Photo credit: Benson Kua
When Kenosha County Supervisor Dayvin Hallmon left his office in frustration after a decade of service, he left some parting gifts for his County Board colleagues. Symbolically, one was an hourglass. As Kenosha County’s lone Black elected official, Hallmon’s tenure had been marked by his sustained mission of social justice. As an unrelenting advocate for Kenosha’s LGBTQ+, Black and Latino populations, he recognized the perils of implicit bias and of ignoring community needs in deference to the status quo.
In 2016 he pleaded for civilian oversight of law enforcement and the use of police body cameras. In the same year he issued a 10-point protocol entitled “Retaining Trust to Sustain Law and Order.” It provided guidelines to be implemented in the event of a police deadly force incident against a person of color. In 2017, in light of white supremacist gang activity in Kenosha as well as federal actions against Muslims, he proposed county resolution calling for the defense of those discriminated against based on their race, ethnicity or religion and to affirm civil and human rights. Needless to say, his efforts were ignored.
And, he wasn’t shy about criticizing the homophobia of the Black civil rights movement and the Black community in general. He called out local Black community leaders for fawning kowtows to Congressman Paul Ryan at Gateway Technical College’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration despite the congressman’s blatant disinterest in the issues facing POC.
Now, the dire most prediction of Hallmon’s incessant fool’s errand has been fulfilled. By now, the entire world has seen the horrific video of a Kenosha police officer shooting an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, seven times in the back at point blank range while his children watched.
Dropping the F Bomb
Elsewhere, veteran Cincinnati Reds announcer Thom Brennaman casually dropped a “fag” bomb on a hot mic during a double header last week. He wound up making an on-air mea culpa during the bottom of the 5th with the usual eye-roll inducing greatest hit platitudes like “that’s not who I am” and “if I hurt anyone…” and the not so usual but nevertheless ironic “I’m a man of faith.” In the midst of his apology he called a home run and then left the booth. He’s been suspended.
Closer to home, Frank Nitty, local Black Lives Matter leader, currently marching to Washington, DC, had an encounter with a white heckler along the way who apparently called Nitty the n-word. In response, among other epithets, Nitty called him a “faggot. When his LGBTQ+ followers, including Montell Ross who had led Milwaukee’s Pride March for BLM cried foul, Nitty brushed off them off, claiming “the gay people I’m with say you gay people are too sensitive,” suggesting if they didn’t like it, they should get off his live feed.
Fine. But, were it not for the reality that, in some circles, it’s the most offensive word used when insulting another man because it denies him his masculinity, his very male identity. This is not a meaningless insult. Everyone knows its power. The fact that both Brennaman and Nitty used it in the moment reveals its priority. Brute vulgarity wins, at least in the mind of the speaker. Of course, it never occurs to oppressed people who freely use such words, that they are not only perpetuating their own oppression by endorsing the expression. In Nitty’s case he undermined his own credibility as a leader in the fight against oppression. Speaking of irony, he later proclaimed “This is a revolution. We will not stop until we get change!”
Hallmon and Nitty have similar missions. Unfortunately, tactics, demeanor and vocabulary matter. The Kenosha event proves the case for common cause against injustice. But we run into a roadblock when the struggle meets internal divisions and hate as well as external resistance.
To read more My LGBTQ POV columns by Paul Masterson, click here.
