Fuck Assimilation

I wanted to finish up June with a little story from a few weeks ago.

I was waiting at the bus stop on LaBrea and Pico with my friend Jessie (she can back me on this) that evening. That particular bus bench had one of those spiffy ads for the movie District 9, which I have been waiting to see with mounting anticipation. The ads, which are part of a very clever marketing campaign, look like this:


Before I say anything else (and you'll see why this is important) I should warn you, never ever attempt to take the bus that runs along LaBrea. You'll wait about an hour, only to eventually climb aboard an overcrowded, rickety vehicle with an actively rude and beligerant driver. It goes through a mostly-latino neighborhood, making it very difficult for the locals to get very far out of the area, which is not a particulaly nice one. It also makes it logistically harder, more time consuming and less desirable, to go up LaBrea to the relatively nicer, more commercially thriving neighborhood, or up to the Hollywood area, where tourists might see them.

So we're sitting on this bench and I look at it, about to say something about how I love this particular marketing campaign and I'm looking forward to the movie, and South African accents are hot, when I notice some interference with the lettering of the ad. Stepping back and squinting (it was kinda dark) we made out a new, shocking message.


I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. I will summarize the damage: the word 'Human' in the first line had been abbreviated to just the letters 'US.' Then the 'Report Non-Humans' had been changed to 'Deport Non-United S' with 'tates Citizens' trailing after it. Strong, hateful words to put out in a community that is already horribly marginalized.

I was surprised that I couldn't find anything about our bench online. There was, however, a similar picture of a different bench on Bunny Blog. It looks like this:

I'm the victim of my own racism sometimes, and I beat myself up about it. When you live around any particular ethnic group for a long enough period of time, you start to notice things that annoy you. I lived around white people for eighteen years, and that got old really fast. But people in this town really hate the latino population for what they see as refusal to assimilate. I'm aware of my own prejudices, and in my time in LA I've had the misfortune to meet many people who aren't aware of theirs, but that doesn't mean sights like this are any less upsetting.

I've seen discrimination on both sides of the line, and heard racial hatred spew from mouths of all colors and creeds, and what can you expect from a city where everyone comes to get away from their closed-minded upbringings in small towns in flyover states. All it does is feed the mindset inherent to the city itself. LA was designed to keep it's population segregated, which is obvious if you know the town's history or looked at the city plan (yes, LA was actually planned), and its residents are doing their best to make sure it stays that way.

On another, lighter note, I offer this photo, courtesy of faithful YWBT operative Brian, who recorded this piece of fagtastic defiance in a port-a-potty at San Francisco Pride this past weekend. This is exactly what's missing from LA's gay community, this spirit of "You know what, we have baseball bats too!" That's exactly what we need, an antidote to something like the Happy Hour 'Demonstration' hosted by Fiesta Cantina, a good safe distance away from anyone not already part of the choir, on May 26, 2009. Where are the fags setting buildings on fire? That's what I want to know!

Oh well, I'm not bitter. This rant should have ended several paragraphs ago. Happy last day of June, everybody!

Haha, Blackface.

Today, I'm again playing that constant game of catch-up. It's been over a week since I blogged. Here now are, as promised, my thoughts on Check and Double Check, the Hammer/UCLA blackface offering from over a week ago.


Check and Double Check is an Amos n Andy movie, the only one, starring the radio performers who created the duo, Charles Correll and Freeman Gosdon. (the picture above is from the TV show) It's up to you to look it up since I don't want to waste space laying out the plot. In attendance was Correll's son, Richard, who unbeknownst to me (I'm ashamed) is a successful TV director and writer in his own right. Ever hear about this thing called Hannah Montana? He invented it. Seriously. Anyway, he got up and talked about his father, his father's partner in crime for thirty years and about the film.

Refreshingly, Correll made no apologies for the film. He shouldn't, but he's also a rare brave soul not to take the audience's hand in his and talk to them like a ten year old. An audience of adults at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, California, doesn't need to be reminded that the movie we are about to see contains subject matter that some people might find offensive. We are there because we know that already and just want to see the damn movie. Kudos to you, Mr. Correll.


Richard Correll's parting words were something like, "I'll probably be the only one laughing for most of this, but enjoy." The audience's reaction, however, was extremely positive, and the movie holds up really well, thanks in no small part to it having been made well and to surviving in its original form. The jokes are also way less dated than, say, a Marx Brothers movie where they make jokes about Abie's Irish Rose.

I'm going to go out on a limb here: This movie is not offensive! Its central characters are uneducated black men played by white men in blackface, but their relationship is complex and plays out with admirable subtlety and humanity. There's an especially moving scene where Amos learns that his own employer, who was like a father to him and Andy, has passed away. His reaction, even in the minstrel-y dialect, is heartfelt and moving.

I will also point out a scene where they have to spend a night in a haunted house. As fearful as they are of houses' alleged ghost, they are still able to work strategize and keep their cool. When somebody's coat tail gets caught in a door, they don't behave any differently than Edgar Kennedy or Laurel and Hardy would. For a 1930's comedy made by white people about black people, that's about as unoffensive as you can get.

One more thing to consider: Charles Correll and Freeman Gosdon were both known to be supportive of equality both in the recording studio and in the real world. A number of black performers, including Hattie McDaniel, go their start on the Amos n' Andy radio show. They were even lauded by the NAACP.


This movie was the first half of a double feature program. At the end of the second feature, a guy sitting near me and my cohorts asked us about Check and Double Check, which he had skipped because he didn't want to see a racist movie. We did our best to assure him, in a polite and round-about way, that he missed a well-made and interesting movie that had a lot more than that to offer than some politically incorrect makeup choices. We did our best to paraphrase what Richard Correll had said, but it didn't seem to change his mind.

As much as I want him to understand us, I can see where he's coming from. We all have our red flags that we can't see past. It's like opening a window for a bird stuck in a house, and all they could do was keep hitting their head on the wall space next to it. Certain accents make me wary of people. Certain word choices make me judge them. And yet I feel like, in America, blackface is one of those things that refuse, at this point, to get past. By its very nature, it has become territory that nobody dare cross into. In the previous night's show He Fell In Love with His Wife, Lydia Yeamans Titus played a brutish, rabble rousing Irish housekeeper, but nobody at that screening seemed to bat an eye. There is something so outrageous, so unnatural and invasive about blackface, that its very appearance cancels out its context. It made me sad that, outside from academic-filled screenings like this one, this sort of film was unlikely to see much appreciation, or at least be given the chance it deserves.