If you listen to mainstream society, we’ve supposedly and miraculously entered a post-racial society with the election of President Barack Obama. Yet, in reality, there appears to be an outbreak of racist exhibitions, letters, emails, videos and a multiplicity of other performances that shamelessly demean black people at every opportunity.
Inter-cultural relations have degenerated to the point where even a gay person, one of the most vilified demographics in the nation, believes it’s okay to perform racist caricatures of black people.
The latest is Charles Knipp, an admitted gay performer, who, under his alter ego Shirley Q. Liquor, bills himself/herself as the “Queen of Ignunce.” Through his hideous interpretations of Tyler Perry’s Madea, he depicts the black woman as an illiterate, welfare collecting, mother of 19 children who drives a Cadillac and attends Mount Holy Olive Second Baptist Zion Church of God in Christ of the Resurrected Latter-Day AME CME. And he performs this ridiculous interpretation in blackface.
According to the Miami New Times, Liberty City activist Rev. Richard Dunn has hatched a plan to mobilize protesters via his radio show he co-hosts with Bishop Victor T. Curry on WMBM-AM (1490).
“It shows that unfortunately racism is alive and well in America,” Dunn says. “It shows that we are not serious or sensitive enough about the rights of everyone.”
Knipp is scheduled to perform not once, but twice at the this weekend’s Exxxotica convention in Miami Beach.
Exxxotica spokesman Woody Graber, according to blogsite jasmynecannick.com, declined to rationalize Knipp’s act. He would only characterize the convention as an event developed to “showcase a wide variety of exhibitors, seminars, and attendees who embrace alternative lifestyles and … enjoy a multitude of personal pleasures. Although all may not be of one mind, at Exxxotica we all agree to not pass judgment.”
What does that say about our society when a white gay performer, perpetually seeking acceptance in society and who decries discrimination in America, believes it’s okay to belittle black women with impunity? —terry shropshire
