and driven by middle-class economic and cultural privilege. They maintain and invest in these conversations about hip-hop – seen as a poor, urban, nonwhite youth culture – as the apex, if not the genesis, of all pop-cultural homophobic notions. We get the attendant ridiculously satirical or frightened and aghast puff pieces about b-boys and b-girls pushing against-all-odds at some huge wall of nigga antagonism.

Then a movie like Brokeback Mountain becomes successful, and all of a sudden, you see articles outlining the long history of Hollywood’s homophobia and how these invariably white actors can’t get jobs after playing fag on film. Huh?! What happened? Where did the b-boys disappear to – or is this our fault as well? Did Run-DMC secretly concoct some scheme to keep Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean from getting feature film leads after they did Making Love in 1982? Where we at?

We’re exactly where you say, Tim’m – invisible, trotted out when needed to create some furor or sell some magazines or some cable shows. Poor and nonwhite folks (and yes, this includes Eminem’s authenticated wiggerisms) become these abject, mythological characters. This is the genesis of my reference to the frightening, “inappropriate” faggot – by which I mean the real, the living, the breathing, fucking, fighting, loving, shit-talking faggot (and by extension the even more frightening, emasculating bulldagga/dyke) as opposed to the erstaz, apolitical, defenseless “Men on Film” incarnation of the “sissy bitch-nigga” (wow, there goes that misogyny again.)

I mean, really, could you watch Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied and come away with a notion that queeny Black gay men were afraid of straight people or somehow necessarily co-opted and conscripted by a whitewashed notion of “gay” culture? How does a straight Black man look at himself after reading Essex Hemphill’s interrogations of his brothers’ sexism toward Black women or deconstructions of how the white gaze had complicated his notions of what his desires should be? How do white and nonwhite men deal when confronted with Pat Parker’s dialogues on female masculinity and butch identity?

Heteronormative culture, white and nonwhite, doesn’t want to deal with the issues they discuss. It’s all too scary. So they start making up these mythologies, these ghosts to go “Ooooh, boogedy boogedy!” [...]

Congratulations, Michael Brewer.

I have never walked across the stage on the Morehouse College campus green to receive my degree. On the first day of our indoctrination in 1986, who would have thought I would end up as one of those missing in action four years later? The upperclassman speaking prophesized: “Look to your left and your right. Four years later, one of these brothers will not be here,” and in 1990 one of those brothers was me. I was an “out” gay man at Morehouse College. On my would-be graduation day, I contemplated what
looked like a dismal future, by Morehouse standards—no Morehouse degree and no respect from the men that made up my peer group.

A recent article in the Los Angles Times, by Richard Fausset, bookends the recent history of homophobia and gay awakening at Morehouse with the heinous 2002 baseball-bat beating of a Morehouse student, Greg Love, by a dormitory mate, Aaron Price, and the historic “No More ‘No Homo’ ” events organized by Michael Brewer and members of the campus organization, Safe Space, in April 2008. For me, this recalls memories that I had put away, but which provide the foundations of my life as a scholar and activist. The fact that homophobia at Morehouse is not unique or unusual with respect to heterosexism and homophobia in society at large should be obvious. The institution represents rather, the “perfect storm” of homophobia —racial and class anxieties of “exceptional Negroes,” masculine gender trouble, class conflict and fundamentalist religious baggage [or as some might say, "heritage" or "tradition."] These seas roil and skies open up in an international climate of heterosexism and misogyny. Homophobia at Morehouse is therefore instructive, dramatic and sad, but not rare in our world.

In return for the “crown,” which we are told Morehouse holds over the head of its sons who endeavor to grow tall enough to wear it, we are asked to buy a bill of goods that include fidelity to image and representation. But what—and whom– does this respectability betray?

Who pays the price for this shoddy mimicry- the picture in which the Black man takes up his “rightful” place at the head of a family with a dutiful longsuffering well-educated but decidedly under-employed light-skinned wife, and children with good hair?

[To each, her and his own, of course. My point here is not to point a finger, but to shine a light.]

How do these images and longings for certain types of lives, mates and relationships get shaped? To whom do we look for examples and for approval? My point here is that Black angst over appearing freaky, weird, less-than, or too Black shape our decisions and the ways we treat each other. Perhaps—the logic goes—if I speak, act and embody the White middle class heterosexual standard, or at least closely approximate it, I will finally be accepted as levelly human, as worthy, employable and loved.

But what violence takes place outside the picture’s pose, in order to frame this ‘just so’ story, in which Black men get to borrow the crumbling crown of the White patriarch? We rarely call into question the concept of “leadership,” or the assumption that an elite college education and middle class status qualify us to take the reins of a community putatively deemed “out of control.” And where do we turn, but to places like Morehouse, where suited and well-spoken men stand poised to do so?

For a long time, I could not express to anyone who was not there to witness it, what I experienced and what I felt. I allowed my parents to believe that my failure at Morehouse was just about being trifling. There was certainly a bit of that too, but hear me. The smart one—in whom my family and community had placed so many hopes—returned home from the Citadel of Blackness with nothing to show, but some scars he refused to let folks see. Tongues wagged about the waste. I despaired. I delayed. Perhaps I had not heard Audre Lorde the first time: “…even when we are afraid, it is better to speak.”

I was afraid and I had good reason to be. On that graduation day, though I did not receive a Bachelor’s degree, I had already come by a thorough education in heterosexism and homophobia.

I had learned, as well, a great deal about regret as I watched the woman I had loved, receive her degree at Spelman even as she dealt with her own disappointment and perhaps embarrassment over our break-up and the surveillance, attempts at discipline, and final expulsion that I was subject to by my fraternity brothers and friends. When I arrived at Morehouse I knew that I had desire for other men, but had resolved that homosexuality was a behavior—if I did not do it I would not be it.

But desire is stronger than reason.

I broke up with her without explaining why. Her love for me would not extinguish my desire for men. My love for her would not allow me to follow the well-worn path of marriage, infidelity and secrets. It was unfair to ask her to bear the burden of not knowing what was going on in my head and heart. Still, no relationship could work until I had resolved these issues for myself.

Two years before my would-be graduation day, I had joined KMT, an “Afrikan fraternity” that promised an end to the abuses of the Greek system, which at Morehouse had not only seen perennial scars and broken bones, but the death of my friend Joel, while pledging Alpha Phi Alpha. KMT represented a return to community service and scholarship and a new afrocentric Black masculinity respectful to women. Following tenets of Black cultural nationalism, each members changed their names as we crossed over to membership. I became Jafari, and this is still my name despite the challenges that came later.

I earned it.

The original impulse of the KMT Brotherhood was honorable, for the most part.

Just tragically flawed and not so radical after all.

Our aim was not to party, drink and step-dance, but to contribute to the liberation of Black people. For me, the opportunity to do this in the company of brothers who were likewise committed was irresistible. I had very few male friends in High School—always finding myself on the outside of those circles made up of athletes or wannabe gangsters. Here were men who also liked to read, to talk, to serve our community. I finally felt a sense of belonging.

The Black Nation which my fraternity brothers and larger community of budding afrocentrists imagined together had incisive [and for the most part, correct] critique of the bourgeois milieux most of us lived in and under. We were, for example, enraged by violence against women, inside and outside our ranks. But, not unlike the “handkerchief-headed Negro” institutions we
criticized, we also made no real steps to hold those brothers accountable or to make structural changes that would make sisters more secure in the streets and at home. I knew that I had to be in those fights, with sisters lobbying for better off-campus security and protesting swimsuits in the college pageants; and with the brothers, ready to deliver a beatdown to someone who had disrespected our sister. At least until it was one of our brothers deserving of the correction.

But it became clear that along with changing our names, a lot more work would have to be done to unlearn deeply ingrained homophobia and heterosexism. As we got closer, it became increasingly important for these brothers to protect their own deeply invested and fragile masculinities by ensuring that everyone in the brotherhood at least acted straight—lest the whole brotherhood be painted with a wide gay brush. This is the logic at work at Morehouse. Anxiety over what folks on the outside will think about The House drives the homophobia.

At the same time that I began to acknowledge to myself who I was becoming, I became a target. As Pat Paker promises in her poem “where will you be?” “they”—my “brothers” that is– came for me one hot afternoon. Not counting the months long traumatic prelude, my expulsion from the brotherhood took only a few minutes.

It was my job to call meetings and I had refused, for weeks, to call a special meeting where my sexuality and gender expression would be discussed– again. Eventually, I relented and agreed to show up. After a ride on the MARTA and a long walk, my stomach in knots, I was greeted by a number of those whom I had helped to initiate into the group, and a few who were initiated with me, after twelve weeks of a harrowing process. Perhaps there was also at least one who had been one of my guides into the brotherhood—I can no longer remember [or cannot stand the memory]. The air was thick with silence. No eyes met mine. My heart sank, then broke in silence. I like to think that I am now a long way from that young man with the paper-thin skin and razor sharp tongue. I keep him safe in a quiet space of my heart. But in moments of angst, pain, or alarm, these are the memories I exhume—my own scenes of injurious subjection. After all, these were my brothers, at one time.

In order not to reveal my pain, I quipped “so… what is it,” or something like that. He [the newly initiated brother whose name escapes me now] met my arrogant quip, quid pro quo: “we have decided to expel you from the brotherhood. For homosexuality.”

By definition, this is not radical, but reactionary.

The radical acts were happening– as I have learned, radical acts do– on the other side of the gates. I felt and participated in radical Black politics only after being once removed from this Black cultural nationalist kinship. Though we saw ourselves as a sort of revolutionary vanguard on campus, I became an intellectual and an activist in my own right outside the formidable gates of KMT’s brand of Black bourgeois respectability— in Atlanta’s Black lesbian and gay community of artists and activists. We supported each other as we healed from various wounds received within our communities and families; railed against homophobia at Morehouse in front of MLK’s tomb at the King Center; paraded with the African American Lesbian and Gay Organization of Atlanta [AALGA], established the Coalition of African Descent, Second Sunday; and Craig’s A Deeper Love Project at AID Atlanta; and marched down Peachtree Street and in Washington, DC, for more HIV prevention and care dollars, for an end to violence against women, gays and lesbians in our homes and our streets; and even organized and attempted to charter what I believe was Morehouse’s first gay and bisexual organization, Morehouse Adodi. We did our work to save our own lives and communities. We had to—wasn’t nobody else going to do it for us.

Nobody else cares that we are dying.

While my reading list did not change much, the new way I read—critically, synthetically– shifted like tectonic plates finally clicking into place to make another country, where I might one day live.

At the time, I did not link this unceremonious surgical removal with the unusual request that Ron [not his real name] had made several months before, to accompany him to Montré’s, the low-end strip bar in the West End. In a scene that I recall now in its cinematic inanity, Ron, then known as Hamid Khalid [likewise a pseudonym], insisted that we go to this strip joint after leading Freshman Orientation. I thought nothing of this strange outing, even though we usually spent our time at Yasim’s fried fish place, planning KMT work or fomenting revolution. There I was in this dark, dank, sad strip club, wearing my Morehouse “uniform”—dark Brooks Brothers jacket I had bought while interning on Wall Street, crisp khakis, white shirt and bow tie. He told me to order a table dance. I did not want to disturb the dancers who looked tired and uninterested [as I have learned, low paid strippers often do]. He insisted again. I did. He pushed—“go up and tip the dancer.” I did it—crisp $5 bill, probably borrowed from him, folded and arm outstretched for the sister-dancer. Then, the announcement from the DJ Booth: “Hey, Spike Lee college boy, don’t be ‘fraid of the pussy… !” We all laughed as I handed the bill to her—embarrassed for and saddened by the brothers that chose to place their gratuities for her work, in her flesh.

Years later, in 2003, I learned from Ron—both of us drinking Ketel One and tonics at a professional conference in New Orleans– that this had been “a test.” Similarly, two of the elders of the organization— the ones I respected and admired most– in turn “counseled” me. In an office full of symbols and photos of men whom I hoped to emulate, and leaning in his chair as if trying to pierce my skull with x-ray vision, he asked, sternly, “is there something that you have neglected to tell your brothers?” His words hung heavily in the air for a moment. I demurred. Then, in another elder’s home– where I first met Ann Petry and Toni Cade Bambara between her pages– she asked in her own inimitable way, “Do you really love her?” I answered affirmatively. It was true and remained so. But this was utterly beside the point and not what She wanted to know. I evaded. I had already learned my lesson in disclosing my nascent desire. Months before, I told a professional counselor at Student Affairs about my attraction to other men. Soon, I learned, it was all over Gloster Hall [the administration building].

More than a year after my supposed graduation day, my friend Kirk told me that his Sociology of The Black Family professor planned to screen Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied in class. Although I lived close by, my deep hurt—and shame too, I now believe—had prevented me from stepping foot on the campus before this time, but I was hopeful that this signaled a sea changed in attitudes. I arrived to find the class sparsely attended. The professor breezed in with a television on a cart, and seemed not to mind that a former student had asked to sit in. She pushed the video in, left the attendance roll on the table, and exited as the film began.

The chorus of “Brothertobrother brothertobrother. Brothertobrother brothertobrother…” now sound/feel like the beating of my own heart, but in 2002, it was only my second viewing of this film that re-ignited the Culture Wars when it aired on Public Television stations. A few students left the room after signing-in. Others sat through it, making a show of their discomfort, while some seemed to take in these revolutionary images of Black men revealing themselves and loving other Black men. At the end, I quietly wiped my tears—and felt one Spelman student glare at me, as another gave a kind smile.

The Professor marched back into the room and ejected the film. With one hand poised to write on the blackboard, she flipped the lights on with the other. She wrote, purposefully: “CONSEQUENCES”. Under this, she stabbed at the board with her chalk: “Alienation from family”; “Alienation from Community”… “Disease”; “Death.”

Today, it seems the news at the Atlanta University Center these days is hopeful. As the newly inaugurated President of Morehouse College, Robert Michael Franklin, begins his second year, his support of the “No More ‘No Homo’” campaign is inspiring. There is reason to be cautiously optimistic that the self-appointed makers of Black leaders will finally take up its work of producing 21st Century Black men with open and affirming gender and sexual politics.

There simply is no excuse not to do so.

Now is no time to turn our backs on the work left to do.

(Photo Credit: WeArePartOfYou.Org)

So after Joanna posted her article on Gimme Sugar I decided to check out some of the episodes On Demand. Since On Demand was horrifically slow with adding new episodes, I found the rest on Logo’s site.

After watching the first few episodes, I was charmed. I generally liked the show, the women cast, and while there were a few things I had some questions on, the show was entertaining enough for me to look forward to the new episodes.

However, checking out the reaction to the show online was a bit of a shock.

The show was panned by AfterEllen’s She Made Me Watch It segment. I mean, damn. The vloggers and I came away from the show with two completely different impressions. The AE crew also seemed upset at the whole concept of vapid twenty somethings and the idea of reality TV in general.*

From where I sit, the show is looking very different from the usual reality show fare due to the strong business focus and the portrayal of women of color in the GLBT community.

The Business Dynamic

I was ready to dance around my apartment when I realized the Sugar crew was actually serious about starting this club. Unlike other reality shows that show a few seconds of entrepreneurial instinct or the elaborately funded lifestyles of the young and jobless, Gimme Sugar is actually displaying what it takes to start a business from the ground up.

The numbers are staggering. The Sugar crew thought that holding a car wash would be enough to raise the money without realizing that setting up a club night has heavy costs associated. They raised $300 from the car wash – the club they are looking to book costs requires a $2,000 deposit, a $6,000 guaranteed bar tab, and pays a 10% return on liquor sales after they meet the guarantee. Charlene sagely points out that they will make less than their initial investment, which Alex waves away as the cost of doing business. The Sugars also incurred costs related to the photo shoot, make up artists on the photo shoot, and cost of flyer printing and design, which were not discussed. I am also interested to see when exactly they are going to deal with things like insurance and liability – half of Alex’s drive to start a club night stemmed from her being refused entry at her favorite hangout spot for being underage. However, there are stiff penalties associated if a minor manages to get alcohol or if someone is injured during a club night. It appears that the series is going to allow the girls to figure out their own steep learning curve, but it will be interesting to see how the women deal with the realities of promoting a club night.

Gimme Sugar also shows the downside of working with your friends, which isn’t often explored in reality show world. Trying to start a business is expensive, frustrating, time consuming and risky – and that tends to manifest in stress. The Sugar girls are often seen fighting over the basics of the business, everything from the name to costs associated to creative direction. Their friendships are under a great deal of strain, but this is something important to see – that businesses are often started with the best intentions but quickly become serious when money is on the line.

The Friendship Dynamic

The show is centered around Charlene, who often narrates transitional events or adds her own commentary. However, I am not so sure about the other girls. While there is definitely some affection and camaraderie, it seems a bit more like a bunch of girls who are all friends with Charlene who happen to hang out with each other.

Case in point: Robin. She is not much of an onscreen presence, but when she is represented, she tends to be starting something. In episode two, she intentionally hooks up the new girl, Sayeh, with Bathilda’s ex. She confides that she knows Bathilda and her ex (Brittenelle) have unfinished business, but decides “it would be funny” to try to start something up. When it works, and Bathilda starts acting out, its Davonee that drops in to remind everyone of the fault lines they are playing over. However, Robin still isn’t done, and decides to set up Sayeh and Brittenelle on a secret date. She calls Sayeh to meet her at a restaurant and calls her later to admit that she really set her up on a date with Brittenelle. As Sayeh is on the impromptu date with Brittenelle, Robin and the rest of the girls file into the restaurant, creating another awkward situation between Bathilda and Brittenelle. Through it all, Robin continues to make comments like “oh they are so cute together!”

Now, every clique has their own code of ethics. But if that’s how “friends” on the scene act, maybe Bathilda would be better off hanging with enemies. Now, I could be wrong on the meaning of these actions – in her interview, Charlene cracks a joke about the West Hollywood scene, saying “Where My Ex is Your Ex.” And by episode four, it seems like the girls have patched up all their differences, with Bathilda even helping Sayeh with wardrobe and style. But judging by the reactions of Alex and Davonee, I take it that this kind of behavior is shady.

And Sayeh is kind of suspect as well – you’re in a new group of friends and you decide to hook up with someone’s ex? To each her own, I suppose. But I am thinking the group friendship dynamic isn’t as strong as it is made out to be with anyone but Charlene.

An Offhanded Comment

In episode two, Davonee and Bathilda are playing around when they are caught by Davonee’s jealous love interest Djosefin. After Djosefin accuses them of messing around, Bathilda chases her down to set the record straight. “I don’t like Asians!” she screams “[Davonee] doesn’t like Asians!”

Djosefin accepts this and uses the fact as a kind of stand in apology. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you don’t like Asians, I don’t know that!”

Now I am left with an arched eyebrow at this one. You don’t date people from your own ethnic group? At all? As a rule? Hmm…

I know I’m not a lesbian

…but can someone please explain the “Shane” references that came from AfterEllen readers commenting on the show? I have gleaned that Shane is apparently a character on the L-word with self-destructive tendencies. Is this fictional character now an archetype?

Wardrobe

I want to steal all the jackets in Charlene’s closet. Just saying. The red leather one she wears in the first episode is hot like fire.

Bi-Bashing on the show

Malinda Lo, managing editor for AfterEllen.com, praised the show, calling it “a lighthearted reality series that features more Asian-American lesbians than have ever been seen before on television” focusing on the need for representations of queer friendship groups on television. However, she pointed to one part of the show that appears to be a reocurring theme – Bi-Bashing.

Lo writes:

As in many series that include lesbian/bi women, biphobia is present in Gimme Sugar. Alex, who is bisexual, is often ridiculed for her bisexuality by her otherwise supportive lesbian friends.

This is unfortunate because it presents bi-bashing as acceptable social behavior. It is clear that Alex’s friends do like her, but their dismissal of her sexual orientation as disgusting is disappointing. Even if it reflects reality in the lesbian community — where bisexuals are often discriminated against — it also reflects poorly on the girls of Gimme Sugar.

In episodes two and three, Alex explores her bisexuality and ends up dating a guy named Matty. While some of her friends (most vocally, Devonee) display disgust at her actions and choices, things don’t get heated until Matt drops by the Truck Stop (current Lesbian club night) and proceeds to show his affection. Later on, in episode four, Sayeh is embracing her queerness but still stops short of embracing the label of “lesbian.” One of the girls she is flirting with questions this, and Sayeh replies “Why can’t I be bi?” The woman just shakes her head. She begins to explain but Sayeh cuts her off with a kiss.

I will definitely be checking for this dynamic in future episodes.

Overall

Gimme Sugar was compelling enough for me to actually tune in to this week’s episode during its original air time, which is amazing if you know my aversion to set schedules. Perhaps it is because the world Gimme Sugar explores is foreign to me on two different counts – it takes place in a predominantly lesbian environment and it also deals with a business that I am not familiar with. However, judging from the comments online, I am wondering if Gimme Sugar is on the wrong network. Many of the women on AfterEllen seem to be searching for a deeper, more intellectual representation of lesbianism than is presented in Gimme Sugar. However, I think the MTV crowd will be well served by this show, post Tila Tequila. While Tila’s show is intended to be an over the top dating show, Gimme Sugar actually explores the reality of being an out lesbian – in the same glittery style that MTV pioneered.

I mean, hell, it beats the Hills.

*Reality TV is generally referred to as “unscripted television” – any facade of reality has gone out the window ages ago. The last reality show I remember watching was one of the early seasons of the Real World. Boring conversations, a lot of people dreaming about stuff they wanted to do while stuck in some job they don’t really care about, and a roommate who stays home all day and drips kool-aid on the floor. I am not surprised that reality got swapped for a glitzier one.

A while back, I read Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America. Written by Keith Boykin, the book is an answer to J.L. King’s On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of “Straight” Black Men Who Sleep with Men. Boykin sets out to debunk a lot of the myths about the down low as put forward in King’s piece, but one part of his argument stands out in my mind.

In analyzing what makes a good black man, he poses multiple scenarios about men, their community contributions and their personal lives. In one synopsis, Boykin seemingly describes the perfect, community involved black man with one catch – he’s gay.

Does his sexual orientation disqualify him from being “a good black man?”

I’ve been puzzling over that question for two years now. While it would make sense that a man’s deeds, not his choice of partner, should determine his standing in the black community, it is obvious that the ideal we would like to get to is far from reality as it stands today.

So, when reader Jafari sent in an article from the LA Times about being gay at Morehouse, I hoped that the article would lead me to some answers.

The piece begins with a tantalizing tagline:

The ‘Morehouse man’ is a paragon of virtue and strength, a leader destined for great things. But can he also be gay?

The article revolves around Michael Brewer, a Morehouse senior who spends his time advocating for gay rights on campus.

“Morehouse is like this enclave where Stonewall never happened,” Brewer said, referring to the 1969 New York protest that galvanized the gay rights movement. “It just doesn’t exist in this realm of reality.”

Brewer, 22, didn’t come to Morehouse with the intent of changing it. But he found that he had no choice. He had arrived here from Oklahoma City pretty comfortable with himself: outspoken, proudly smart and, at 5 foot 9 and 300 pounds, hard to miss.

Early on, he decided he wouldn’t water down his gay identity.

And that, historically, has been a problematic strategy at Morehouse. The 141-year-old college has played a key role in defining black manhood in America. But with a past steeped in religion, tradition and machismo, it has struggled to determine how homosexuality fits within that definition.

The author of the piece, Richard Fausset, takes pains to paint a picture of the expectations of Morehouse College:

Over the years, it became famous for turning out the vaunted “Morehouse man” — a paragon of virtue and strength in a society that once institutionalized the destruction of the black nuclear family.

Traditionally, its students have been expected to follow a well-worn path: They were to choose ambitious wives, preferably from Spelman College next door, a historically black school for women. They were to become captains of industry, leaders of men, saviors of a race.

But now, more than ever, students like Brewer are forcing the school to confront a vexing question: Can the Morehouse man be gay?

Like many African-Americans who head to an HBCU for their higher learning, Brewer initially considered Morehouse for the kind of experiences you cannot have in a white-majority college setting:

In Oklahoma City, Brewer attended an arts-intensive magnet high school, where his best friends were white girls and being gay wasn’t that big of a deal. His senior year, a recruiter persuaded him to apply to Morehouse.

Despite its mystique — as the school that had produced King, filmmaker Spike Lee and NAACP leader Julian Bond — Brewer hadn’t given Morehouse much thought. But the college offered him a full scholarship, and he grew intrigued by the idea of joining a brotherhood.

“I thought it was time that I started to kind of commune with my kinfolk, with guys who look like me,” he said. “And the very second I saw Morehouse and stepped on campus, it was this sense of belonging. . . . I felt that I was home.”

Unfortunately, finding a home that meshes with your culture is not the same as finding a home that accepts or embraces your sexuality:

It was also difficult to ignore the fact that he had stepped into a place that had not come to terms with the presence of gay men on campus. There were the casually cruel statements from some of the straight guys and the tortuous code of silence from the guys on the down low. There were ministers-in-training who tried to convert Brewer’s gay friends with prayer. There were gay seniors who advised him to tone it down.

Brewer soon realized that the campus was in a profound state of soul-searching and flux on the issue of homosexuality. For decades, he learned, Morehouse had lived with a schizophrenic reputation. The school, unfairly or not, was known for harboring a large number of gay men. “Morehouse takes your money and makes you funny,” an old saying went.

Yet throughout the 1990s the Princeton Review regularly listed Morehouse among its top 20 homophobic campuses, based on student surveys. Aaron Parker, a veteran Morehouse religion professor, thinks some of that had to do with straight students being sensitive to the slights about Morehouse being a “gay” school.

Many of these views are still pervasive both in the black community and in mainstream society. And so, the article then explores the darker side of homophobic sentiment. Jafari Sinclaire Allen was a Morehouse student over a decade ago who found himself forced to leave campus after coming out. And in 2002, a Morehouse sophomore resorted to violence, beating another student with a baseball bat because he thought the other student was making a sexual advance.

The College grappled with what to do, with some alumni asking them to “screen out gay applicants.”

Instead, the school held diversity seminars — an odd concept, perhaps, at a school that has only a few students who aren’t black. But some faculty and staff members said the efforts encouraged students to take a more civil tone when discussing gay rights.

Meanwhile, another dynamic was also altering the climate: Students of Brewer’s generation were showing up at Morehouse more comfortable with being openly gay. Parker, the religion professor, has been discussing gay rights issues in his classes for years, but it was only four years ago, he said, that a student spoke up and identified himself as gay. Now, he said, it is a regular occurrence.

The result has been a small groundswell of activity. After the beating, gay students formed a support group, Safe Space, which Brewer joined. The president of Brewer’s freshman class, Jameel Smith, caused a stir when he came out soon after his election. Last year, students at Spelman produced a documentary that took a frank look at the gay and lesbian experiences on the two campuses. And a Morehouse political science major recently chose to do his senior thesis on “queer studies” — hardly a radical move at most campuses but a bit of a shock at Morehouse.

Morehouse is still grappling with how to reconcile black masculinity and homosexuality, much like many other segments of society. However, it is refreshing to note that the conversation has at least started and is becoming more open.

I kind of hate reality shows, and especially ones that are about a group of people who like to party. (Well, okay, I’ll admit that I did follow the first season of A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila.) But here’s one that I have reason to be excited about: Gimme Sugar on Logo.

From the GO Magazine article:

“Most happily, perhaps, is the strong presence of Asian lesbians on the show. Three lesbians on Gimme Sugar are certifiably Asian American. There is swaggering, deep Davonee from Laos; on-top-of-the-bar-making-out-with-whoever Taiwanese Bathilda; and alternately kickass and nurturing lesbian leader Charlene, who was born in the Philippines and settled in California as an infant. They are some of the first Asian lesbians portrayed on television.”

Davonee says, “It’s really hard because we’re Asian, you know—we’re not supposed to be gay! So I think [the show] is just gonna help a lot of Asian girls and families to come out and be comfortable.”

Bathilda adds, “And we’re three very different Asian lesbians—some Asian out there in Milwaukee can totally relate!”

A reality show about the party scene in L.A. isn’t exactly going to change the world; and it’s limited to the Logo audience, so it might not get much mainstream attention. But, c’mon, Margaret Cho and Tila Tequila can’t hold it down for all queer Asian American women forever! Since The L Word can’t seem to acknowledge that there are Asian Americans in California, and even add one token character to their cast, this is big news. I’m just impressed that out of only five main characters on Gimme Sugar, three of them (60 percent, people!) are Asian American.

What do you think? Are you going to watch?

Nina’s Heavenly Delights is the latest badly-written desi flick to hit enough recognizable truths about the diaspora that it’s fun in spite of itself. It’s a Glaswegian lesbian romance interpreted chastely, as if for kids. The female leads nuzzle and kiss without tongue, lest director Pratibha Parmar offend the focus group, while the drag queens camp and vamp to stereotype but are never permitted to smooch on screen. FSM save gays and lesbians from friendly filmmakers.

The problem with gay, desi, and gay desi flicks is that they’re made out of a crying need for representation, but neither ‘boon’ automatically makes one a good director. Nina’s is infested with clichés, begins with a spice metaphor, and ganks not only the ghostly chef from Ratatouille, but also the spirit guide from the atrocious Touch of Pink (Jimi Mistry, Kyle MacLachlan). It rings false and fantastical, with the most understanding desi mom ever written into film. But it leans on an indie soundtrack and a cinematographer who loves slow pans and tilts. Save for a tacky Taj Mahal model-slash-heartlight, it’s not as obviously amateur as Flavors.

Shelley Conn, great niece of stealth desi Merle Oberon, is taller with darker skin than her white love interest. She’s the top in this film, which is unusual for gay desi flicks. (Daniel Day-Lewis’ tomahawk cheekbones were clearly dom in My Beautiful Laundrette.) The plot is yet another battle-of-the-bands exercise, a ‘curry competition’ helmed at last by the great Kulvinder Ghir (Goodness Gracious Me) in burr, kilt and rabbits’ feet. The movie’s relentless focus on Indian food makes it more commercial, as does the lesbian angle; knowing her mainstream, Parmar let the girls get to first base, while any guy-on-guy takes place off-screen. It’s not that one wants to see Ronny Jhutti (Rafta Rafta) get it on — not that there’s anything wrong with that — it’s that it’s a blatant double standard, genuflecting in the direction of heteronormative marketability.

This movie was made earlier with more wit and bite as East is East, which too made great use of Jhutti and Raji James. But its ending video sequence has queens, twinks, brown highland dancers and white Bollyornaments naachofying to Briton Nazia Hassan’s classic ‘Aap Jaisa Koi.’ If you enjoyed Rocky the drag queen’s camp performance in Bollywood/Hollywood, you’ll have fun with this. And Shelley Conn (and Atta Yaqub) aren’t exactly hard on the eyes.

Nina’s opened in NYC and San Francisco recently. Here are the trailer and clips. For more desi Scots, check out Psychoraag and Ae Fond Kiss, among others .

In Blade Runner: The Final Cut, the 25th anniversary edition of that seminal film, little-known indie director Ridley Scott (A Good Year, Black Rain) uses yellow panic to convey a dystopian future. Impenetrable Chinese and kanji ideographs and Arabic vocals from the Brian Eno track ‘Quran’ signify a future where Earth is crumbling, most have moved off-world, and the seedy neighborhoods left behind are non-European. In Blade Runner, white flight means leaving for the sub-orbs.

In one scene, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) chases a replicant down a crowded street, pushing his way through a group of Hare Krishnas. The world may be run by spinners, androids, implants and megacorps, but like cockroaches, Krishnas and Chinese noodles survive. Make way, make way; Deckard locates and blasts Joanna Cassidy, in a scene reshot with the aging actress specifically for the final cut.

Deckard later tracks down a clue, decorative scales from an artificial snake. The music switches to tabla and desi vocals as he shakes down the Muslim proprietor. Paul Oakenfold sampled other parts of the soundtrack in ‘Goa Mix’ (’94). Artless though it is, Blade Runner’s multiculti melange is even today far ahead of ultrawhite sci-fi/fantasy films like E.T. (which crushed Blade Runner on their head-to-head opening weekend), Star Wars, and the modern-day Lord of the Rings. The only sci-fi films I’ve seen recently which were as multiculti were Serenity and Sunshine.

* * * * *

Blade Runner has held up remarkably well over time. It’s still gripping and panoramic and ambitious in a way not often attempted in sci-fi these days. Its atmospherics were remarkable. It was the Half-Life 2 of its time in terms of immersive, spooky audio and visuals; today, PC games are the new Blade Runner. The film’s models look great, non-CGI-fakey. With physical models, getting the lighting and physics right is pretty much automatic.

Later movies freely pinched from key scenes in Blade Runner. Silas in The Da Vinci Code was ripped from Rutger Hauer’s white-haired Jesus figure, complete with crucifixion reference. Daryl Hannah’s leotarded replicant crushes Ford’s neck between her thighs. The scene was gleefully echoed by Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye.

The ghostly, omnipresent advertising blimp showed up later as the floating zeppelin in Æon Flux. Hide-and-seek with living toys and assassins with calling cards have become fright flick staples. ‘Time to die,’ uttered twice in different contexts, is now a survival horror catchphrase. Blade Runner’s even got its very own ‘Han shot first‘ fanböi squabble, the unicorn scene.

Ford’s antihero, a moper who’s overmatched by his adversaries, was an extension of his Han Solo routine, coming five years after the success of Star Wars. Little since has been as grand. The younger Ford was handsome, Tom Cruise as a wiseass with a crooked smile.

But there are a few glaring anachronisms 25 years on. The computer screens, small, dim CRTs with underpowered raster engines, look laughable these days, almost like the purposeful pneumatic throwbacks in Brazil. Hauer’s sneering villain in a black leather greatcoat is like the cheesy baddies from Rocky IV and Superman II, and they come with lines just as stale.

Most strikingly, Hauer’s eyes, bucktooth and ‘Oriental’ lisp as he’s threatening Methuselah Man, and Ford’s effete, gay accent as he pretends to be a theater activist, would not fly today as broadly as they’re played here. Sadly, eye geneticist James Hong has made an entire career out of Orientalism. He was the mystical ping pong master in Balls of Fury this past summer.

The movie itself uses androids as a metaphor for American slavery. Here’s a snippet of Deckard’s voiceover excised from the final cut:

Bryant: Come on, don’t be an asshole Deckard, I’ve got four skin jobs walking the streets.

Deckard (voiceover): Skin jobs. That’s what Bryant called replicants. In history books, he’s the kind of cop that used to call black men n–. [Link]

… Blade Runner elides ethnicity even as it seems to deal specifically with it… The replicants… function as replacements for blacks, whose absence… has made it economically desirable… to construct a new race of slaves. Only this time… we’ll get it right: we’ll program them with a four-year life span to keep them from getting uppity… a fearful white technocracy constructs its new race of slaves “better,” meaning white-skinned and blonde. [Link]

* * * * *

Scott is dealing with race with more sophistication these days. Edward James Olmos’ young wife Lymari Nadal plays the wife in American Gangster, Scott’s latest, and there are only offhand references to her character’s Puerto Rican heritage. Denzel Washington plays a Harlem heroinista like an MBA with a gun.

But the scenes set in Vietnam may make you wince again. Ric Young’s Chinese general has the impenetrable stillness of Hannibal Lecter.

Here’s the Final Cut trailer:

In the time that we have come to know and love Stanley Hudson as one of the beleaguered employees on “The Office”, we have seen the myriad offensive ovations suffered at the hands of his boss, Michael Scott. Stanley is recruited by Michael for a pick-up basketball game because he is Black. Stanley, though, always seems to prevail, confounding Michael’s racist presumptions with hilarious consequences. The problem, though, is that Michael never learns. He never learns that it’s wrong to assume that Stanley is a good basketball player because he is Black. He doesn’t understand why he can’t drop the n-word when impersonating Chris Rock. He finds it hard to believe that the White woman with Stanley at the Dundies is actually his wife. He’s surprised to learn that Stanley and his family don’t celebrate Kwanzaa. You know what I don’t understand? I don’t know how Stanley held out so long, and for so little.

Stanley finally gets his due, though, when he gets an offer to join the Utica branch, for more money and presumably a better boss: Karen, formerly of Stamford and Scranton, the girl Jim dated before he finally broke it off and started dating Pam. The Utica branch appears like an oasis in comparison to the dysfunctional drudgery of Scranton. Who can blame Stanley for wanting to leave? Apparently, Michael can: in a fit of exasperation, he announces Stanley’s leaving to the office. Unexpectedly, Stanley’s fellow employees applaud. Michael is beside himself: “You cannot take the hilarious Black guy from the office.” Going on, he lists Stanley’s assets: “bluesy wisdom, sassy remarks, crossword puzzles, his smile… those big, watery red eyes.” He pauses, then continues: “I don’t know how George Bush did it when Colin Powell left.” Stanley insists that the reason he’s leaving is money, and anyway, it’s probably his sales record that got him the job. I don’t see Karen running an want ad for “bluesy wise older Black gentleman”. Michael, still, is incredulous: “Mo’ money, mo’ problems, you of all people should know that.” Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Again, I’m wondering why nobody calls Michael on his ignorance, but then I remember that Michel, not being smart, would never get it. But does that make it any less reasonable to try? How do you reason with the unreasonable?

Elsewhere in the office, Pam, Toby, and Oscar have started The Finer Things Club. Oscar says that, apart from having sex with men, it’s the gayest thing about him. Way to embrace the stereotype! Mainly, though, the Club discusses a book over a lunch tied to the book. E.M. Forster’s “A Room With A View” with tea and sandwiches. “Memoirs Of A Geisha” with sushi. Andy tries to join, but is unsuccessful. Jim’s eventual admission seems short-lived, as he may not have actually read “Angela’s Ashes”.

Eventually, the episode wanders from Stanley’s narrative to Michael who, if he cannot keep Stanley, will exact revenge on the Utica branch by sneaking into their office to steal their industrial copier. An interrogation from Karen, and Michael returns defeated to Scranton. He gets Pam started on a want ad: “Wanted, middle aged black man with sass, big butt, bigger heart.” Fortunately, we don’t hear any more of the ad, as Stanley surrenders. He’s staying — in fact, he never meant to leave. He just wanted to see if Michael would counter Karen’s offer of more money, and was surprised to see Michael calling his bluff. Which makes Stanley wonder if perhaps Michael is a secret genius after all. I doubt it. I’m disappointed in Stanley — he could have moved into a more diverse office with a boss who isn’t a racist for more money, but he stayed. I’m sure he has his reasons. What they might be, I can only hope to figure out.