This is what Oprah Winfrey would call a "teachable moment."
In a video posted on the media-sharing site, You Tube, rapper/actor Bow Wow (aka Shad Morris) attempts to answer the question: “Are you homophobic?” You see, in a previous interview, Bow Wow recounted a story in which he needed a haircut and asked his staff to find a barber. When the barber eventually showed up, Bow Wow refused to allow the man to cut his hair because Bow Wow perceived that the barber might be gay.
In the latest video, Bow Wow tries to defend himself by saying that he's not even sure what the word “homophobic” means, nor does he grasp the proper response to the question. He goes on to indicate that he knows gay people and are aware that there are many of “them” in the entertainment industry. BUT—and this but is almost as big as his homeboy Omarion's—Bow Wow also indicates that he's a “man,” and so it's only natural that he has an aversion to being touched by someone who might be gay. The reason why I call this a teachable moment is because there are some interesting things at work in Bow Wow's response.
For some reason whatever ailment afflicts
But if I had to hazard a guess based on my own observations, I would say that it might have something to do with the place black people, for the most part, inhabit in American society: Blacks, for a great deal of the history of this country, have found themselves designated as the object by which (through direct opposition) Whiteness is defined. Whatever it was determined that whiteness was (intelligent, wealthy, privileged, clean, educated, manly, womanly, humanly, Godly, etc), blackness was not. Whites could only experience their imaginary superiority by enforcing blacks’ imaginary inferiority. Thus, a society was created and institutions were established to actively excluded blacks and actively denigrated them.
Having to shoulder the burden of being black (expressed as the “lack of” whatever the larger society deemed they lacked), blacks did whatever they could to survive the mental, emotional and physical onslaught of this contrived dehumanization. They were not always successful (the most insidious power of oppression is in its surreptitious effects on the oppressed). As a result, many blacks internalized this fictitious deficiency and behaved as though the lie was the truth; more than behaved, they believed it. So whatever it was that the whites possessed, blacks coveted (the sole exception being intellectual endeavors since the power cultivated there is neither vicious nor immediate)—whether for ill or for good—believing that only by imitating and eventually becoming more like whites could they ever be deemed civilized (no matter how dehumanizing the civilization process).
One of the most dangerous things blacks coveted from whites was their notion of manhood. For whites, masculinity rested in the loins of pirates and cowboys; soldiers and hunters, raiders and frontiersmen; and eventually, outlaws of any kind: Really, anyone who wielded a weapon of destruction; who conquered at the slightest whim; who took what did not belong to him; who raped and murdered and pillaged and plundered as he pleased; who was invincible and immortal; in other words: Jehovah. These things had nothing to do with manhood whatsoever and everything to do with defining what it meant to be a monster. But blacks (blinded by their avarice) and whites (blinded by their hubris) could not see that.
Another much-sought-after poison was misogyny. Because the philosophy of the white society was to define itself in opposition rather than by complement, they regarded women as The Other, too. So if manhood was strength, protection, and order, women were weakness, vulnerability, and chaos. If the worst thing a white person could be was black, then the worst thing a man could be was a woman. So imagine their shock at witnessing something they could not have been imagined (or did, but repressed): The wretched homosexual man (the only true wretched thing was the degenerate mind that regarded him as such).
Not only did this homosexual man willingly (or so it seemed) dispense with his masculine birthright, but he sometimes assumed (or so it seemed) the position of the female: Some of them walked like her, talked like her, dressed like her, and most appallingly, had sex like her. And if that were not enough, he presented yet another challenge: He represented the potential of any man (or so it seemed) to be likewise afflicted. It did not matter that one's homosexuality was as intrinsic to one's being as one's eye color or skin color. It did not matter that one could not be forced to be a homosexual (unless one was raped; and this fear reveals the heterosexual mind: He would gladly rape a woman if he could get away with it; so why wouldn’t the homosexual gladly rape him?). It did not matter because now the men were blinded by their panic and their horror gave birth to homophobia. Like the black man, the homosexual did not escape the imperative. Placed within him, too, was a monumental hatred of self. And so it was written.
And this is the toxin—one of, literally, biblical proportions—that has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. This is
It is what has infected the blood of men who believe themselves both reasonable and pious, but are, in fact, neither. It is, as I said earlier, expressed with even greater degree in the black community because blacks hunger doubly for whatever single thing whites possess.
It is from this double-wide cesspool that Bow Wow speaks; a victim as much as he is, himself, victimizer. In his limited imagination, like in the woefully limited imaginations of his forefathers, his manhood (a disguise for monstrosity) is so fragile—indeed so paper-thin—as to be vexed by the mere touch of a homosexual. In his video, he repeats the stupidity of the millions of Neanderthals who came before him; like them, unable to comprehend his own ignorance, much less endure the scrutinizing of it. Flustered, he retreats to well-worn clichés and deceptions, none of which have any art or value.
Part of the reason this pestilence endures is because so few are willing to challenge it; so few have the courage, the fortitude, the requisite steel to stand before an audience that desires nothing more and nothing less than their bodies swinging from trees, or atop pyres, or tied to cinder blocks at the bottom of the ocean. So few are willing to share their larger, grander, more inclusive vision, and I understand the reticence; there is an enormous price to pay for such honesty. Yet, I feel compelled to write this, to announce my truth, to stand up, to confront, to dispel, to correct, to challenge, to instruct, to teach every misguided poltroon who has ever waged war against me from the safety of their multitudes, behind their shields of foolishness, with their ever-shrinking gods. Even as they raise their swords, which, with time, have grown dull, I shall come out and, with my hand on their shoulders, proclaim: I love you.
And I'm a man.
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