Michael Crawford: 'I don’t want Chappelle to be canceled. I want him to pull out the threads of homophobia and transphobia that run through the quilt of his otherwise brilliant work.' - NBCNewsTHINK
I grew up a scared, nerdy kid in a poor, Black neighborhood in Houston in the late 1970s. I was pummeled with vicious slurs such as “sissy” and “punk” in elementary school by children only slightly older than I was. These babies inherited those terms from their older siblings, fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts like bigoted antiques passed from one generation to the next. Even my father openly expressed his loathing at having a “fag” for a son.
I don’t want Chappelle to be canceled. I want him to pull out the threads of homophobia and transphobia that run through the quilt of his otherwise brilliant work. In middle school, I ran home after class every day out of fear of getting beaten up. The fights started as pranks at my expense and escalated to blows to my head and torso. After the end-of-day bell rang, students came together in a circle to be entertained like the audience at the comedy shows the adults watched. The fists of my harassers were the setup and my face was the bloody punchline. I learned to smile when the gags were verbal, but taking a blow to the mouth made that much harder.
The folks in my neighborhood knew that I was gay before I did. When I realized it, too, I tried to hide it by making myself as small as possible. I was the quiet, bespectacled nerd who knew the answers to questions from the teachers, but not what to say to avoid getting hammered in the hallways. I eventually came out at 15, and I’d love to say that it got better after that. But I just became an even bigger target for mockery by boys who wanted to prove how manly they were.
I emerged from the terror of those years into the world of political activism. My first tentative steps into advocacy in Houston became a confident stride as I organized rallies and marches on behalf of victims of hate crimes. I moved to Washington, D.C., to work with Human Rights Campaign to fight for LGBTQ equality at the federal level. I played a
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