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Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:03
Okay, welcome to this week Story Update. This week where you are with Steven Winter. And
00:11
before we have him join us, let’s take a look at his video story that he shared with us
00:16
eight years ago. My name is Steven Winter. I’m originally
00:20
from Chicago, Illinois. And I’m here to talk to you about the time this guy named Nathan
00:25
called me and said he wanted to talk about black gay issues.
00:27
It was a journey within myself that I went through this week when I was trying to figure
00:31
out as someone who is perceived as gay and perceived as Black can respond to somebody
00:37
who is perceived as white and perceived as gay, who has a great intention of putting
00:42
together the special section of this website, which is lovely and will continue to be even
00:51
lovelier, without pissing myself off, because I don’t want to be the Black guy.
01:00
And so for every single thing I did this week, you know, and I had some businesses to do,
01:05
I had some art to do, I had a couple different towns to visit and a whole bunch of people
01:09
to meet. And in my mind, on a regular week, I’m just – I’m Steven winter, you know, art
01:17
guy, film person. This week, I was Steven Winter, does not want to be black gay guy
01:23
first. Still wants to have relations with men and… and dudes. You know, still wants
01:32
to, you know, proudly operate under a society where cops think I’m black. It’s fair.
01:42
But did not want to respond in a way that would help perpetuate what I think is a status
01:50
quo that really should be moved beyond. My father was from Hungary, Czechoslovakia
01:56
and Austria, and he was a Jew turned Catholic. He was fleeting the Nazis. An immigrant and
02:03
a refugee. My mother was from Jamaica, the Caribbean. As far as we can tell, two, three
02:09
generations back were all from that island. And she was fleeing of course, British colonial
02:14
rule and economic, social issues. They both came to Chicago in the forties without
02:20
being too, well, sometimes they were dogmatic about it, sometimes they weren’t. But what
02:24
they did say to me very clearly was that, “Your mother is considered black and your
02:30
father is considered white, but we’re not. I’m Jamaican. I’m Czechoslovakia. You’re our
02:40
child. You’re American and you are wonderful. And so you shall be.”
02:50
But out there in the world, and later as I grew up and started experiencing the world
02:54
and soon became clear that, you know, race is a construct, but what you are is what cops
03:01
think you are. You know, the blacker you look, the blacker you shall be treated. The whiter
03:06
you look the whiter you shall be treated. So my parents let it make clear to me that
03:12
out there in the world, I was going to be treated like what I was considered, but here
03:17
inside, I shall be me first and American, first-generation. The pride and joy of two
03:25
worlds of families, both escaping things and bringing something else to bear. And then
03:32
I, you know, I grew up in Chicago for the most part and pretty soon became queer, we’ll
03:41
put it. And then when I left my little queer teenage world and went out into the grander
03:49
world, where gay exists, it became very clear that ‘gay” in that context meant white
04:00
and everybody else was kind of visiting.
04:02
So if it was a sitcom opening from the eighties, The Gay World, it would be, “Welcome to
04:10
the Gay World. Here are your main characters and as special guests, the Black guy, the
04:16
Asian person, the Drag Queen. You know, the Bull Dagger, you know. The gay white men in
04:24
the front, everyone else sort of to the side. It would appear that the gay – and I’m not
04:31
talking specifically about the L and the B and the T and the Q, but G – seem hellbent
04:37
on continuing this into the century, which is the exact same rubric of understanding
04:43
each other that upon my first visit at age 17 into a gay bar in the north side of Chicago,
04:50
with three young men of equal underage status who were of European descent, they got to
04:57
go into the club. I was asked for three pictures of ID.
05:02
And it turned out that in Chicago at the time, there was a wave of, regardless of how old
05:08
you were, for black people to be asked for more ID than white people because they didn’t
05:13
– at certain clubs, because they didn’t want black people in that club. And if you did
05:16
have three pic, three IDs, two of them would have to have pictures. There always was something
05:19
going on. Folks protested against this. But that was my first experience at the gay bar
05:26
at age 17. I didn’t get to go in. That was my almost first experience.
05:34
Okay. Uh, Steven Winter is here with us. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you?
05:40
I’m all right, thank you. Good. So in your story, you had talked about
05:46
how you just got back from a work trip. You were working on some films or some art business,
05:51
and you, that’s kind of like your life, right? Are you working on anything today? Can you
05:56
give us an update on what you’re working on? I’m still working in the film and art business
06:03
and I have no less than three or four, sometimes five things bubbling at the same time. It’s
06:11
kind of the nature of that beast. You know, you go where your passion is and you go where
06:15
the money is. You go where things are cooking. And that often involves having a lot of stuff
06:21
on the boiler at the same time. So… but it’s exciting stuff that I’m working on. It’s
06:27
still genre-based, queer Black intense comedy drama, drama, musicals. Like I known for.
06:40
Two years ago, me and my friend, Justin Cohen, premiered, a show called “Adventures in
06:47
New America”. I’ll show you the little… that’s our little logo. “Adventures in New
06:52
America.” It was a nAfro futuristic political satire that was very ahead of the curve. It
06:58
kind of predicted a lot of things that are going on now. We got a New York times rave.
07:03
We got a hit show. It was on Nightvale Presents, which podcast people may recognize as being
07:08
one of the premier fiction podcast outlets. That went really well. And now we’re working
07:15
on returning to that. So we’ve got a new season written and we’re cooking with gas and looking
07:21
to sign new deals. And so putting out that products as the podcast, the fiction podcast
07:28
is really exciting. And I got to play the lead.
07:32
Sounds like you’re… you’ve been very busy with all the things that you love. That’s
07:36
amazing. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you.
07:40
So, specifically in your story, you mentioned at one point that, when you went to the gay
07:46
bars or queer bars, this was in the eighties, when you went for the first time, what you
07:51
discovered was that you said it felt like being gay in that context and the gay bar
07:57
scene meant being white and everybody else, and I’m quoting, everybody else was kind of
08:02
visiting. And you compared it to like a sitcom with like the main characters being white
08:06
and all the guest stars were people of color. What do you think… do you think, like, to
08:11
what extent is that still happening today? Or do you think it is still happening today?
08:18
Well, as we record this, nothing is happening today because the world is closed. And what
08:26
has happened in the last few weeks – we’re recording this June 15th of 2020 – is that
08:35
the horrors of racism that’s baked into the fabric of America has now been newly reseen
08:46
by a whole population of white people. And when I say reseen, I mean that specifically,
08:52
cause they did see it before, but they just didn’t think about doing anything. It’s just,
08:56
what was. You know, it was just status quo and everybody was -all the white people were
09:03
comfortable in that context. And now after the shutdown and the white people
09:10
electing a racist monstrous president and the white people, letting them get away with
09:15
all kinds of genocide on our way of life, it finally came to pass that everybody had
09:24
to sit down and take them and take a minute – or three months of minutes – where everything
09:31
has been destroyed, they did exactly what they said they were going to do, which was
09:35
destroyed all. They did. And that kind of destruction doesn’t know color.
09:41
And then we got to see once again, or re-see rather, how lynchings have never stopped.
09:53
And that has galvanized folks. White people coming together to say the way that we save
10:02
the world is to end – is to confront and then change white supremacy.
10:11
Prior to that, I was happy to see that the young friends that I was making were living
10:23
more varied lives than – as queers and LGBTQ people – than I saw when I was in my own generation,
10:35
which is Gen X. They, so what I’m saying is to put a bluntly, didmore white, black, Latinx,
10:45
and Asian folks hang out together In the… in the aughts and the teens? Yes. It would
10:52
definitely appear to be so, and I think a lot of that was economic. You know, they took
10:56
all the jobs, it took all the money. All the queers in New York had to move to Bushwick.
11:01
They live four to a room, you know, so of course they’re going to be a little bit more
11:05
open to what’s going on. Of course, they’re going to be able to see
11:08
each other’s beauty at each other’s souls in a better light, because they’re all huddled
11:12
around the same box of ramen, but… and then partying and doing the thing that queers do,
11:20
which is wonderful. And the legacy of Black ball culture finally
11:30
became historical fact. And the links between what the Black trans people were doing in
11:38
ball culture for decades that was then recorded in the “Paris is Burning” documentary
11:45
became standard American English for how people express themselves. So then we have this whole
11:52
generation of white kids who grow up saying “Yaaas,” as a for instance. And then they
12:01
get to a place where maybe one of their Black friends, or maybe they just see it themselves
12:04
and go, So, oh, wait a minute. We didn’t make that up. They made that up. We’re just using
12:10
it, but it’s not like we are using it because we don’t… because we’re trying to take something
12:16
from somebody. I think we’re using it because this is how we grew up. So we owe a debt.
12:23
We have a debt that we have to pay up. And part of that is confronting and changing
12:33
white supremacy. So I believe all that stuff was cooking, not just in the queer… in the
12:38
queer world, but in other worlds as well when the racists elected this monster. So I think…
12:48
I hope that there will be a definitive change by the end of the decade to how what happens
13:02
when LGBTQ people first walk into gay space as a teen, or what have you. First of all,
13:10
we’re not going to be walking into gay space like they used to. When I was a kid in the
13:14
eighties, I’m sneaking into bars with a phony ID. Here they’re going to be walking into
13:19
gay spaces that are virtual gay spaces that are queer spaces that are created by likeminded
13:26
people and not by a gay white oligarch that owns all the bars and is married to the mob,
13:33
et cetera, and so forth. So, yeah, I can see hope in the future.
13:39
Do you… do you think that… what do you think you… you touched a lot on like what
13:45
I – I view it as representation. Like you’re talking about like “Paris Is Burning”
13:50
and what people see in media and then that kind of trickles into, or vice versa? Like
13:56
what people say. Like, “Hey, I saw this in a documentary or on Pose or on “Paris
14:02
Is Burning,” and this is actually – this was created by black queer kids. And do you
14:10
think that it’s all rooted in media, which is really distilled, but is that like this
14:18
big part of it that you’re touching on? Representation is really important. You know,
14:23
coming out of the nineties, you know, some people have been commenting – some young people
14:27
have been commenting, it’s like “Jesus Christ, Friends is really white. Will & Grace is really
14:32
white. They never have any black people there. Sex in the City, really white. Why is that?”
14:39
And the reason that is because the people who were in charge of making – not making
14:43
– of greenlighting shows and allowing people that have jobs to create them, were all white
14:50
and were convinced that they, nobody in the mainstream wanted to see black people. They
14:56
didn’t want to see black culture. And I had friends who were in the film business
15:01
in the nineties who told me that they would be in meetings, white friends, white directors,
15:05
and straight up and they would say to their producers, “There’s a supporting role in
15:07
my movie. I want it for the black person in there.”
15:10
And they said, if you cast that as a black person, “You’ll lose $2 million off your
15:15
budget, you know, because your film will be less valued than, you know.” There was black
15:22
people films, and then there’s regular people films, and never shall the twain meet.
15:28
So representation for LGBT people, Black LGBTQ people is vital to letting people understand
15:41
that there’s a world beyond them. And I believe that it would appear that a huge swath of
15:49
modern audiences will not accept all white situations anymore. Tthey will not accept
15:58
all straight situations anymore. And when it comes to looking back at, for young LGBT…
16:06
LGBTQ people, like, how did we get here? How did we get to a place where we say “Yaas,
16:12
queen,” there is now a clear historical record that is in the system that says, you
16:20
know how you got it from these black trans people. And where did they get it from? Their
16:27
black trans for mothers. That’s where we got it.
16:33
The proliferation, I suppose, of. Having information at your fingertips makes this stuff harder
16:40
to ignore. And then it would appear for many white, young queers, just having that knowledge
16:47
and disseminating that knowledge becomes a point of personal pride. Which is perhaps,
16:53
Nathan, the biggest shift that I have noticed between the white queers that I grew up with
16:59
in the nineties to the white queers that I now meet and befriend today.
17:06
Generation X queers who were white often made a point to separate themselves from Black
17:12
culture, which I believe was an offshoot of early propaganda that said AIDS was cre- was
17:21
contracted by dirty people, slutty people and Haitians. And I think if you even go back
17:29
a little bit farther in the wayback machine to the disco era, you’ll find the disco was
17:34
a gay music and more significantly a Black music, and that the discotheque was a place
17:42
where folks of all stripes would come together and feel free. The barriers are breaking down,
17:49
the boundaries with dissolving. And folks were like, Why do we have to always be in
17:53
all white places? And why do you have to always be in all Black places? Why can’t we all be
17:57
together? That’s what disco was. And then the homophobic rock ‘n roll people
18:02
decided that disco is dead. Disco morphed into New Wave. Before he could get our bearings,
18:10
AIDS. And so when you look at the line of how we get to things, you know, you’ll see
18:16
that the expression of Blackness and the rejection of Blackness becomes part and parcel of every
18:25
big chapter in the LGBTQ community’s lifeline. And now perhaps finding a new place where
18:33
you can’t show a rainbow flag without the brown stripe. To do otherwise is a gay expression
18:43
of white power. And I believe that we may be getting to a point where folks aren’t going
18:50
to be jiggy with that anymore. Did I say jiggy? Oh my God!
18:59
Yeah. That’s a Philadelphia pride flag. I have a lot of friends and loved ones in Philadelphia
19:05
and it originated in Philadelphia, the black and Brown stripes and very, very cool. And
19:12
you’re right, it’s – now every time I see a pride flag, I can’t help but look. It’s
19:17
like a, just an automatic thing. I’m like, “Are the brown and bright stri- brown…
19:23
black and brown stripes on there?” And I’m like, “Why aren’t they? Did they just not
19:26
think about it?” And it’s like this automatic trigger every time I see a pride flag now.
19:31
You know, one thing that I’ve noticed the past few weeks is that one recurring theme
19:34
over and over again is like, We see your silence. You know, everyone is saying like, If you
19:39
don’t say anything, we’re seeing that. And it’s almost like the other side of call-out
19:45
culture where, like, you have to choose a side on this. It’s beyond that. And I think
19:51
that’s what feels so different from what I’ve been noticing this time. Like something’s
19:55
definitely different this time and it’s just like a giant – it’s a big reveal happening
20:02
right now for better or for worse. All the major corporations – like, you either make
20:06
a statement and it has to be good. If you don’t make a statement, you’re in trouble.
20:10
It’s like, you know, now like what queer people, what we’re sort of fighting against of the
20:14
over corporatization of pride – it’s a… it’s a benchmark of like progress, I think.
20:22
And if you make a statement as a corporation and your employees know that you are lying,
20:29
they come out and they tell people that you’re lying. Oh this corporation that says that
20:36
you’re all inclusive. I’m a black employee for you for eight, nine years. I never got
20:40
past this point, but all these white people get going up to the top. You know, and that’s
20:45
not even counting the microaggressions. One of the things that struck a chord of me
20:51
with Me Too a couple of years ago, when it became a standard understanding that you can’t
20:58
harass and assault women. And all these dudes showed up who had that
21:07
stain and some of them were favorites. And gone. The same thing is starting to happen
21:15
with white people where they thought, No one’s looking. No one’s checking for us. We do what
21:22
we want. But now if it becomes truly normalized that anti Black actions cannot be tolerated
21:31
in the workplace, we’re going to lose a lot of heinous people from our view, which
21:40
is great. I’m going to shift gears a little bit here.
21:45
There was a part of your story that I – I enjoyed your entire story, but part of – you
21:50
talked about your parents and what they said to you, and it just seemed like they were
21:55
very honest with you. They seem very wise in your story. It was just a few seconds that
22:01
you mentioned them, but they seem to really pass down a lot of great information and knowledge
22:06
to you. Can you just touch on them a little bit?
22:09
Well, they were immigrants. My father was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia and he escaped
22:15
the Nazis. And my mother was an immigrant from Jamaica who escaped British colonial
22:20
rule. So they knew from losing their home. And they came to Chicago and took a long time
22:31
to fall in love and get married. Like, they were well into their thirties and forties
22:37
when they finally put that together. So they lived a lot of life. And they got married,
22:44
I think, two years after interracial marriage became a lawful thing to do. You know, so
22:54
– and that is an amazing context that my parents were married in the complete wake of this
23:02
ridiculous anti-human law. So they raised us up to feel good about ourselves,
23:10
but also to understand that there were going to be folks who are going to take us and try
23:19
to destroy us. And I do remember the time, the sense of it, when I went from being a
23:26
cute little brown boy to a big old Black man at age 13, when I became six foot three. And
23:35
my first nasty running with the cops, was at age 13. And it was terrible, but I was
23:46
prepared for it. And I was also prepared to understand that as a person who had a black
23:53
parent and a white parent, I would be constantly oscillating through different worlds, and
23:59
that would give me an ability to speak different languages and understand different things.
24:05
And it was my job to present my findings as much as I could in whatever way that the message
24:14
could get out there. Yeah, they were Bohemian, they’re were badass.
24:19
And they went through a lot of pain. They went through a lot of pain. They were first
24:24
generation. And the scars of their childhood had never healed. And that was the other interesting
24:33
thing growing up with them, in comparison to some of my friend’s parents who were not
24:38
immigrants, who were American, they didn’t have the same scars. My parents were very
24:47
clear that America was an experiment and they were – they’re also very clear that that experiment
24:56
was failing. And I would imagine that they are looking down on me now going “Yep! It
25:05
failed. It’s broken. Pick it up and try again.’ Do you think that they wouldn’t be looking
25:12
down and feeling that hope that you’re feeling? Or…
25:20
That – that was a statement of hope saying that the American experiment has failed is
25:26
objectively true statement. It is June 15, 2020. They elected these people, those people
25:38
destroyed the country. It is literally destroyed. We can’t… we can’t sugarcoat that. And the
25:50
system of oppression where Black and Brown people have less of everything trickle down
25:55
to that too. The COVID deaths of Black and Brown people, in terms of percentages, far
26:03
outweigh, what they should be or what they could be rather. I mean, they actually are
26:07
doing exactly what they should be because the system is set up to kill them. So by saying
26:14
that it has failed and it is done is an act of hope because now we can remake it. We can.
26:24
So that’s what I meant by that. And what perhaps some white LGBTQ people are
26:31
now fully understanding is that you can’t have hate black people all day long and then
26:38
go home and be nice to your gay son. Doesn’t work. Doesn’t work. Slave owners could not
26:47
beat their slaves all day and then go home and be nice to their wife. So the head in
26:54
the sand aspects of LGBTQ life has been torn asunder. There is no more veil. And it’s right
27:06
there. It’s always been right there to see if you are willing to do it. But now after
27:12
months of sitting at home and watching the rich people, Instagram from their yachts,
27:18
I would imagine – and it would appear, I don’t have to imagine it, it is appearing in the
27:24
world in all 50 States – Basta! Enough. It’s all connected. You cannot hate Black people
27:34
and then be nice to trans folks. So if we’re going to get anywhere with anything
27:43
anymore, we all have to work together. And the first order of business is to support
27:50
Black lives and to save Black lives. And to say the names of the folks that we’ve lost,
27:59
who are black with the understanding that for every name that we know, untold names
28:06
that we don’t. Stephen, it’s always really great to talk
28:12
with you and hear your thoughts and I always, every time I see you, I really appreciate
28:17
it. And your honesty and your conversations, and it’s always great. So thank you. And is
28:24
there anything else before we sign off, is there anything else that you want to share
28:27
in regards to your story or any thoughts on anything else?
28:32
I’m just – I appreciate being a part of your Driftwood family. I like the work that you
28:38
do. I think it’s excellent. And I’m always – I’m always available to help. It’s a good
28:46
cause. It’s a good situation. It’s representation and epresentation is important.
28:51
Well, thanks a lot. And if anyone has any questions for Stephen, leaving them in the
28:57
comments and we’ll ask him to check back and maybe respond to some. And all of our stories
29:03
are available on our website at imfromdriftwood.orgo and also on Facebook and Instagram. We’re
29:07
easy to find. So we have thousands of stories and Stephen,
29:10
you’re also easy to find. So if anyone has any questions for Stephen directly, look him
29:15
up. You know, be in touch. Yeah? You can watch my films on Vimeo. Chocolate
29:23
Babies and Jason & Shirley. So if you Google Jason & Shirley Stephen Winter, Chocolate
29:29
Baby Stephen Wwinter, you’ll find those things on Vimeo and YouTube.
29:32
And if you’re interested in that kind of stuff and having a few laughs, there’s a good movies
29:39
to watch. Great. Well, we can add those links also in
29:42
the description. So we’ll do that. Alright, well, thanks for watching the stories we update
29:47
and we’ll be back next week with a new one. Thanks, Steven.
29:58
Thank you.
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The post Stephen Winter ‘I Can See Hope in the Future.’ appeared first on The Good Men Project.