I already know most of y'all kneejerks won't read it or engage with the actual assertions in it; I'm posting it for okp posterity. Hopefully this entire post gets archived.

https://twitter.com/RaquelWillis_/status/1446516461091135496

"Dave Chappelle represents a segment of society (along with white supremacists, hoteps, incels, and others) that is anxious about the waning power of cisheteronormativity and the patriarchy.

People like him know that their outdated, limited view of the world is obsolete, and instead of transforming in the name of empathy and humility, they lean into toxicity.

Chappelle reveals the ignorant tensions in the Black community about queerness and transness but doesn’t have the range to turn them on their head. In fact, he underscores the bigoted status quo.

It’s convenient for Black cishet male comedians to talk about LGBTQ+ folks as if our group is only or even predominantly white. With that frame, they don’t have to contend with how Black cishet folks often enact (physical and psychological) violence on Black LGBTQ+ folks.

With that frame, Chappelle and other Black cishet men don’t have to acknowledge that their hate of trans and queer people is more than “just jokes.” It regularly becomes beating “the queer” out of young people, shunning us, and even killing us.

Let’s be clear: Homophobia and transphobia aren’t just dynamics that exist in the Black community. It’s antiBlack to assert that narrative, especially when most of the anti -LGBTQ+ policies pushed around the world come from a white colonial power structure.

Interestingly, many Black folks think of queerness and transness as white inventions because much of the most regressive LGBTQ+ policies in other countries have been exported and stoked by white conservative and evangelical politicians.

Chappelle could have laid bare his insecurities with his gender and sexuality. We know so many Black cishet men are scrambling to understand their place in a cultural context where queer and trans people have microphones and platforms too.

Take, for instance, the DaBaby, Boosie, and Lil Nas X debacle. The tirades against queer and trans people being visible are really about their fear that their toxic and limited views on masculinity are losing their footing.

What does it mean for Black cishet rappers to contend with the fact that Lil Nas X has transcended beyond their success? They take it as an insult to their “rightful” place as the gatekeepers of Black culture.

And what does it mean for Black cishet men, writ-large, to contend with Black women, Black LGBTQ+ folks, and more charting their destinies independent of their patriarchal “leadership?”

They feel owed the power that white cishet men have historically had, and they haven’t gotten it. They think we’ve jumped a few steps in the March toward equity any time they’re held accountable for their transphobia and queerphobia.

Yes, transphobia and queerphobia are about fear. I don’t entirely buy the reframing of these concepts as solely about “hate for LGBTQ+ people.” They are fearful of losing a way of life, a claim to power, and a claim to an identity that is rooted in dominating “lesser” groups.

I challenge Black cishet men to interrogate what their identity means to them. Who are you without being the “head” of the household/tribe/culture? Who could you be if you saw Black community-building and cultural-building as the collaborative effort it truly is?

Who could you be if you took on expanding Black masculinity and manhood without having to repress other Black experiences of the feminine, gender nonconforming, queer variety?

It’s sad to witness Chappelle’s decline. He was once someone we could count on to punch up against white supremacy, but in a time where damn near everyone is “woke on race,” it seems punching down on the trans community is his shock tactic.

Chappelle is now a wealthy cishet Black man with little else to offer to his audiences, but low-hanging uninformed fruit. And cishet folks who claim the LGBTQ+ community have to thin a skin also lack the range to confront their own prejudices in a meaningful way.

Lastly, it’s particularly sinister for Chappelle to wrap his special up with a narrative that the trans community viciously went after Daphne Dorman. I don’t buy it. He’s using that to justify his hate.

You’re telling us that a community that has been so intimately aware of doxxing and harassment almost since the inception of social media is the culprit when we live in a society where trans folks continue to face systemic discrimination?

And for all the folks caping for Dave’s narrative about his “trans friend,” do you consider the trans people who will be harassed and experience violence because he told millions of people to not take our experiences and voices seriously?

Dave’s using his trans friend’s story is hardly any different than white people using their token Black friends as ammo to shoot down their racism. And the “trans on trans” harassment narrative plays out like the “Black on Black” crime narrative. Dave just skirts accountability.

Lastly, I’ll just say one of the greatest tells that he is disingenuous is that he in one breath claims Twitter isn’t a real place (or the concerns of trans folks don’t matter), but that the trans people on Twitter led to Daphne’s demise. It’s all nonsensical.

d

"But rest assured, in my luxurious house built on the backs of people darker than me, I am sipping fine scotch and scoffing at how stupid you are." - bshelly