An Invitation - Clean Your Own Damn House

An Invitation. Clean Your Own Damn House.

I just came back from my best friend’s house where I enjoyed another episode of Greys Anatomy. That show, with that cast of beautiful people just tickles my fancy. I like them all and I definitely want the cast to remain the way it is, including Isaiah Washington, the newly crowned Scion of Satan.

Surely he must be source of all evil because anywhere you go on the net you see the gays branding him a violent, bigoted, hateful, and wicked, idiot, asshole. This shit is totally out of control. Am I losing my mind, or did this start as a loud and contentious disagreement between co-workers? Because, in the real world where I live, people say very mean hateful things to each other in the heat of an argument, only to have to recant them, after it’s over. Even the valiantly put-upon gay community can turn their tongues into switchblades in the heat of battle. But instead of being a little story about an on the set rigmarole, it’s been turned into this myth-sized tale where Peter Cottontail was wounded by the snarling vicious, wicked, bigot-dragon (Washington) for no reason at all. That’s just what bigot-dragons do. Patrick Dempsey, the other actor in the fight has been rendered impotent and invisible. It seems he said nothing, did nothing, except offer up his throat for a now legendary choking, and then walked away mute and testicle-free. How kind we’ve been to dear Patrick.

How did we get to this place where the black bigot-dragon savaged the white knight and the “lamb of Grey’s”, prompting the villagers to come forth with the torches and pitchforks to save kith and kin? And how did the white queen in the pretty form of Katherine Heigl come to be elevated to the status of heroine du jour? One need only pull back the wizard’s curtain to see the agitation of a scandal hungry media, and well, the racially distorted nature of America herself. After all, is it so unusual to see actions taken by black men demonized or actions taken by whites lionized?

As a black gay man I used to shun having white friends. This is because it takes many hours of painful conversation to genuinely excavate and build an even ground on which friendship can actually happen. Difficult frank conversation is need to pierce layer after layer of denial and guilt, only then to have to struggle to root out the racist indoctrination that we all have to undo. I’ve spent years rooting out my own internalized versions. Then, as things go, I’ve been sent a large group of white friends who have several sexual orientations. So I have been a veil remover for the past 8 years. I have found that no group is more hardheaded and recalcitrant than white gay males when it comes to dealing with race. In the rush to be down with the oppressed status, I have frequently found that they utterly refuse to examine their own racist assumptions, and are quite annoyed when I point them out. This is often difficult for me because it is hard to deal with neighbors who try and clean your house but won’t move their own mess.

All over the gay blogosphere, there has been this very angry response to a really minor incident, as if Washington proposed a constitutional amendment against gay marriage or something. In the comments on gay blogs, you see gay men playing the role of the villagers in a Frankenstein movie, viciously attacking Washington, and extending their wrath to Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey’s Anatomy for not acting in what’s been deemed a timely fashion to condemn the utterance of the word. Give me a break. Predictably, these same gay men cannot see the racist undertones in their behavior, getting quite offended if it’s brought up. BUT, if one asks where they’ve been, oh say on protests against ultra-offensive drag performer Shirley Q Liquor (who performs in demeaning stereotypes in black face to mostly white gay audiences across the country, see JasmyneCannick.com if you care to know more) or what they know about an episode of the Real World Denver that aired December 6, 2006, where a white gay man, referred to one of his cast mates as a nigger, during a drunken call to his lover after a difficult argument. While I know the Real World doesn’t have the same real world, earth-shattering importance of sudsy entertainment like Greys Anatomy, it still fascinates me that the angry villagers never even stop to question why they don’t know that it happened. What’s that about? If part of the gay blogosphere’s function is to police relationships between blacks and gays, how could a story about the white gay man calling the black man a nigger escape the notice of so many prying eyes? Could the fact that the participants in the ugly incident sat down and talked the next day and realized it was a mistake fueled by anger and alcohol and decided to forgive and forget? C’mon now, it made such a good story because 2 episodes later, the same nigga put himself in harms way to defend his gay housemate from 2 white homophobes looking to beat him up. What a great story, that went unnoticed and mostly unreported, on blogs like Defamer, Perez Hilton and Towleroad.

Here’s something I know. Like the men in the bar who wanted to beat up Davis, in that Real World episode, a true homophobe is usually unrepentant. They think they have the right to feel the way they feel, and do what they do. Washington isn’t one. I know this because I met the man, when he starred in a play written by a black gay man. He may be a hothead with anger issues, but I am not taking your word for it; that he’s a homophobe. Thanks to your overreaction, I am not sure that “the community” knows what one looks like. I think he lied about what he said, because he never intended to hurt Knight during that argument, and he regretted it then. I also know I shudder whenever I see a picture of a black person on a gay blog, before I read the headline. I know the economic gap between white gays and black gays is enormous and we live, work and play in separate, segregated communities, and I don’t see very much outrage coming from my white gay brethren. Seems they are too busy trying to burn the black dragon.

If you are interested in reading a story about the Real World Denver incident, read that last few paragraphs of the article here: or here:

If you are interested in reading a story about what how the Real World incident reflects some white gay bias, you can go here:

If you want to listen to an interesting discussion about slurs on NPR, go here: Are all slurs created equal?

If you want to learn about an ongoing protest against Shirley Q. Liquor and why she is so offensive, go here:

Dragon Image copyright of artist, Bob Eggleton