Shirley Q. Liquor and her minstrel show predecessors |
An illuminating race debate has broken out among my colleagues. But, where the bulk of American political strategists and analysts are debating the role of race in the (seemingly unending) marathon to the White House, my peers and I have been discussing race within the context of humor.
Jasmyne Cannick, a 30-year-old author and activist, is one of Q-Notes’ contributing opinion writers. Often, she focuses on issues of race and, particularly of late, the performances of Charles Knipp (a.k.a. “Shirley Q. Liquor”).
A caricature of the supposed stereotypical Southern African-American woman, Shirley Q. Liquor’s performance consists of highly exaggerated speech, clothing and mannerisms traditionally associated with Southern black culture.
Perhaps due to the performance’s drag component, Shirley is primarily popular with gay men. But among those gay men, Shirley is most popular with white men. More specifically, she’s most popular with white men in the South. In fact, one of Shirley’s biggest audiences is during Southern Decadence — a festival in New Orleans (i.e. The Deep South).
Count it as no coincidence that Shirley — a “blackface” parody — is primarily popular south of the Mason-Dixon. To deny that fact is to openly declare a willing ignorance of reality and the history of our nation and society.
At the risk of losing some readers and friends, I’m going to be honest: Shirley Q. Liquor is humorous. In fact, sometimes Shirley Q. Liquor is funny as hell.
But no matter how many people laugh, and no matter the skin color of those who laugh, the facts and reality can’t be denied. Shirley Q. Liquor — the performance and the concept — is racist.
For 400 years America’s history has been one besmirched by slavery and government-instituted and sanctioned discrimination.
Around 1800, a socially damaging and deeply racist form of “entertainment” known as minstrel shows, featuring offensive “blackface” caricatures, emerged and grew in popularity. Minstrelsy continued into the 1950s when public attitudes finally shifted. Shirley Q. Liquor and her creator Charles Knipp must take their infamous place among the many busts in the Hall of American Bigotry and Shame alongside these performers from the past.
The minstrel show caricature of African-Americans eventually made its way into the mainstream, as depicted by this 1936 cigarette lighter, with a black bartender ready to ‘serve,’ rendered in classic ‘darky’ iconography. |
But to get to the heart of the issue, we have to ask: Can something be funny and racist? Can something we know to be wrong, illicit laughter? Asked in a slightly different form for a gay audience: How many times have you laughed at stereotypes of yourself, portrayed by straight actors who haven’t the slightest idea what your life is like, and how those stereotypes hurt you and your community every day?
We’re all human. We like humor. Sometimes humor relays itself through our minds faster than logic. We laugh now, and think later.
Such is the case with Shirley Q. Liquor. Knipp might have humor. Knipp might certainly be able to turn his caricature into a rousing and hilarious comedy show. But the lazy, fat, drunk, promiscuous, Southern and black welfare mom is an image that has been used against Southern African-American citizens for decades — and it’ll continue to be used against them for years to come.
Whether it is a local county commission shutting down a low-cost healthcare clinic or the Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats taking away Medicaid and other welfare benefits, we here in the South know all too well the reasons these things happen. The “folks ’cross the tracks” are real people, and they’re nothing like Shirley, but our grand Southern aristocracy doesn’t know that.
No matter how much we might dislike it, the discussion of race in America is here to stay for the foreseeable future. And as previously noted, it’s likely to be particularly loud until November. A black man is running for president. A white woman is running, too. White versus Black — the age-old American story continues even now, 150 years after the Civil War. Maybe this time we can get the discussion right.
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