Left of Black S3:E11 | Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia

Left of Black S3:E11 | Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia

November 26, 2012

On Thursday, November 8, 2012, HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) sponsored Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia:  A Symposium on the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. 

The event featured Jack Halberstam, Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California, and author of the recently published Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon);  Marlon Ross, Professor on English at the University of Virginia and author  of  Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era (NYU Press); Kathryn Bond Stockton, Distinguished Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Utah and author of Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer”; and Sharon Patricia Holland, Associate Professor of English and African & African American Studies at Duke University and the author of the just published The Erotic Life of Racism (Duke University Press). 

The event was moderated by Left of Black host and Duke University Professor, Mark Anthony Neal.

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Left of Blackis a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in  @ iTunes U

Live Symposium: Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia with Marlon Ross, J. Jack Halberstam, and Kathryn Bond Stockton

Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia:  

A Symposium on the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality.   

November 8, 2012   1 pm to 4 pm 

A provocative, scholarly, and lively event, "Everyday Racism, Everyday Homophobia:  A Symposium on the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality,” will take place on November 8, 2012, from 1-4 p.m. at the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies at Duke University.   

Bringing together some of the nation's most urgent thinkers on race theory and gender and sexuality studies, the Symposium is free and open to faculty, students, and the general public.  A reception will follow.  

PARTICIPANTS: 

Jack Halberstam is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Halberstam is the author Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012) and four other books including The Queer Art of Failure (Duke University Press, 2012). Halberstam writes and lectures widely on issues of gender, cultural production, popular music and sexuality and blogs at both bullybloggers.wordpress.com and www.jackhalberstam.com. 

Marlon B. Ross is Professor of English and of African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, where he teaches courses on British romanticism, African American literature, race, gender, and queer theory, and the cultural theory of space. He is currently completing his second book, The Color of Manhood: Remaking Black Masculinities within and beyond the Civil Rights Era, which examines the figuration of masculine competence as a racialized phenomenon in the domains of labor, political protest, and sexuality across the second half of the twentieth century. He is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lilly Endowment Fellowship.

Kathryn Bond Stockton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah.  Her most recent books, Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer” and The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century, are published by Duke University Press, and both were finalists for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies.

RESPONSE: 

Participating and responding to this discussion, and honored in this symposium for her key contribution to this debate, will be Sharon Holland of Duke University, whose searing, controversial, and prescient new book, The Erotic Life of Racism, is a key document helping to define and understand these typically unspoken interconnections between what she terms “everyday racism” and “everyday homophobia,” including the intertwined histories of racial eugenics and reproductive rights.  These recurrent strains in American society also form much of the discourse of critical race theory, transnational studies, American studies, gender theory, queer theory, and sexuality studies.   

MODERATOR : 

Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University. Neal is engaged in interdisciplinary scholarly work in the fields of African-American, Cultural, and Gender Studies that draws upon modes of inquiry informed by the fields of literary theory, urban sociology, social history, postmodern philosophy, Queer theory and most notably popular culture. His books include New Black Man and Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (Routledge). Neal hosts a weekly webcast, Left of Black, produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.

The Chick-fil-A Dilemma: To Eat or Not To Eat?

Twitter, Frank Ocean and the “Violence of Heteronormativity”

Twitter, Frank Ocean and the “Violence of Heteronormativity”

by LaCharles Ward | special to NewBlackman(in Exile)

As we all know, homophobia, like racism, is omnipresent in our society. It, again, akin to racism, is embedded in a culture that labors to both minimize and ignore the experiences of GLBT members in our communities. Similarly, sometimes this homophobia can, at times, be inadvertent; notwithstanding, it is still homophobia steeped in a society that is quick to place the “Other” label.  As I wrote in my senior thesis, marginalized bodies, especially bodies of GLBT members, are discursively and socially regulated and controlled via hetereonormative discourse that is informed by homophobic views and attitudes that silently discipline bodies for behaving in societally deemed “abnormal” ways. It is at times a discourse that is obfuscated in a language that is not quite overt homophobia but is completely covert homophobia—that equally harms GLBT bodies.

This silent homophobia became very present after (before and during) the recent emotionally moving, courageous and candid open letter by Frank Ocean about his sexual identity. I noticed this homophobia (not for the first time however) throughout Twitter, which to be honest, prompted this essay. It was both disgusting and disheartening to read tweets from individuals expressing such virulent homophobic sentiments that were coated in a decorum of I am not homophobic but… A discourse that is very analogous to how we talk about racism today I am not racist but… (Bonilla-Silva, 2006), that is, in a coded manner. Recognizing the importance of marking my identity position, I write this as a heterosexual Black male, who has spent most of his academic career pushing back against (and being pushed back by) oppressive structures such as racism, sexism, abilism, gender and sexual violence, homophobia, and heterosexism.

I am reminded of the poignant words of Audre Lorde on oppression(s):

Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.

Many of the tweets that I read ranged from blatant homophobic tweets to more inconspicuous (or, subtle) tweets. In a world where masculinity is caricatured and driven by a discourse of heterosexuality, men who deviate away from a presumed and/or performed heterosexuality are chided with oppressive epithets. It becomes less about marking what a person is—a presence—and more so important to mark what a person is not—an absence.

This is similar to what has been happening with what some might hail as the “Frank Ocean Controversy;” yet, to be quite frank, its only a hullabaloo because it diverge from the road frequently taken (read: heteronormativity), especially in this particular type of culture. Twitter has been dubbed the place to be for all things pop culture and even to confirm someone’s death, the latter is quite sad. I digress. Given its importance, I argue that it might be a productive space to illuminate, challenge and even subvert discourse(s) that oppress members of minority groups, such as members of the GLBT community.

Let’s take a few different tweets to help illustrate my above writing. For example, in a tweet sent out on July 11, 2012, one Twitter user stated, “now that Frank Ocean came out all of a sudden dudes don’t listen to him but they were the same ones singing Novocane [a earlier song featuring Frank Ocean].” In this person’s tweet it is quite apparent that they are pointing out a behavior that from their perspective can be interpreted as homophobic. One, it implies that because Frank Ocean acknowledged that he fell in love with a man -- now men who once listened to him have decidedly stopped listening to his music due to his sexual identity. Second, we can see that the very act of not listening to his music after his announcement is in act of homophobia albeit possibly inadvertent—though, I think it’s intentional.  

Another user tweeted, “ @Frank_ocean yo gay ass lol #Illumnatti” and someone else tweeted “Now Ive seen a lot of shit I got questions @frank_ocean are u the female or the dude w/ your boo?” In another tweet, that is both sexist and homophobic, one user writes, “man, I have a truck load of women who would literally die if they found out that nigga Frank Ocean was gay…#igottaknow,” here, it is quite clear that this comment is palpable homophobia—the assumption that if Ocean is indeed confirmed gay (by the Twitter gods) then women would (literally or figuratively) die. Yet, in another tweet, a user wrote this about her/his brother: “ my brother told me I can’t play Frank Ocean in his car he talkin bout he gotta get his mind right before he listen to it” marking quite aptly, the user writes, “smh such a homophobe.” I mean, the very fact that this person has to “get their mind right” before they can listen to an album of someone who has just identified as being in love with another man should send flags of unadulterated homophobia. It’s a shame that this is happening but it is by no means anomalous.

In addition to these comments, I’ve have also read remarks that exclaim that they would prefer Frank Ocean use gendered language that would conform to the heterosexual norm (i.e. Frank Ocean should use “her” instead of “him” or “girl” instead of “boy”). Such request(s) may not readily seem homophobic to a general eye, perhaps its just a fan’s request; nevertheless, it is just a subtler form of homophobia that has been blurred by a polite collocation.

To be clear, more than ever, Twitter became a stage for performance(s) of heterosexism—a marking of territory if you will. To secure their heterosexuality many users voiced their dissent to the recent news of Frank Ocean’s sexual identity, especially within the Black Twittersphere. Rather than embracing another Black man who (though not the only one) opened up in an environment steeped in homophobia about his sexuality most shunned and even refused to support his music. Put nicely, this is a sad reality.

Communication scholar Gust Yep (2003) reminds us that heteronormativity is the invisible center and force that creates, sustains, perpetuate, marginalize and oppress the voices and bodies of sexual others. In this way, Twitter became a disciplining mechanism to those who veered away from a heteronormative center—in essence, heterosexuality. Users, albeit unintentional, attempted to control the body of Frank Ocean, and, by extension, the bodies of other GLBT individuals’ vis-à-vis violent discourse. As men and women, we must move beyond a heterosexual lens in which we employ (allow) to make sense of our world. If we continue to remain silent around homophobia and heterosexism, even if we are not certain, we remain part of a system that reproduces it. Speak up and speak out, for as Audre Lorde reminds us, “silence has never brought us anything of worth.”

Writer’s Note: I am not the first person to write about this. Members of the GLBT community have already begun to speak on and/or write about Frank Ocean and his recent narrative. I don’t believe that I have a right to speak about “coming out” but I do believe that I have a duty to speak out against homophobia, heterosexism, sexism, domestic violence, racism and other forms of oppression. I have provided a few links below:

Tim’m T. West -- http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2012/07/deepdickollective-co-founder-timm-west.html 

Darnell L. Moore -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darnell-l-moore/anderson-cooper-frank-ocean-gay_b_1653017.html

Summer McDonald -- http://www.blackyouthproje ct.com/2012/07/coming-out-stories-on-frank-ocean/#more-26607

Recognizing the violence of language, I have opted out of posting more tweets, as many are extremely inappropriate, disparaging and frankly, hateful. Read more here: http://hatetweetstofrankocean.com/

References

Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Yep, G.A. (2003). The violence of heteronormativity in communication studies: Notes on injury, healing, and queer world-making. Queer Theory and Communication, 45(2/3/4), 11-59.

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LaCharles Ward is a Masters student in the Department of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University- Carbondale specializing in Intercultural Communication. His research and academic interests lie at the junctures of race, gender, identity and communication.

Murs Complicates the "Coming Out" Narrative: "Animal Style"

MursTv:

 

follow Murs at http://twitter.com/murs
directed by HOBOSTEWD (http://twitter.com/hobostewd)
follow Embassy at http://twitter.com/embassyhitmaker
buy LOVE & ROCKETS VOL 1 on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/love-rockets-vol.-1-transformation/id470396116

Cali emcee Murs presents the Hobostewd-directed music video for "Animal Style", the Embassy-produced track from his recent BluRoc release Love & Rockets Volume 1: The Transformation. "Animal Style is a song I did for many reasons," Murs explains. "The first was to be an advocate for people close to me who are out, and those who have yet to come out. It's also a love song, which is nothing new for me. But with this one I wanted to challenge the listener to ask themselves: Is the love shared by two people of the same gender, really that different than the love I have for my partner of the opposite sex? And finally, I just felt it was crucial for some of us in the hip hop community to speak up on the issues of teen suicide, bullying, and the overall anti-homosexual sentiment that exist within hip hop culture. I felt so strongly about these issues and this song that I had to do a video that would command some attention, even if it makes some viewers uncomfortable. Even if it came at the cost of my own comfort."

Trinity United Pastor Otis Moss III Speaks Back to Black Church Homophobia & Patriarchy

Esther Armah Discusses Radical Anti-Gay Forces on Up w/ Chris Hayes

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Up with Chris Hayes featuring John McWhorter, Michelle Goldberg, Esther Armah, Chris Mooney.

Protecting the (White Male) Gaze: Homophobia of Sports Talk Radio Goes Unchallenged

Protecting the (White Male) Gaze:

Homophobia of Sports Talk Radio Goes Unchallenged

by David C. Leonard | NewBlackMan

During his ESPN show on Tuesday, Bruce Jacobs described the Los Angeles Sparks and the Phoenix Mercury as “the “Los Angeles Lesbians” and the “Phoenix Dyke-ury.”  He returned to the air the following day to offer the following “apology”: “My comments yesterday were ridiculous, stupid and amateurish.  I apologize for even uttering the comments, whether you heard them or not, whether you were offended or not.” 

To date, little has been made about either his comments or his half-hearted apology that neither apologizes for the spirit of his remarks nor the ideological underpinnings that led to such comments.  His apology does not repudiate his own homophobic stereotypes nor does it challenge the ideological assumptions evident here, but instead apologizes for vocalizing them.  It isn’t the homophobia that warrants the apology, but expressing it on his show.

While Mr. Jacobs needs to be held accountable for his remarks, along with ESPN, which has failed to publicly condemn the comments, it would be a mistake to isolate this rhetoric as that of a “bad apple.”  The homophobia and sexism on display here is reflective of sport talks radio.  As with talk radio in general, sports talk radio emerged as a movement to “restore” the hegemony of white male heterosexism.  The homophobic remarks of Bruce Jacobs represents a systemic and longstanding effort to restore the normalized vision of sports as a space of male dominance. 

Like the efforts to sexualize female athletes, the construction of female athletes as lesbians reaffirms the “normalcy” of sports as a male domain.  According to David Nylund (2004), “With White male masculinity being challenged and decentered by feminism, affirmative action, gay and lesbian movements, and other groups’ quest for social equality, sports talk shows, similar to talk radio in general, have become an attractive venue for embattled White men seeking recreational repose and a nostalgic return to a prefeminist ideal.”  As argued by Trujillo (1994) and quoted in Nylund:

Media coverage of sports reinforces traditional masculinity in at least three ways. It privileges the masculine over the feminine or homosexual image by linking it to a sense of positive cultural values. It depicts the masculine image as “natural” or conventional, while showing alternative images as unconventional or deviant. And it personalizes traditional masculinity by elevating its representatives to places of heroism and denigrating strong females or

homosexuals. (p. 97)

His comments, thus, embody the efforts to silence, surveil, demonize, and ultimately discipline and punish any challenges to the white male heterosexuality of sporting cultures. Those perceived threats to this hegemony are met with efforts to reclaim the sporting space as one of masculinity.  From the ubiquity of images of hypersexual female athletes on various sports websites to the commonality of homophobic, sexist, and racist rhetoric, we see that despite the increased levels of diversity, the hegemony of white male heterosexuality remains a central facet within to contemporary sports culture.

The relative silence about this instance of homophobia (as of writing there has been only 9 articles about Jacobs’ comments) and the culture of homophobia within the sports media is especially telling given the widespread condemnation of various players for homophobic slurs during the 2011.  Others may cite the varied levels of celebrity and the divergent platforms as reasons for why the comments of Kobe Bryant, Joakim Noah, and Wayne Simmonds received ample media attention.  Yet, the comparative silence here reflects a level of comfort in isolating homophobia as a symptom of athlete culture, hip-hop culture and blackness. 

Writing about the politics surrounding Kobe Bryant’s use of an anti-gay slur during the 2010-2011 season, I previously focused on the ways in which a hyper focus on the homophobic utterances of black athletes provided a comforting narrative that reaffirmed white civility (as tolerant and accepting) and black pathology:

The culture and the blackness of the league became a subtextual source of inquiry for the debate about homophobia within the NBA, ultimately exonerating whiteness/American through a scapegoating discourse.  While writing about Don Imus, Michael Awkward is particularly instructive in this case: “Put Simply,” Kobe Bryant “was made to stand in for millions of well-known and faceless” homophobes and other who tacitly protect their heterosexual privilege who GLBT communities and their allies “want desperately to identity, put on trial, and excoriate because of incontrovertible – but to this point often easily dismissed – ‘evidence’ of centuries of anti-gay violence, heterosexism, and homophobia.  With Kobe Bryant, we get a similar reductionist formula, where Bryant and all of his past experiences provide a supposed explanation for his use of this slur. 

The ease to which Bryant was condemned and the perceived self-righteousness reflect the hegemony of the white racial frame.  Bryant’s homophobic slur, his perceived homophobia, his emotional outbursts, and his evidence “childishness” here fit a larger script about black male bodies.  This instance and the claims about uber homophobia within sports culture (usually linked to basketball and football and not say hockeyand baseball) and homophobia within the black community thus fit a larger narrative about black dysfunction, pathology and otherness.  “The casual sexism and homophobia reproduce the oppression of straight black men, providing a justification for ‘the denial of manhood to black men within a racialized society,” writes Michael Kimmel in “Toward a Pedagogy of the Oppressor.”  “‘You see,’ one can almost hear the establishment saying ‘those black men are like animals.  Look at how they treat their women!  They don’t deserve to be treated with respect.”  In other words, “the very mechanism that black men thought would restore manhood” – demonizing homosexuals, using anti-gay slurs, asserting and demonstrating traditional male values – “ends up being the pretext on which it is denied.” 

Whereas the media spectacle that ensues in moments involving black athletes legitimizes dominant narratives, the comments from Mr. Jacobs, and the commonplace homophobia of sports talk and talk radio in general does little to substantiate dominant narratives.  Whereas those moments that purportedly provide “evidence of ‘deviance’ for a mainstream public conditioned to think of black people and black men in particular as such”   (Neal, 2005, p. 81), the comments from Mr. Jacobs are rendered invisible as his homophobia and uber masculinity has both normalized within whiteness.  It has been imagined as little more than boys being boys. 

Seen as neither deviance nor a sign of a larger cultural failure, the homophobia that emanates through the radio is acceptable, left without condemnation, as such outrage is saved for the next moment involving a black athlete.

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

"I'm a fan of yo' 'I'm Gay'": Fat Joe on LGBTs in Hip-Hop

Open Letter to Tracy Morgan

Media: Open Letter to Tracy Morgan

by Craig Laurence Gidney | The New Gay

Dear Tracy Morgan:

Nothing happens in a vacuum. When you recently expressed yourself in an allegedly comic rant in Nashville this past week, you were adding your voice to a well-established chorus of hate that suffuses the black community. I am thinking of the Hiphop machismo of Dr. Dre (“I don’t care for those kind of people). The calls to violence by reggae “dancehall” stars like Buju Banton and Yellowman. I’ve heard this hatred rise like smog from the pulpits of black church leaders—from Bishop Eddie Long, to Ken Hutcherson. The rhetoric of whipping the demons of homosexuality out of the black body has a long and sordid history. How many black youth have been cast from their families because of these beliefs? How many more stay in the closet—or get married and keep their love and lust “on the Down Low”?

Read the Full Essay @ The New Gay

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Craig Laurance Gidney is the author of the Lammie finalist collection SEA, SWALLOW ME & OTHER STORIES, and an editor at Lethe Press.

Hip-Hop is Gay: Seeing Mr. Cee

Hip-Hop is Gay: Seeing Mr. Cee

by James Braxton Peterson | special to NewBlackMan

Hip Hop is gay. Not in the colloquial/vernacular sense of ‘gay’ as something negative or deplorable, but gay as in actually gay. I am gay too – about the possibility of actually having a real conversation about human sexuality, human resources and Hip Hop culture. It’s high time that Hip Hop had some real discourse about the homophobia that plagues us socially and I think at this point any other front(ing) is simply a thin veneer for the Hip Hop community’s inability to embrace the sexual reality of this culture that we know, love, and sometimes hate.

Recently, HOT97’s Mr. Cee (ne Calvin LeBrun) was arrested for public lewdness when police allegedly saw him receiving oral sex from another man in his car. According to the New York Daily News this is the third time that (in less than a year) Mr. Cee has been caught/detained for solicitation, loitering and now public lewdness. Even more recently, Mr. Cee pled guilty to lewd conduct in public. As J. Desmond Harris reported on The Root.com, the online response to Mr. Cee’s predicament was typically homophobic and at times downright ignorant. To my mind this is simply more evidence that Hip Hop is gay.

In his award-winning documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, filmmaker Byron Hurt unveils hypermasculinity and homosocialism as foundational pillars in the construction and performance of black masculinity in Hip Hop culture. The film also suggests that some of the rampant hypermasculinity, misogyny, and violent themes are ways in which men attempt to over compensate for their own homoerotic and homosocial desires. As more and more narratives like Mr. Cee’s emerge, the response to the alleged activities/crimes seem to be more indicative of Hip Hop culture than the actual alleged acts in question.

For his part, Mr. Cee originally denied these allegations, shielding himself in a playlist of oddly defensive rap tracks, and ramping up a twitter account so that he can defend himself against the perceived ‘plague’ of being gay in the homophobic world of Hip Hop. There are several situations in the not so distant past that have unraveled similarly in the public sphere. Eddie Murphy was arrested for a rendezvous with a transgendered person and rumors of him being gay have pretty much dogged him ever since. In a more honest discourse we might be able to consider that Eddie is more bi-sexual than gay, or better still, he, like many folk, have sexual preferences that can not simply be defined by hetero/homo terms.

You might also remember that New Jersey governor (McGreevey) who frequented Turnpike truck stops in order to satiate his socially repressed desires to be with other men. Or you might likewise recall Ted Haggert’s scandalous meth-drenched affair with a ‘personal trainer’, or former Senator Larry “wide stance” Craig’s arrest for lewd conduct. Maybe you haven’t seen the self-photograph of a svelte Bishop Eddie Long, in full pose – making a virtual/visual gift for his young targets of seduction. Bishop Long also, very recently settled his case. Mr. Cee is not the first and certainly won’t be the last public figure to be “guilty of” engaging in gay sexual activity.

Yet his recent plea, the responses, defenses and protests tell a powerful story of repression and utter fear of severe social rebuke. For the ministers and senators, their professional anti-gay rhetoric belied their personal gay desires. If we situate Mr. Cee’s alleged activity within the context of a long history of homophobia in Hip Hop – and here I am thinking specifically of the ways in which Wendy Williams stoked the flames of hatred and fear in the very first gay-rapper witch-hunt-like scandal. Nothing really came out of it except for the violent verbal attacks on Wendy Williams and the vehement denials of any rapper ever even having a gay thought.

Seriously, we cannot at this point in time as adult constituents of Hip Hop culture believe that no rapper (or DJ/producer) has or will ever be gay. It just doesn’t add up and this is not to weigh in on how/why you think people are gay – whether you think they are born that way or they somehow ‘choose’ their sexual preferences. Somebody in Hip Hop must be gay, but for me, our exceeding willful denials of this fact simply belies our culture’s repressed gay identity. We’re much like those ministers and senators who protest gay sexuality/marriage just a little too much – or just enough to signal the repression of deep-seeded gay sexual desires.

In Hip Hop this repressive denial often takes the shape of hypermasculine narratives with a no-homo brand of homophobia functioning as the frosting on the cake. Check out Funkmaster Flex’s seething defense of his homie Mr. Cee delivered in response to a rival station’s bit about Mr. Cee’s alleged public fellatio scenario. Flex goes on for at least five minutes straight, berating the entire station, defending Mr. Cee, and intimating that (gasp) there may be some folk at that other station who are actually gay, not (as Flex suggests re: Cee) framed by the NYC Hip Hop police.

But let’s pretend for minute that Mr. Cee is gay. Does that mean that his show, “Throwback at Noon” isn’t hot like fire? Does it diminish his pivotal role as Big Daddy Kane’s DJ? Is Ready to Die any less dope to you now than it was before you thought about the possibility that Mr. Cee was gay? I hope that you answered NO to all of these rhetorical questions and I hope that starting now the Hip Hop community can at last be persuaded to confront its irrational fear of the full range of our community’s human sexuality.

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James Braxton Peterson is Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC. Follow him on Twitter @JBP2.

'Left of Black': Episode #31 featuring Aishah Shahidah Simmons & Zaheer Ali

Left of Black #32 

w/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons & Zaheer Ali

May 2, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons in a discussion of sexual violence in Black communities, homophobia, and popular culture controversies surrounding Ashley Judd, Kobe Bryant and DJ Mister Cee. Later Neal talks with historian Zaheer Ali, one of the lead researchers on the late Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Re-invention.

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→Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning African-American feminist lesbian independent documentary filmmaker, television and radio producer, published writer, international lecturer, and activist based in Philadelphia, PA. Simmons is the writer, director and producer of NO! the Rape Documentary, a ground-breaking film that explores the issues of sexual violence and rape against Black women and girls.

→Zaheer Ali is a doctoral student in history at Columbia University, where he is focusing his research on twentieth-century African-American history and religion. His dissertation examines the history of the Nation of Islam’s Temple/Mosque No. 7 in Harlem, New York. Under the direction of Dr. Manning Marable, he served as project manager and senior researcher of the Malcolm X Project (MXP) at Columbia University, a multi-year research initiative on the life and legacy of Malcolm X and was a lead researcher for Dr. Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011), a comprehensive biography on Malcolm X.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Also Available @ iTunes U

Another Missed Shot: Kobe Bryant and the Politics of Homophobia

Another Missed Shot: Kobe Bryant and the Politics of Homophobia 
by David J. Leonard

Whistled four his 4^th personal foul and then a technical foul, Kobe Bryant headed to the bench.  With cameras focused on him, he shouted “fucking faggot” in the direction of the referee leading to an avalanche of public condemnation, a fine from the league, and ample debate.  As a Lakers fan, and someone committed to social justice, his choice in words was deeply disappointing.  “Homophobic Slurs Are Always Meant to Offend” writes Mychal Denzel Smith.  “The use of this particular word reveals something deeper. It's the belief that homosexuality is inherently inferior and an undesirable trait; therefore, to refer to someone with slurs usually reserved for gays is an attempt to belittle that person further. The quickest and most efficient way to insult a man has become to call into question his sexual orientation.” 

Yet, as someone committed to social justice, I have also been disappointed by the reaction from both his critics and his defenders.  Not surprisingly, throughout the Internet many have used this as an opportunity to highlight their own anti-gay sentiments.  Others, however, have denounced Kobe Bryant, expressing shock at his comments, while focusing on the necessity of a fine rather than education of not only Bryant but also society at large.

Shortly after Bryant slur became a public story, the Human Rights Council offered the following denunciation of Bryant:

What a disgrace for Kobe Bryant to use such horribly offensive and distasteful language, especially when millions of people are watching.  Hopefully Mr. Bryant will recognize that as a person with such fame and influence, the use of such language not only offends millions of LGBT people around the world, but also perpetuates a culture of discrimination and hate that all of us, most notably Mr. Bryant, should be working to eradicate.  Bryant and the Lakers have a responsibility to speak up on this issue immediately. America is watching.

Others followed suit, demanding apologies, questioning what sort of punishment should be leveled at Bryant, and otherwise condemned not only the slur but also the person in Bryant.  Yet, amid all the shock and self-righteousness, John Amaechi attempted to provide context for incident: “I'm surprised that people are surprised. This is common language when I played. It was an everyday word that I heard. I haven't seen anything new put in place (by the NBA) to tackle homophobia. There's no reason for it to somehow get better.”  Hoping to capitalize on Kobe Bryant’s visibility (and possibly his already negative standing amongst segments of society) GLADD and Human Rights Council emphasized the potential here to educate and inform.

The Human Rights Council called Bryant’s situation a teachable moment.  While correct in a sense, unfortunately effective lessons have not been at the center of this pedagogical exercise.  By excoriating Bryant and demanding an apology, by focusing on his being a role model (the consequences of kids using it in their schools demonstrates that this isn’t an issue specific to role models) the issue of homophobia has been individualized and isolated.  Bryant’s multiple apologies are seen as a resolution as the focus rests with his learning a lesson.  Lesson learned, back to the game.  

Likewise, the decision from Davis Stern to fine Bryant $100,000 further illustrates the ways in which Bryant required disciplining and punishment as part of the education process. Yet, another lesson learned.  In fact, the denunciation of Bryant, the calls for apologies, education, penance, accountability, and punishment is commonplace within the NBA.  The culture of the NBA is one of control, disciplinarity and punishment for intruding, transgressing, and rule-breaking black bodies.  It is a cultural platform where respectability and appropriateness, as defined by the white racial frame, govern the day-to-day operations alongside its cultural reception.  This is especially true for African American players who have a responsibility to demonstrate their respectability, something that Kobe failed at this moment.

For example, GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios stated, “Professional sports players need to set a better example for young people who use words like this on the playground and in our schools, creating a climate of intolerance and hostility. The LA Lakers have a responsibility to educate their fans about why this word is unacceptable.” Likewise, Edward Wyckoff Williams, waxing nostalgically about a better era in sports, further emphasized his failure as a role model:

Older fans will remember the days when sports stars were heroes, admired for their talent and stature. They graced Wheaties and Cheerio boxes, encouraging young people to stay in school and eat a healthy breakfast. Now, in an age where headlines show the growing number of gay and lesbian youth committing suicide, Bryant's rant is both disrespectful and potentially dangerous -- sending the wrong message to young, adoring fans -- who may well take it literally. Members of the NBA and NFL should be governed not just by their professional code of conduct, but with a great sense of obligation -- reflecting the often quoted line -- 'with great power comes great responsibility'.  If our athletic icons use homophobic slurs, how can we expect our children to act any differently on the schoolyards and street corners?

The efforts to link Bryant’s slur to heroes through a paradigm of nostalgia reflects the historic myopia here in that homophobia has always been present within sporting cultures (and the larger culture as well).  In fact, (white) heteronormativity is central to hero worship historically and present nostalgia for it.  Homophobia is not new, nor is it reflective of the a new type of athlete.  

The effort to use Bryant’s offensive remarks to highlight the pervasive problem of homophobia ironically erases the ubiquity and the systemic impact of homophobia inside and OUTSIDE of sports.  In effect, the public condemnation, the fine, and the overall discourse effectively isolated homophobia, linking it to blackness and Kobe’s visible signifier as basketball player.  In other words, Kobe gets constructed as the face of homophobia, evidence of yet another example of homophobia within the NBA and black America rather than society at large.  As evidence by Bryant’s deployed slur and the public criticism, blackness is once again marked as essentially disruptive, uncontrollable, as a source of “cultural degeneracy.”  Rhonada Williams, in “Living at the crossroads: Exploration in race, nationality, sexuality, and gender,” reminds us that blackness exists as “a problematic sign and ontological position” (1998, p. 140).   The ways in which homophobia has been attached onto Kobe’s body is evident in both media discourse and reader comments.  Imagined as evidence of his “immaturity” and “ignorance,” linked to culture of sports and basketball, denounced because of his failures to be a role model to kids, the responses consistently focused on Bryant as the beginning and end to the conversation.

To fully understand this situation, one needs to understand it within a larger history of the NBA. In 2007, after former NBA player John Amaechi announced that he was gay, controversy and debate ensued as to whether or not homophobia was particular to the NBA culture.  Such questions increased after Tim Hardaway, responding to a question about Amaechi’s announcement and the surrounding media coverage, told Dan LeBatard, “You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known,” Hardaway said. “I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.” Hardaway was quickly banished from the NBA’s All-Star weekend, while David Stern dismissed the controversy arguing that “the question of the NBA is always, “have you got game?’”   (Breton 2007).  While the invocation of meritocracy is both instructive and without much evidence (think Craig Hodges), what was most revealing in terms of race and the ongoing culture was the efforts to isolate homophobia within the NBA, with hip-hop culture functioning as the source of homophobia within America’s basketball arenas. 

Efforts to invoke Allen Iverson’s rap lyrics, where he uttered the phrase “faggot tendencies,” or the reactions of many players, who spoke of discomfort around having a gay teammate, served as the basis of a simple conclusion: Amaechi’s decision to remain “in-the-closet” and the firestorm that resulted from his “coming-out-of-the-closet” demonstrate the heightened level of homophobia within the NBA (Thiel 2007; Whitley 2007).  It was not a societal problem, but an NBA problem; it was not an American thing; it was a black/hip-hop thing (if an NBA thing it’s gotta be a black thing).  LeBron James fueled the controversy, offering the following: “With teammates you have to be trustworthy, and if you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy. So that's like the number one thing as teammates . . . we all trust each other. You've heard of the in-room locker room code. What happens in the locker room stays there. It's a trust factor.”. In response, Michael Wilbon similarly confined the issue to the sphere of basketball

Not to be too cynical, but I don't want to pay too much attention to reactions from a 22-year-old ballplayer with incredibly limited exposure, whose life has been little more than a series of tip-offs from biddy ball to AAU to high school to the pros. LeBron's reaction simply reflects the self-absorption of the day when it comes to young athletic gods whose transition from boyhood to manhood is in too many cases put off until retirement from the pros.

If we're lucky, the men and women who are both enlightened and emboldened will not only be supportive but will drown out the knuckleheads and Neanderthals and everybody who wants to slow the march of progress. Even one step away from tolerance, whether we're talking about race, gender, religious beliefs or sexuality, simply slows the march to the day when none of this stuff matters (2007).

Concluding that homophobia and ignorance concerning the GLBT community reflects the culture of basketball, Wilbon unknowingly constructs homophobia as exception, as a problem specific to the NBA.  Even Dave Zirin, often a source of progressive sports commentary, concludes that sports are unique concerning homophobia: “Sports is one of the last grand hamlets of homophobia. Amaechi poses a real challenge to the realities of the locker room, the press box and the owner's box: all places where I have heard homophobic comments used as casually as a comma. I give no credit to Stern's pretension that it just doesn't matter” (2007).  Others similarly wondered if hip-hop contributed to homophobia (Moore 2007; Amaechi 2007) or if other issues – violence, locker rooms – were at work as well.  In a league that regularly reduces women to sexual objects, that celebrates the hyper masculinity of its NBA players evident in the use of gendered/sexualized language (“Pau Gasol is soft”; “Sacramento Queens”), the hypocrisy here is endless.  Within sports culture that works to recode the WNBA as a heterosexual league as a counter narrative to assumptions about its lesbian presence, it is hard to accept the righteousness evident here.

Notwithstanding, the culture and the blackness of the league became a subtextual source of inquiry for the debate about homophobia within the NBA, ultimately exonerating whiteness/American through a scapegoating discourse.  While writing about Don Imus, Michael Awkward is particularly instructive in this case: “Put Simply,” Kobe Bryant “was made to stand in for millions of well-known and faceless” homophobes and other who tacitly protect their heterosexual privilege who GLBT communities and their allies “want desperately to identity, put on trial, and excoriate because of incontrovertible – but to this point often easily dismissed – ‘evidence’ of centuries of anti-gay violence, heterosexism, and homophobia.  With Kobe Bryant, we get a similar reductionist formula, where Bryant and all of his past experiences provide a supposed explanation for his use of this slur. 

The ease to which Bryant was condemned and the perceived self-righteousness reflect the hegemony of the white racial frame.  Bryant’s homophobic slur, his perceived homophobia, his emotional outbursts, and his evidence “childishness” here fit a larger script about black male bodies.  This instance and the claims about uber homophobia within sports culture (usually linked to basketball and football and not say hockey and baseball) and homophobia within the black community thus fit a larger narrative about black dysfunction, pathology and otherness.  “The casual sexism and homophobia reproduce the oppression of straight black men, providing a justification for ‘the denial of manhood to black men within a racialized society,” writes Michael Kimmel in “Toward a Pedagogy of the Oppressor.”  “‘You see,’ one can almost hear the establishment saying ‘those black men are like animals.  Look at how they treat their women!  They don’t deserve to be treated with respect.”  In other words, “the very mechanism that black men thought would restore manhood” – demonizing homosexuals, using anti-gay slurs, asserting and demonstrating traditional male values – “ends up being the pretext on which it is denied.” 

bell hooks takes up this issue with “Homophobia in Black Communities” arguing that “black communities may be perceived as more homophobic than other communities because there is a tendency for individuals in black communities to express in an outspoken way anti-gay sentiment.”  Furthering the distinction between black and white homophobia she writes, “yet a distinction must be made between black people overtly expressing prejudice toward homosexuals and white people who never make homophobic comments but who have the power to actively exploit and oppress gay people in areas of housing, employing, etc.”  Echoing the criticism offered by Dwight McBride in Why I hate Abercrombie and Fitch, I find myself dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the binaries constructed here as well as the tacit acceptance/privileging of one form of bigotry over the other. 

Yet, hooks challenges readers to think about how and why a public discourse around homophobia relies and focuses on the uttererances of Kobe Bryant, Isaiah Washington or Chris Brown, and not the ways in which homophobia is ingrained in our culture, language, and institutions.  Why do these black men become the moments for public righteousness and concerns about bigotry and not the ubiquity of anti-gay slurs at American schools, anti-gay hate crimes, or any number of examples?  Similarly, these spectacle serve not as a means to interrogate homophobia, heterosexism, and anti-gay violence as manifested in a myriad of spaces but as a moment to celebrate “us” (“the normal) as accepting and progressive in the demonization of the other.  It becomes a missed opportunity to interrogate our own language and prejudices for the sake of imagining the Other as the Other. 

hooks’ comments also mirror the hegemonic belief that black males are likely to express and hold onto homophobic beliefs, a fact that is complicated at best and patently without basis in another sense.   In “A Comparison of African American Men and White College Students Affective and Attitudinal Reactions to Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Individuals,” Charles Negy and Russell Eiseman found that blacks were only slightly more accepting of anti-gay sentiments.  These differences, however, disappear when accounting for religiosity.  Noting, “that most ethnic groups are not very accepting of homosexuality,” the authors conclude, “for both African Americans and whites, gender and religious commitment predicted homophobia.”  Despite these findings and ample evidence about societal homophobia, the reaction to Bryant’s comments and commonplace discussions about homophobia within the black community erases the larger issues at hand.  A CNN poll recently found that 48% thought homosexuality was morally wrong.  In 2001, Human Rights Watch reported that 2 million American teenagers suffered because of anti-gay slurs and taunts.  Similarly, according to one study, “Gay students hear anti-gay slurs as often as 26 times each day; faculty intervention occurs in only about 3% of those cases” while another found that 97% of high school students “regularly hear homophobic remarks from their peers.”

Yet, these sort of spectacles that imagine homophobia as unique to the black community, as particular to basketball culture, as reflecting the values and ethos of hip-hop not only furthers the demonization of blackness but in term safely confines homophobia to the dysfunctional Other in need of education and punishment.  By scapegoating homophobia as a sports thing, a black thing, a hip-hop thing, or a Kobe thing, the discourse lets a lot of people and institutions off the hook.

Responding to increasing criticism directed at the African American community in lead up to the November 2008, which put the issue of gay marriage on the ballot with Proposition 8, Ta-Nehisi Coates succinctly highlighted the danger in ignoring or defending in instances of homophobia, yet not using it as a moment to scapegoat and demonize African Americans:

I don't like the idea of being an apologists for homophobes--least of all black homophobes. Also, I'm concerned that my defense not make black folks think that this isn't an issue worth our attention. But sweeping statements like "no ethnic community [is] as homophobic in America as African-Americans" should induce some serious pangs of skepticism. Are African-Americans really more homophobic than, say, Italian-Americans? Are we really more homophobic than Hasidic Jews? Than Caribbean Americans? Than Puerto-Ricans?

As a teachable moment, we must ask what are we being taught and why?  What is it teaching us about society, others, and our self? Does it teach us about a larger issue of prejudice, homophobia or bigotry?  Did it teach us about language and the normalization of heterosexism and homophobia in our everyday life? Does it push us to think about language constructs “normal” and “Other” and the impact/consequences of language as everyday violence?  When a person (Kobe or otherwise) “hurls that antigay slur at a referee or anyone else — let’s call it the F-word — he is telling boys, men and anyone watching that when you are frustrated, when you are as angry as can be, the best way to demean and denigrate a person, even one in a position of power, is to make it clear that you think he is not a real man, but something less,” writes John Amaechi. “It is an indication of the power of that word, and others like it, to brutalize and dehumanize. This F-word, which so many people seem to think is no big deal, is the postscript to too many of those lives cut short.”  Did we learn this lesson or have we been too focused on what Kobe did and not what Kobe reveals?

Amaechi efforts to contextualize, to move beyond the individual, to reflect on the consequences have been unique to the discussion.  Unfortunately, much of the public rancor has “become another spectacle, evidence of ‘deviance’ for a mainstream public condition to think of black people and black men in particular as such”   (Neal, 2005, p. 81).  By focusing on intent, on sports, on Kobe, and the larger discourse about black homophobia, we have missed an opportunity, creating another moment where the wrong lessons are being taught and learned.   Homophobia, anti-gay bigotry and harmful slurs directed at the GLBT community are not a black, hip-hop, or sports thing, but an American thing.  A me and you thing.  

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David J. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman. His next book (SUNY Press) is on the NBA after the November 2004 brawl during a Pacers-Pistons game at the The Palace of Auburn Hills He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.