Chuck Knipp - Support

Support

• Entertainer RuPaul has long been a fan and supporter of Knipp. "Critics who think that Shirley Q. Liquor is offensive are idiots. Listen, I've been discriminated against by everybody in the world: gay people, black people, whatever. I know discrimination, I know racism, I know it very intimately. She's not racist, and if she were, she wouldn't be on my new CD." In her blog, RuPaul adds: "I am very sensitive to issues of racism, sexism and discrimination. I am a gay black man, who started my career as a professional transvestite in Georgia, twenty years ago."
• Boston Phoenix journalist Dan Kennedy awarded Boston government official Jerome Smith the dubious Muzzle Award for his part in leading to the cancellation of Knipp's scheduled 2004 Boston performance.
• Writer David Holthouse, anti-racist investigator for the "Intelligence Report" from the Southern Poverty Law Center, stated "Knipp is in no way a white supremacist" and that Knipp "invites the audience to sympathize with a single Black mother." An in-depth article was printed in the June, 2007 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine.
• The New York Blade criticized GLAAD for condemning Knipp, stating, "We commend GLAAD for condemning racism, but we question whether the organization’s goal is best attained by joining this particular fight."
• John Strausbaugh, author of Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture, explores Liquor's act in his book.
• Michael Berry (radio host) plays frequent clips, and often live call ins. She introduces his show in her best Southern Louisiana drawl. Some of her recent parodies include the Democratic National Convention and weekend updates in Houston.

Knipp concedes that his performances as Shirley can make people uncomfortable. Knipp has said his show is about "lancing the boil of institutionalized racism" and that "treating African Americans as if they have a disease is the real racism" because black people are "more than intelligent enough to discern the nuance" of his performances. He's also said that "many people thought that Harriet Beecher-Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was and still is perceived as racist, despite being the probable artistic genesis of emotional support against slavery in the 19th century."