Commentary

Is Donald Trump humanity in drag?

22. Jan. 2017
Black Cracker by Alexa Vachon

Black Cracker's first column for SIEGESSÄULE is a meditation on the madness in his home country

Jan. 31 – I mean drag in the sense of glamourized portrayals of a traditional beauty, or comic interpretations of gender simplified, or tragic train wrecks of the charm of things gone wrong becoming oh so (unfortunately) right with proper lighting and a perfectly chosen diva ballad.

Somewhere in America, or actually everywhere in America, there are men, women and children sitting on the tailgates of trucks, drinking beer in packs of six, not ever considering an alternative to those plastic rings or that the rings kill after ending up in the ocean, on islands of the most perfected waste. These same people think those manufactured resorts are actually just glaciers picked up by Socialist satellites because “global warming” is a hoax created by any nuclear ambitious state. They are polishing their guns, popping Tic-Tacs in locker rooms after mud sporting events, discussing all the beautiful pussies. Cats, as in showtunes, as in why must we all – all humans alike and cultures apart – paint each other in such extremes?

Culturally so divisive, and to what gain? Beyond gender, age, race, nationality, class, religion. We are two queens sitting at a vanity “throwing shade” out of a barred window, not realizing it's not a window, rather a mirror clear as day. Or we are a queen sitting indeed at a mirror, "kiki-ing" like our look is the best of the night, not knowing the mirror was actual glass. (In my opinion, if a slang term is not in the dictionary of your native tongue, or is not a part of your immediate lived [excluding virtual] experience, it's quite safe to say that using it is highly colonizing. Please refrain.)

Privilege is the ability to see and not see some things. As much as my boner runs deep for drag queens, I often find the practice problematic in similar ways to identity-costume politics or cinematic blackface and beyond.

As an Alabama born, aging young man, of trans experience, I did not remotely have the fall-to-the-floor, Southern Gospel reminiscent reactions I witnessed many, with for instances lighter skin, gender aside, endure. Earthshaking horror and disbelief, as if the impossible became possible as election results returned, was a position I had never had the privilege of being in. And I don't mean the queen himself, rather the supporters. I have seen them, felt them and kept tabs on them from as far back as memories of hair shame with my grandmother Augustine, a beautician.

The rage in thinking an onion was making your tears fall, then coming to realize that you are very well the child of onions and as epilogue the lip sync for your life Epiphany that that makes you in fact an onion. Sashay! Shante! Chantre and don’t fret, we are all onions. Nevertheless, all the tears look great under the lights, but maybe a bit too much eye shadow for some.

These words are not perfect. But you are. We are. Flaws and all. We are not victims, maybe we have been victimized, but we are warriors and saints. 

Black Cracker is an artist working with text, music and video. His latest album Come as U R is out now

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