SuperWeed

Over at RaceWire, there’s an interesting commentary on a controversy I missed. Evidently, otherwise righteous defenders of evolution are going around comparing creepy Creationists to “welfare queens.” Rinku Sen cheers Stephen Colbert for challenging Kenneth Miller on such rhetoric and calls for more white people to do the same.

That reminded me that I once wrote a piece about the “queen” slur as applied to black women, first by Ronald Reagan to recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children and then to other black women like Lani Guinier (the “quota queen”) and Jocelyn Elders (the “condom queen”). I wrote the piece for an LGBTQ newspaper, calling on gay men (also often called “queens”) to be creative in showing solidarity with black women.

Thinking about that piece got me motivated to finally do what I’ve been getting ready to do for more than a year: Start posting my old pieces from print-only and defunct web publications online. So (drum roll)… on the new “texts by pattrice jones” archive… from waaaay back in 1993… here’s “Warlords & Condom Queens.”

It starts in Somalia and ends with Radical Faeries, which was pretty typical of my style back then. Check it out then (here or there) tell me what you think. I’ll try to remember to post a notice here when I post more golden oldies but please do subscribe to that blog if you want to be sure to be notified when new-old essays, interviews, book reviews, chapters, and feature articles go up.

July 8th, 2008 | Category: Queer, Race | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL