A Brief Rant On The Queen We Got, Not The One We Deserved: Trixie Mattel Everyone

Image Description: Trixie and Katya (drag queens) starring at the camera with their pointer fingers over their lips (shhhing the viewer)

Trixie Mattel ain’t shit. There, I said it.

Not so much that I wholeheartedly believe the above comment, but I want to prepare you Trixie stans for one of my tamest reads.

I want to approach this rant with more heart and nuance, but again, this is a rant…

Trixie is in the news again, and this time not for illegitimately snatching the All Stars 3 crown from Shangela (with immense help). One would think a queen that constantly states that she understands social justice and inclusion would understand that at the core of her AS3 win was the perfect pairing of anti-Blackness and capitalism. You would hope she over-stood this, and that understanding would lead her to make different decisions around her comedy and life. But, alas…

This time Trixie is under fire for making a racist anti-Black joke around cotton and slavery. COTTON AND SLAVERY everyone, and had the nerve to throw in our queen Latrice Royale…and y’all still stanning for her.

Also worth mentioning, Trixie refuses to apologize for the below joke:

Image Description: Trixie Mattel at a podium telling what she thinks are jokes- wearing a gold gown with big blonde wig.

From Out Magazine: Mattel tells the audience, ‘I couldn’t decide what to wear so I wore this. It’s just like a cotton. Latrice picked it.’ While there was a smattering of laughter, groans and even boos can be heard from the crowd. ‘Oh, is that too far, Denver,’ asked the All Stars winner. ‘What did you forget to invite your black friends tonight?’

Here are three things I want us to pay attention to, as we watch this incident quietly float away.

1. Pay attention to your faves:

The white queens and non Black queens of color (NBQOC) who are supposedly about social justice and inclusion, but stay silent when shit like this hits the fan. Pay attention to how loudly they speak when Tyra Sanchez or Nina Bonina Brown makes a poor decision, or when Tyra’s just trying to exist. Track the silence around this violent anti-Black comment, and how accountability will indeed escape Trixie.

2. Pay attention to the excuses:

There will be a flood of excuses hurled at Trixie’s defense. Like, such:

“Its just comedy”
“It’s a roast”
“Other people say awful things too”
“You’re too sensitive”

All of these excuses are a means to derail authentic and necessary conversation around white supremacy and accountability. This is how white people and folks invested in whiteness fight back around a variety of violent issues. They gaslight the fuck out of you, and make you feel like you’re the one overreacting.

3. Pay attention to how white people will unabashedly tell Black people how to feel:

This is NBPOC (non Black people of color) and white peoples’ favorite pastime. All you have to do is twitter search Trixie Mattel racism/joke and read through the thousands of threads. White folks, specifically, cannot help themselves. They feel so entitled to everything, including Black emotion. And when you mixed that entitlement with the mission to never reckon with yourself, you get toxic anti-Black fandom. Just ask Kennedy Davenport, Nina Bonina Brown, The Vixen, Chi Chi DeVayne, and many others. These fans are the folks who can’t wait for Latrice to rescue them by coming out and saying that this wasn’t a big deal, so they can feel less implicated.
Honest question, why do y’all think this is okay? Hint, the answer is above.

This incident happened a while back, not exactly sure when, but I feel it’s still worth discussing. All of this to say, violent incidences like this are not new, and will continue to occur as we choose silence over liberation.

Bio

Cody Charles is the author of A Pride Story: Choosing To Live My Black Fat Queer Life, Higher Education Graduation Speech You Deserve, Roseanne Is Back! And This Time I Am Not Tuning In, Mudbound: Uncovering The Parts Of Ourselves We Sacrifice In Order To Survive, Favorite Blackity Black Quotes In Black Cinema, Engaging My Black Fat Body, Black Up The Cast: Re-imagining Iconic Horror Films, Black Joy, We Deserve It, The Night The Moonlight Caught My Eye: Not a Review but a Testimony on the Film Moonlight, 5 Tips For White Folks, As They Engage Jordan Peele’s Get Out. (No Spoilers), and What Growing Up Black And Poor Taught Me About Resiliency. Join him for more conversation on Twitter (@_codykeith_) and Facebook (Follow Cody Charles). Please visit his blog, Reclaiming Anger, to learn more about him.