Shirley Q. Liquor Celebrates Racism and Gets (Gay) Applause

White gay men talk a good game about how much they love strong Black women like Tina Turner, Mary J. Blige and Janet Jackson. But when it really comes down to it white gay men consider the lives of Black women spectacle to entertain themselves with and in the case of the white man in blackface known as Shirley Q. Liquor to denigrate, humiliate and profit from. Shirley Q. Liquor is in the words of the self-described “forty-five-year-old, fat, gay white man” who created the character “a welfare mother with nineteen kids who guzzles malt liquor, and drives a Caddy.”