“Twerk” vs. “Tip Drill”: The Clear Difference Between Empowerment And Degradation

In the early hours of Tuesday morning (Jan. 29), Jussie Smollett became the victim of a senseless racist and homophobic crime in Chicago. Two white men viciously attacked him with what Smollett believed to be bleach, fractured one of his ribs and spewed out a bombastic diatribe of disgusting discriminatory slurs. "Aren't you that f***ot 'Empire' n****r?"  the masked men reportedly asked him.

The two unidentified men reportedly also wrapped a noose around the 35-year-old’s neck and reportedly yelled out, “This is MAGA country.

Let’s call it what it is: what happened to Jussie is a blatant hate crime by two homophobic white supremacists—the same type of white supremacists who put the lives of unarmed straight cisgender black men and women in danger, and the same type of white supremacists who call the cops when a black man is in his backyard living his best life and minding his own damn business.

The actor has received a slew of support from members of the LGBTQ+community in and out of Hollywood, as well as black women alike. But aside from a few Hollywood peers and allies, those same straight black men who are targeted by white supremacists have been largely silent. Their probable homophobic attitudes or silence towards their black gay brothers can be just as lethal as the same white men that kill them and incarcerate them at more disproportionate rates than any other minority in America.

White supremacy is one thing, but the toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia that plagues black and brown communities is another.  

To this day, as a 27-year-old Dominican gay man, I say a prayer when going inside a barbershop because I don’t feel safe. Most black and brown men find the shop as a sacred place of camaraderie with their boys. For me, it’s torture. “Nah he’s a f***ot, he lives up the block,” I heard a Dominican barber say to a black client. They both laughed in unison at a gay man who just left the shop in my neighborhood in the Bronx. I just sat there hoping I wasn’t their next target.

I’ve never felt supported by straight men to safely be my full self in front of them, with the exception of a few who are part of my personal or professional life. (And maybe that’s a problem I need some soul searching on.) What makes it worse is that when given the platform and opportunity to educate themselves on LGBTQ+ people, prominent voices in the media take it as a chance to display their ignorance.

In the summer of 2017, author and trans activist Janet Mock visited  Power 105.1 The Breakfast Club to promote her new book, Surpassing Certainty. Days after her appearance, comedian Lil Duval went on the show and was asked what he would do if after four months of dating, a girlfriend disclosed she’s transgender. From here on, things took a turn for the worst. Duval made transphobic comments towards Mock and the community.

Mock detailed the experience in an essay in Allure. “Duval purposefully misgendered me (as the hosts laugh, thereby cosigning) in an attempt to put me in my place and erase my womanhood,” she writes. “Their fragile masculinity would not allow them to recognize a simple truth: I am an accomplished, beautiful black trans woman. Your willful ignorance will not stop me from being exactly who I am.”

Then, of course, there’s the whole Kevin Hart debacle with his homophobic tweets from 2011 and his Oscar hosting gig, but I digress.

What cisgender straight black men need to acknowledge is that in spite of identifying as queer, we’re still black people and our black bodies are just as susceptible to violence and injustice as theirs are. In a 1984 interview with The Village Voice, author James Baldwin succinctly explained this.

“A black gay person who is a sexual conundrum to society is already, long before the question of sexuality comes into it, menaced and marked because he’s black or she’s black,” Baldwin said. “The sexual question comes after the question of color; it’s simply one more aspect of the danger in which all black people live.”

He also went on to break down the chasm that exists between white queer people and queer people of color—or, really, just white people versus people of color, among all demographics when it comes to the benefits of white privilege.   “I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe,” he added. “The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. Their reaction seems to me in direct proportion to the sense of feeling cheated of the advantages which accrue to white people in a white society.”

That same racial dichotomy and breakdown of privilege that Baldwin expressed back then is still prevalent to how people on both sides of the spectrum responded to Smollett’s attack. Ellen DeGeneres, a privileged queer white woman, showed her support to Jussie by including that he came out on her show four years ago. Nowhere did she acknowledge that while being gay, he is also a black man.

Four years ago, @JussieSmollett came out on my show. I’m sending him and his family so much love today. ❤️

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) January 29, 2019

On the opposite side of that, many in the black community have spoken out on the attack by only highlighting the racial aspect of it, and ignoring Jussie’s gay identity. Prominent film producer and activist Tariq Nasheed blatantly refuses to acknowledge the intersectionality that comes with being a gay black man. A gay black man doesn’t have the privilege to pick and choose which marginalized identity he wears in society on any given day when he can be attacked for either of them.

Instead, he just denounces the white LGBT community for supporting Jussie but allegedly taking advantage of the situation and using their queerness as mechanism to manipulate identity politics to their favor.

The “intersectionality” crowd is totally silent when white media outlets ignore the racial element of the #JussieSmollett story.

Yet they vehemently correct & chastise Black ppl who don’t mention the homophobic aspect.

That speaks volumes

— Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) January 29, 2019

See what I’m saying👇🏾 https://t.co/aSkQc98sBv

— Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) January 29, 2019

W H A T ?? https://t.co/4pNRL5FIZO

— Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) January 29, 2019

With that being said, you can’t support the black and brown LGBTQ+ community if you’re not going to acknowledge the intersections between their race and their queer identities. That’s like concealing the issue with a tone deaf “all lives matter” slogan, which puts a bandaid on the identity you choose not to recognize.

I don’t care how historically homophobic black culture can be. That will never be a valid excuse for one’s silence or ignorance. In Hollywood, music, politics and sports, there are tons of black men with influence who choose to turn a blind eye or “mind their business,” and it’s not helping anyone.

Yet the silence that’s more weaponized comes from black men in our own communities. Usually when something happens to a cisgender black man that can take or has taken away his life, the community is in uproar. But when it comes to queer folks, the protests aren’t as loud. And for black transgender women, who suffer the most from fatal violence among the community, they are met with silence.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, approximately 26 trans women were killed in 2018, most of which were black. “Many people find it difficult to see that violence is intersectional, and that we must analyze it with nuance, understanding that various oppressive systems create the conditions for a specific instance to occur,” Raquel Willis wrote for Out. “This is why we often see initiatives that focus on alleviating threats of violence for one specific, marginalized identity group at a time: white cisgender women, white LGBTQ+ people, Black cishet men, and on and on.”

Here’s a message to all black men: we need your influence and your voice. You can’t just be vocal when rapping about the inequalities of the straight black man from the ‘hood in America. You can’t just be vocal about supporting Colin Kaepernick on his kneeling stance. You can’t just march in a Black Lives Matter rally, and not acknowledge your queer brothers and sisters marching right beside you—because our lives matter, just like yours do.

On Tuesday (Jan. 16), Future made the revelation that he was sober. Who knows, maybe he traded the lean in for alkaline water and fresh juices. While this may have come as a shock to fans who have often linked the rapper to heavy drug use, what was even more astonishing was that Future concealed his sobriety for weeks or even months—not because he was diligently working on weaning himself off of the dangerous drug of choice without distractions, but because he feared how the announcement would affect his music stats and fan base.

It’s certainly customary for fans to tie a characteristic or specific subject to an artist’s music or brand. For instance, Mary J. Blige makes breakup music, Trey Songz markets sex, and Lil Peep frequently made emo, drug music. Future’s artistry in particular is deeply rooted in drug use as a method of self-medication to cope with heartache, pain and suffering. He’s arguably recognized as the godfather of this new generation of mumble rappers, who romanticize drug use as a form of self-care. Percocets and molly not only served as the tools for a catchy chorus in 2017’s “Mask Off,” but also provided a lens into Future’s real-life pastime.

When messages such as a breakup, sex and addiction become the primary focuses of an artist’s narrative, we inherently expect them to continue with those trends, especially if the music is a success. Future’s DS2 debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Mary J’s 2017 studio album Strength of a Woman—which discussed her public divorce from manager and husband Martin “Kendu” Isaacs—debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. But Hendrix’s inability to share such a positive transition in his life says more about the negative effects of fan culture and the music industry as a whole than it says about him.

“I didn’t wanna tell nobody I stopped drinking lean,” Future admitted to Genius. “I didn’t tell because I felt like, then they gon’ be like, ‘Oh, his music changed because he stopped drinking lean.’ It’s just hard when your fans [are] so used to a certain persona you be afraid to change.”

The weeknd needs to get back on drugs and make some good music like he used to

— alaina (@lalalaina_) January 13, 2017

Fans naturally equate spiraling and unhealthy behavior with good music and would rather see their favorite musician continue to spiral for the sake of their craft and our entertainment. Although there are new movements promoting mental health awareness and self-care within the hip-hop community, fans still praise the destruction of the genre’s biggest artists.

When The Weeknd split with his girlfriend Bella Hadid in 2016, many prayed for another dark, narcotic-fueled album comparable to 2011’s stellar House of Balloons, which was released during a time when he was deeply involved with cocaine and pill-popping. Twitter users seemingly encouraged such behavior, leveraging musical satisfaction over the well-being of the XO artist.

While fan approval shouldn’t necessarily dictate an artist’s creative process, the possibility of negative feedback that comes with “switching things up” can often be too loud to ignore. In an interview with VIBE, A Boogie wit da Hoodie also reiterated his hesitation with stepping away from his usual themes of relationships and heartbreak on his No. 1 album, Hoodie SZN. He ultimately included both versions of himself—the heartbreak and the new A Boogie—in order to appease his loyal fan base and evolve as an artist. “I feel like all my fans saw what I was doing, but they just didn’t care. They loved how I started so much that they didn’t care about the switch up. They wanted me to be heartbroken.”

Going to jail unjustly was the best thing to ever happen to Meek Mill. Greatest resurrection story since Jesus Christ pic.twitter.com/EXiOKoT72v

— John Canales (@_JohnCanales) April 25, 2018

The association of success and pain doesn’t only revolve around drug use or broken relationships. It was suggested that Meek Mill’s brief incarceration for a probation violation set the foundation for his 2018 comeback and No. 1 album, CHAMPIONSHIPS.

“Going to jail unjustly was the best thing to ever happen to Meek Mill. Greatest resurrection story since Jesus Christ,” one user wrote on Twitter. Despite the frequent protests for his immediate prison release, it’s almost as if some fans approved of his demise once it was over because it somehow forced him to make better music.

There is a danger in requiring artists to stick to their brands, especially when it focuses on abusing and glorifying a harmful lifestyle. Fans have to be willing to allow artists to evolve because that transformation extends far beyond the music; their art mimics life. You will not die if artists like Future or The Weeknd pivot the focus of their music away from chronicling drug use, but they could, and that should be the only point that matters here.

If we can support artists like 21 Savage as he explores other subjects besides his chains (Nipsey Hussle cosigned 21’s decision after DJ Akademiks suggested that he didn’t want to hear anything else from the artist) or salute Jay-Z as he's evolved into talking about investing in stocks and collecting priceless artwork, then it shouldn’t be difficult to endorse the Future's new chapter—whatever that may be—as well.

Future is gearing up to release his new album The WZRD on Jan. 18, and if you can seriously criticize his music not because of the quality but because it doesn’t sound like his typical doped up brand, then Future was never the problem—it’s you.

The saying goes “history often repeats itself” but for those who are black and Queer, that history is often violent and unprotected.

A déjà vu moment for the LGBTQ community happened last week when reports surfaced of another black gay man dying in the home of wealthy Democratic donor Ed Buck. New and disturbingly fresh to some, the story isn’t only stranger than fiction but proves gay black men are fetishized in plain sight.

Let’s back up a bit. On July 27, 2017, police were called to the home of Buck in West Hollywood, Calif., where the body of 26-year-old Gemmel Moore was found unresponsive. The Los Angeles coroner's office would initially rule Gemmel’s death an overdose of crystal methamphetamine—a growing problem within the LGBTQ community. However, there was an immediate outcry from the black queer community, as the narrative between Moore and Buck raised more questions than answers.

Today would've been Gemmel's 28h birthday. Instead of celebrations and Instagram posts from friends, Gemmel's legacy in the public sphere is that of a sex worker—a stirring attempt to discredit his worth while subtly blaming the victim for his own death. We have seen this occur many times when discussing the LGBTQ sex worker community. Transgender women are also painted as such in stories to devalue their worth. Far too often, sex workers endure victim blaming and shaming. A societal standard that contributes to the notion that sex workers are partly liable in their own deaths because of “risk” involved with the industry, intersected with mainstream views about sex work, not fitting standards or respectability.

Questions began to arise about why Buck, a 65-year-old white man, and social-political butterfly to Democratic party members like Hillary Clinton would have someone 39 years his junior in his home doing drugs. As more reporting by activist and journalist Jasmyne Cannick and others continued, a tale of privilege, wealth, and sexual exploitation became the new narrative of story many simply tried to bury.

Reports were coming out from other young black queer men who had dealings with Buck, many of them detailing his drugging of them with meth by needle—a technique called “pointing.” Entries from Gemmel's journal were also published by Cannick, revealing just how much pain and madness he was subjected to, including Buck, reportedly getting the 26-year-old hooked on drugs for sexual pleasure.

It is not easy to live at the intersection of being Black and Queer. It’s a double marginalization where we often find ourselves devoid of allies. On one side we have our own community which like all others, deals with homophobia. That homophobia often times bleeds into social justice work around black queer people. People who feel race should come first and be the only concern.

Black queer people are often fighting for others who would never fight for them. We have been conditioned by white supremacy to fall prey to respectability politics that makes us see anything other than cishet as an attack against our own community.

Despite the painful evidence, media began doing what it does with most black victims—painting them as the deviant and the abuser as the one being victimized. Gemmel was painted as a drug-addicted sex worker, an attempt at dehumanizing his value.

The views of sex work in the United States intersected with Gemmel being from a marginalized community was a tactic that saw many blaming the victim, rather than the manipulative predatory Buck, who was being protected by his wealth, whiteness, and proximity to those in power.

Following the LA coroner’s report, social media outrage eventually forced the LA Sheriff’s department to give the full investigation into the matter that it deserved. Unfortunately, after several months of getting statements and going over the evidence, the LA prosecutor's office refused to indict Buck, leaving the family and black LGBTQ community feeling hopeless that Gemmel would ever get justice.

However, last week news broke that a second black gay man by the name of Timothy Dean was found dead in the home of ...Ed Buck. This time around, media coverage was immediate as multiple major outlets covered the story about the 55-year-old victim, a significant change from the first death. With circumstances surrounding the incident much like the first time, the story was hard to ignore with national coverage happening almost immediately. Responders arrived at Buck's home to find Dean unresponsive by an apparent overdose.

Immediately, Buck’s lawyers issued a statement removing him of all culpability and once again blaming the victim for his own death. “From what I know, it was an old friend who died of an accidental overdose, and unfortunately, we believe that the substance was ingested at some place other than the apartment,” said Seymour Amster, Buck’s attorney. “The person came over intoxicated.”

With this being the second occurrence of death at his home, investigators were more eager to look into the situation—as was the media who showed up to the home of Buck that evening looking for comment. What most were greeted by was outraged citizens, many of whom were from the black queer community that has remained steadfast since last year.

Dozens of activists and community members protested in front of the home of Buck following the second death. During the rally, several citizens spoke out including Cannick. She challenged several city council members who showed up to the rally about how disengaged and harmful they had been the first time this happened, and how their support now was questionable at best. This is an important sentiment in the story because much of Buck’s protection came in the form of those he donated too, on both a micro and macro level.

When the first death occurred in his home in 2017, politicians refused to release statements about the situation. There were some rumblings from GOP members, but only because he was a donor to the Democratic Party, not because of who the victim was—partly why the buzz died down as media coverage went away.

For his political allies, there was too much at stake. With President Donald Trump creating more turmoil between the major political parties and the #MeToo movement surrounding the behaviors targeting those in Hollywood, there seemed to be limited space to care for black life–an aspect we’re used to these days.

On a micro level, these same city council members who accepted funds from Buck in the past were silent in the first death. Not wanting to ruffle feathers with the wealthy donor, choosing allegiance to secure funding over the life of Gemmel Moore. But now, the political climate has changed. In November of 2018, the Democratic Party took back the House of Representatives, all about removing any shielding Buck may have from the party. Once word broke of a second death, those who were silent are now issuing statements and sending money back that was donated by Buck.

Black lives, in general, are not protected in media nor community. White people are more concerned about preserving power and privilege then every affording us equity and justice. This sentiment bleeds into the white queer community, which has also helped to oppress black queer people.

Most recently, comedian Ellen DeGeneres spoke up on behalf of a community she did not belong to offer forgiveness to Kevin Hart for his comments about the gay community. However, when it is someone from her own community causing harm to black queer people, (ie: Buck) she like many other white queer people are nowhere to be found. It only adds to people who love to partake in our culture while turning a blind eye or aiding in our oppression.

This is a challenge to all communities witnessing the atrocities that black queer people are facing in this country. Your silence has become complicity in our death. It should not have taken for a second dead body to be found at the home of Ed Buck for people to join in solidarity with us. We have experienced this type of violence against our community for far too long with no justice in our plight.

Ed Buck is using his wealth, class, and power to manipulate black queer men who are vulnerable. Men who are sex workers or struggling to make a livable wage to sustain their own existence. Men who are already caught up in the meth epidemic and fall prey to sexual exploitation in return from drugs. How many more lives must be lost before a stop is put to this?

In the coming days, it will be more important than ever that media coverage does not let up and continues to press the LA Sheriff’s Office to not commit the same mistake twice. If black lives truly matter, then we must be more vocal and fervent in our fight when they fall among the most marginalized. This is a continuing story, one that we will not only cover but see through till the end—an end that looks like justice for Gemmel Moore, Timothy Dean, and the black queer lives that continue to go unprotected.

George M Johnson is a journalist and activist living in Brooklyn NY with features in over 40 publications including Vibe, Essence, VICE, and Buzzfeed. His debut YA memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue” is scheduled to be released January 2020 through FSG.