beyondchron.org – by Harrison Chastang
African Americans throughout the Bay Area are demanding that the Russian River Resort cancel tonight’s scheduled appearance of Shirley Q. Liquor, a racist stereotypical Blackface character played by Charles Knipp, a white Mississippi drag queen. The character Shirley Q. Liquor is an overweight, illiterate, alcoholic, unmarried Black woman with 19 children who speaks in broken, ungrammatical English. Supporters such as Black drag queen RuPaul say Knipp has a First Amendment right to perform his act, and the Shirley Q. Liquor character is just an extension of the Gay drag queen diva tradition of imitating and making fun of women. Opponents, however, call the Shirley Q. Liquor character racist, divisive and nothing more than a 21st century minstrel show.