In his essay, "Can the Queen Speak?: Racial Essentialism, Sexuality, and the Problem of Authority," Dwight McBride addresses the issue of "privileging race over other critical categories of difference" (266). McBride argues that race is not the only identifier by which black people use in society and using this lone characteristic in race discourse dangerously excludes homosexuality. Considering the texts we've previously read in class, do you think that race fairly paramounts other identifiers, specifically homosexuality, because of the oppresive history tied to it?
McBride opposes a number of ideas posed by Frances Cress Welsing, one being that "the effect of effeminizing influences on black men as the achievement of racist programming." Welsing argues that female-headed households, contemporary clothing styles and television characters such as Jimmy Walker threaten black manhood (264). Rather than provide counter examples of the effects of these influences on black men, McBride simply disagrees with Welsing and asserts that Welsing's point of view gives "no room for a nurturing view of manhood" (265). How has race discourse affected the presence or lack thereof of positive homosexual and heterosexual role models in the lives of black men and women?
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America's sordid history of oppression and institutionalized racism HAS undoubtedly affected the manhood, marginalization (and yes even the increasing effeminization), of Black men. Any sweeping disregard for this reality is an opinion which begs for historical data and/or evidence to support the notion. Though McBride is passionate and clearly qualified to address his own experience as a Black male who happens to be homosexual-he fails to provide sufficient data to support his conjectures or to undermine the proven scholarship of brilliant scholars like Dr. Frances Cress Welsing.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, "Can the Queen Speak?" would be better served by providing a critical argument for the need to eliminate discrimination in ALL of its forms (racial, economic, sexual, spiritual) and not in denigrating the view of those with alternate points.