KRS-ONE says hip-hop needs more women. I’m not sure what happened to female rappers. We used to have Queen Latifah, Lil’ Kim, MC Lyte, where’d everyone go?

In its first weekend, the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It grossed over $100 million dollars across the globe, with 21.3% of it coming from the U.S.

A gay man in Karachi, Pakistan was beaten to death after being caught with another man in his home by an angry mob.

Oprah says audiences may not “enjoy” the gritty Lee Daniels film Precious but she says people will appreciate the experience.  The film opens on November 6.

West Hollywood, a gay hotspot in California, is trying really hard to reach out to gay and lesbian tourists in order to boost revenue for the city.

Black comedian Wanda Sykes is being criticized for using white sperm to impregnate her white wife–the couple now have two white babies.

Are the Bonobo apes riot grrls? An article about whether the primates known for living in an unusually matriarchal structure are feminist friendly.

Newsweek has an article on ten black women in North Carolina who are either missing or dead, in what might be a case of a serial killer.  The murders began in 2005, and have received no national attention until now–except not really.

Ten women have been found slain or have been declared missing in Rocky Mount, N.C., in recent years. But the rest of the country hasn’t heard about a possible serial killer stalking the young women in this Southern town of 60,000. The latest victim, Elizabeth Jane Smallwood, was identified on Oct. 12. Why have the Rocky Mount homicides been largely ignored?

It’s impossible to deny that these stories would have received more attention had the victims been middle to upper-middle class suburban white girls, and the article discusses that very issue.

This isn’t the first time that Spike has talked about this issue so I’m not sure why the media is just now picking up on it (though it’s possible it is the first time he’s specifically mentioned Tyler’s name), but I have to say everything Spike is saying is what I’ve been saying all along about this man’s “films” if that’s what you want to call them.

And yes, Ed Gordon is absolutely right. Black people have no one to blame but themselves for these types of movies constantly being put out by Hollywood. It isn’t white people showing up to the theaters giving this man record box office receipts. And I’ll say the same thing I say to feminists who complain about today’s chick flicks. If you don’t show up for the good ones, don’t complain. Where were you when Miracle at St. Anna was released? Where were you when Akeelah and the Bee came out? If no one goes to see these films, Hollywood will not put them out.

There’s so many problems with Tyler’s films I don’t even know where to begin. But this Entertainment Weekly article puts most of the issues quite eloquently.

A federal bill was introduced Monday that would penalize anti-gay adoption states. States such as Florida and Arkansas would lose federal funding unless they changed their laws.

Former mob hitman Robert Mormando shocked a Brooklyn judge Monday by declaring he’s gay before being sentenced for his part in the shooting of a bagel store owner.

In spite of the fact that Adam Lambert is an out gay man, Details magazine still decided to sexually objectify a female model in the singer’s most recent photoshoot to promote his new album.

Gay Irish hurling star Donal Ol Cusack says the homophobic taunts and slurs have kept his mother from attending his games.

After reports that a gay man had planted a kiss on him at an appearance at a gay club, John Mayer sets the record straight partly because he doesn’t like the idea that gays can’t control themselves.

Illinois teacher David Burk was given merely a warning for making a comment disparaging “black fags” in the middle of class during a discussion about funding for the arts.

Rapper Warren G (yeah, I’ve never heard of him either) says he’s fine with gay people, as long as they stay in the closet.  ’Cause you know, people got kids and shit.

A lot of attention is paid to the diversity displayed on the small screen but Entertainment Weekly has an interesting piece discussing the race and gender of the people behind the scenes in the world of television. They mention some of our most successful and celebrated television show creators and producers like J.J. Abrams, Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon, Aaron Spelling, David E. Kelley, and the list goes on. Forces to be reckoned with in the television industry who have had a number of successes. But where are the people of color? Where are the women?

Even the shows that are female-centric like The Closer, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, –they’re all created by white men. EW cites Shonda Rhimes of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice as well as Silvio Horta of Ugly Betty as some examples of non-white and non-male entities but Horta’s only success thus far has been Ugly Betty and Rhimes’ Private Practice’s long term success has yet to be seen.

But there are some up and coming women whose careers seem promising.

There are, certainly, a few up and coming female executive producers these days: Rebecca Sinclair (an alum of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls), who turned The CW’s 90210 remake around; Stephanie Savage, who’s given both The O.C. and Gossip Girl bite (even though she takes second billing to the more auteur-ish Josh Schwartz);

The L Word’s Ilene Chaiken; and Weeds’ Jenji Kohan. Tina Fey’s one of the few female voices on the Big Four — and she’s clearly one of the most unique (not to mention critically drooled-over). But none of those ladies has gotten the chance to prove she’s more than a one-hit wonder.

Tyler Perry has had much success with his multi-camera sitcom House of Payne on CBS, and as everyone knows, has had enormous success with his feature films, but again, Payne is his only television success and we still have no examples of television giants like the aforementioned who don’t have white skin or a penis.  A few more examples of creative forces of color:

Larry Wilmore won accolades (and an Emmy) for The Bernie Mac Show, but he’s now taken to more freelance work — appearing on The Daily Show, writing for/appearing on The Office, and authoring books.

And in perhaps the ultimate statement on the fate of female and minority would-be auteurs, Mara Brock Akil — who created the long-running UPN/CW sitcoms Girlfriends and The Game, some of the last vestiges of African-American-targeted programming — has joined the writing staff of ABC’s Cougar Town (created by Scrubs’ Bill Lawrence) to make the jokes on the Courteney Cox vehicle more organically female.

This information is troubling but not shocking, as the most recent report on the demographic breakdown of writers in Hollywood was quite bleak for women. According to the Hollywood Writers Report done by the Writers Guild of America, only 28% of the writers for television were female. Does that really make sense to you when more than 50% of the U.S. population is made up of women?

According to Xzibit, his words were taken out of context.  But more importantly, Clay asks him about homophobia in hip-hop in general, and Xzibit says the environment is a lot less homophobic that people think, that it’s “just part of the landscape”.

“It started as just common place; it was just part of the language. I think the overtones that it creates, is not what really exists. I don’t think if you are gay and you go to a hip-hop club that you’ll get beat up for being gay. That’s not what is going to happen. I think words are the way that people express themselves—just like if you say bitch on a rap record for a long time you can rally thousands of women that will say that’s incorrect. You can’t focus on one single thing or bad aspect of what happens in hip hop and try to blanket it. That’s not the root of the problem. It exists, I think it’s how you portray it, and it’s how you use it. You gotta paint with a broad brush when you talk about homophobia because it’s a lot of things that exist in hip hop that aren’t exactly right, but it’s part of the landscape.”

Strangely, I understand the point he’s trying to make.  The overtones of homophobia in hip-hop or the homophobic language that’s used doesn’t necessarily indicate intense hatred or homophobia.  Calling another straight guy a “fag” doesn’t necessarily mean that you hate gay people or want to do harm to them.

But there’s two problems.  One of which is, while for many hip-hop artists like say, Eminem, homophobia is limited to their language and not necessarily their actions, there are plenty of examples of rappers who are outright explicitly homophobic and have no qualms about saying that they are.

The other is that simply because you don’t outright hate gay people and want to physically harm them does not mean you aren’t homophobic, or that your level of homophobia is acceptable.  I’m reminded of people I’ve actually met who have said things to me like, “Well my dad calls black people niggers but he’s not racist.”  Doesn’t that statement sound absolutely ridiculous to you?  So why is it any less ridiculous to let hip-hop artists (and society at large) use clearly homophobic language and let them get away with it because they essentially say “Dude, you’re a fag.  No offense to gay people, though!”

When are people going to understand that words aren’t just words?  That when you say “You’re such a pussy” when what you really mean is “You’re weak” or “You’re a wimp”, you are being sexist.  Or that when you call someone a “fag” because you want to insult their manhood, you are being homophobic.  When you say that something is “so gay” when what you really mean is that it sucks, or it’s bad, you are being homophobic.  When you incessantly say “no homo” every time you happen to come even slightly in contact with another man (men should never hug! so gay!), or when you eat a banana (phallic symbol), or wear a pink shirt (pink is for girls only!!), because you’re deathly afraid of people even thinking for a second that you might be homosexual, all of these things create a culture of homophobia and misogyny.

This conversation reminds me a lot of talking to naive white people who think that because they have black co-workers or black friends, or because they voted for Barack Obama, or because they watch Will Smith’s movies and listen to Beyonce that somehow that proves they’re not racist.  They think that racism only exists in backwoods southern hicks who wear white hoods and burn crosses.  They don’t understand that there is a spectrum of racism.  You may be someone who wants to drag a black man from the back of a pick up truck, or you may just be someone who clutches your purse a little tighter when you see a black man walking past you.  But either way, it’s still racist.

Homophobia needs to no longer be acceptable in any capacity.

Thursday we watched a film called Tongues Untied in my Advanced Video Production class, and given the subject matter of the film I was sort of shocked I had not only never seen it, but I’d never heard of it either.  In addition to the fact that it was extremely helpful by aiding me in determining how exactly I was going to use mostly stock footage to demonstrate how unequally we judge male and female sexuality, it was an beautiful film that addressed issues of internalized racism and self-hatred among black gay men.

It was made by Marlon Riggs, who unfortunately died of an AIDS related illness in 1994.  He’s a black poet, educator, and filmmaker that went on to make other films like Affirmation, Anthem, Color Adjustment, and Black Is…Black Ain’t (which he unfortunately didn’t finish working on before his untimely death, but was posthumously released in 1995.)  The film is not a typical documentary, in the sense that it has a purpose and it has a topic, but it doesn’t say “I am a documentary and I’m now going to tell you about something”.  It knows its message, it knows its audience, and once it starts it just goes.

The filmmaker himself is present in the film as is a prominent gay black poet named Essex Hemphill whose poetry essentially scores the film.  Riggs’ own personal story of experiencing violent homophobia only to be rescued by a white man acts as a through line for the documentary which features many different types of gay black men, from transvestite prostitutes to stocky middle aged men with dreads (who undoubtedly know how to “z-snap”) to passionate vogue-ers who unabashedly embrace the dance created by gay men in 1930s Harlem ballrooms.  But most importantly, it just shows black gay men, being with each other and loving each other.  Unfortunately, Riggs’ message is one that is missing for an entire generation of gay men of color, who are frustrated with the lack of support they have from either community that they are a part of.

Generally, I think minority communities are less accepting of individuality than mainstream white culture.  Maybe it’s because we’ve been oppressed and thus feel a certain sense of unity and cohesion is necessary to achieve equality.  Black, Latino, and Asian culture is very much about family, honor, and often religion.  Unfortunately according to many people these are attributes that homosexuality negates.  Just ask Will Smith who, when asking for advice from Denzel Washington about whether or not to do a gay kiss in the film version of Six Degrees of Separation, was given a resounding “No.”  Why, you ask?

“Denzel said white people generally look at a movie as acting. They accept the actors for who they are, and the role is separate. But black people, because they have so few heroes in film, tend to hold the artists personally responsible for the roles they choose.You can act all you want, but don’t do any real physical scenes. Don’t be kissing no man.”

This was from an interview in Premiere magazine from 1994.   To give Smith some credit, he later said he regretted not fully committing the role.  Telling Entertainment Weekly:

“It was very immature on my part. I was thinking, ‘How are my friends back in Philly going to think about this?’ I wasn’t emotionally stable enough to artistically commit to that aspect of the film. In a movie with actors and a director of this caliber, for me to be the one bringing something cheesy to it. This was a valuable lesson for me. Either you do it or you don’t.”

Apparently being gay wasn’t heroic enough for Denzel Washington but playing a dirty cop in Training Day (for which he won his second Oscar) was. Why is it that Denzel took issue with will kissing a man on screen, but had no problem with the fact that Will was playing a con-artist? The fact that African Americans’ most prized actors don’t want to touch homosexuality on screen is telling of just how relevant Riggs’ point is.  If this is how the black community feels about homosexuals, imagine how gay people must feel about themselves.  White gay men and women at least have the gay community as their safe harbor, but what happens when you are black and gay?  You are rejected because of the homophobia in the black community, and then also rejected because of the racism in the gay community.

Things have gotten better since Riggs’ released this documentary.  There’ve been portrayals of gay men of color on television and, on shows like Spin City, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Noah’s Arc, My So-Called Life, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the DL Chronicles, The Real World and American Candidate.  Unfortunately most of these shows are on cable where mainstream audiences may not see them and/or lived a very short life on the television circuit.  None of them are still currently on the air, and I can’t think of many current examples of shows that feature gay men of color beyond The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (also on cable) and Logo’s Shirts & Skins.  Note that of all the shows I’ve listed, most of the gay men were black, two were latino.  Asian, Native American gay men–they virtually don’t exist.  Oh wait, there’s Rex Lee’s character on Entourage, Ari Gold’s lackey assistant whom he treats like trash, and basically serves as not much more than a backboard for Ari’s plethora of derogatory gay jokes.

And in film?  You’re not alone if you’re hearing the sound of crickets.  Broken Hearts Club featured a gay black character who was completely inconsequential to the film.  Shawn Wayans played a predatory gay caricature in Scary Movie. Adam Sandler’s I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry featured a gay Ving Rhames, who was of course a hilarious character (clip NSFW) because he’s big, black, scary, and (gasp) gay! He’s not a skinny blow dryer-toting effeminate young white male! The cognitive dissonance is making my brain explode.  Some good examples in mainstream films that I can think of are Collins in Rent (great for liberal Broadway audiences but apparently not so much for the larger American public), and Mercutio in the Baz Luhrrman version of Romeo and Juliet–played as a gay man in love with Romeo.  There’s scatterings of other minor, marginalized characters in films pre-1990s such as Revenge of the Nerds, Torch Song Trilogy, Norman…Is That You, and The Boys In The Band, but three-dimensional, fleshed out lead characters, whose shtick is something else besides the fact that they’re gay? Hm. Apart from 2008’s Noah’s Arc: Beyond The Broom, a limited release based off of a canceled cable TV program, no.

What difference does it make, you might ask?  Everyone knows there are gay people of all colors, shapes, sizes, and socioeconomic backgrounds, right?  It’s just common sense.  Why would people think homosexuality is a trait limited to white people? I’m not sure, let’s ask these children.  In the controversial 1996 documentary It’s Elementary, middle school students who were given the opportunity to speak to young gay people and get any questions answered or misconceptions cleared up about homosexuality that they had.  When the gay activists of color left the room, and the teacher asked the students what they learned, one of those things was that gay people were not all white.

“I thought all gay people were like white.  I mean, you know, I feel bad saying that but they’re not.  That’s what I thought. ‘Cause mostly gay people I see are white.”

Another student says,

That’s where I got it from ’cause talk shows they mostly have white people on there that are gay. So that’s what I thought. So then again that kinda changed my little thinking about it.

This documentary is from 1996, so you could say people’s perceptions of homosexuality and race have changed since then, but let’s revisit the television shows and films I listed.  How many of them are post-2000? Very few.  Gay black representation in the media has dwindled since the 90s, as have the number of heterosexual black lead characters in television and film, and the same for women.  Why is that? I’m not sure.  But I do know in 2004 when MTV had gay men of color, and more than one gay person on The Real World for the first time, I remember a friend of mine at Fordham University tell me she was watching it with her roommate (a white girl) who said to her that prior to seeing Karamo Brown on The Real World Philadelphia, she had no idea that black gay people existed.  At the time, this shocked me to the point that I thought this friend of mine had made it up.  Of course, I was a naive 18 year old who had not yet realized the power of the media to manipulate how the majority of the world viewed those lower than them on the social hierarchy.  Today, I hear things like that and shrug.

I remember being a 16 year old boy and seeing Keith Boykin on Showtime’s American Candidate.  It was almost a religious experience for me.  He was intelligent, well-spoken, well-dressed, charismatic, politically astute, black, and gay.  For the first time in my entire life I felt like I finally saw someone in the media who truly respresented me. At the age of sixteen! I wrote Keith a letter telling him how much seeing him on that show (and frankly, owning everyone on it left and right) meant to me.  It was at that moment that I understood all of my potential could be fully realized.

All of this makes Marlon Riggs’ work that much more important.  It makes his death a lot sadder, and it makes the fact that his film was ransacked by the conservative right that much more angering.  As much of an impact as Tongues Untied had, imagine how much bigger a revolution it could have started if it weren’t blocked from television stations all over the country in 1989.  American Candidate was aired in 2004.  Imagine how much earlier I would’ve begun to love myself had I seen Tongues Untied.  Imagine how many less black online dating profiles you’d see that listed they were only interested in dating white men.  Imagine how many less black men would be marrying women and having unprotected sex with men on the side, telling themselves they’re not gay because they’re on top, and then bringing sexually transmitted diseases home to their unsuspecting wives.  Imagine how many less black gay men would have killed themselves because they were rejected by their families and their churches, and were overwhelmed by the sense of isolation and shame.

A straight student in this class raised his hand and said that he wasn’t gay, but that the way Riggs’ presented homosexuality in the film, he thought gay men were beautiful.  In response to a clip shown in the film of Eddie Murphy’s 1983 homophobic stand-up comedy routine where he not only degraded gay men but repeatedly used the word “faggot”, he said we’d come a long way since then, as people wouldn’t get away with saying things like that on television anymore.  His first and second comment reveal very different realities about the state of homophobia in today’s society.

The first is that it’s incredible to see just how far people have socially evolved, to even be able to use the words “gay” and “beautiful” in the same sentence.  It shows just how effective Riggs’ experimental documentary really is.  The second is that still, too many people are blinded by straight privilege.  While his intentions were undoubtedly good, I found it outrageous that one would think people don’t still say things akin to Eddie Murphy’s ‘83 stand up routine today–both in real life and on television.  The 2000 comedy special The Original Kings of Comedy featured many homophobic jokes, mostly from comedian Bernie Mac who repeatedly referred to his six year old nephew as a faggot.  The word and many others like it are still the premier insult used amongst young people in the Western world.

I, as a gay person, know that the world hasn’t changed that much since 1983, especially when it comes to the black community ant its resistance to addressing homophobia.  For every Barack Obama there are five Rev. Willie Wilsons.  But I can understand why someone who doesn’t have to deal with homophobia first hand, wouldn’t notice it.  The hope is that the issues Tongues Untied discusses are issues that come to the forefront, in both the black community and the gay community, so that finally gay men of color can on a large scale feel a sense of pride and self-worth that they deserve to enjoy.