I still maintain this is a charitable take, that he hasn't earned. The whole reason he brings up Pride is to contrast it as something unimportant, it's there to suggest that Pride being in June makes it somehow extra absurd that Black History Month is in February.
I think his last punchline isn't an indication he thinks differently of Pride. It's that well since it exists at least now it can actually do something good. There's nothing in bis set that suggests he has a different view on Pride by the end. It's clear its existence in the joke is to be seen as silly, over indulgent, not important. He doesn't walk back his questioning if LGBT people really need a month.
I'm listening to the bit again. Here's what he says:
"I learned that June is Pride Month. That's a little long, don't you think? For people who weren't enslaved. How did they get all of June? Black people were actually enslaved; they get February."
I don't take this part as to mean that he thinks the existence of Pride is frivolous or unimportant, as in it shouldn't exist at all. He
is definitely contrasting struggle though (and I wouldn't blame anyone for feeling mad about that, even though it is integral to the payoff), by effectively saying it's not fair that a group of people who have collectively suffered more than another group get the shortest month of the year to celebrate. But this isn't inherently an indictment of Pride's
existence. It's him saying he personally thinks black people deserve as much as, or a little more than, LGBT people.
To me, it's no different than if I were to say "I did more work than you, but I got paid less. That's not fair." You could read that statement to mean both "You deserve to get paid less" OR "I deserve to get paid what I'm worth;" it would depend upon the context of my personality and follow up dialogue. In Bill's case, the follow-up to that was "Give black people July," so I'm inclined to believe, within the context of this joke, that the point was indeed a more charitable reading: that both groups deserve long summer months to party.
And I'm gonna be honest here. If he had used Black History Month to contrast against the lack of a visible and sincerely-celebrated Native Pride/Awareness Month, I as a black person wouldn't have balked, nor would I have thought "Damn, he thinks we don't even get to have BHM." I know it's not kosher to rank atrocities and oppression for a couple of reasons. A.) It can easily foster division, and B.) Once you're past the line of bigotry, it doesn't really matter how far you go into that territory. Bigotry is bigotry, and the fight is to stamp that shit out........ But I'm not about to sit here and think I have it
worse than Native Americans, in terms of visibility, access to opportunity and social and civil services, cultural relevance, the ease of our fights.
I'm just fucking not.
Now, I got on this Pride train relatively late in my lifespan, and I really haven't figured my place out within it yet. So there's still some sort of Imposter Syndrome I have with it all, or a lack of experience with it all that makes me feel inclined to not talk about it as much. But you mentioned earlier that he should have deconstructed the intersectionality of race and queerness, so let's jump into that, and you and others are free to rip this to shreds.
Pride is white as fuck, despite the fact that Stonewall was spearheaded by black LGBT women. LGBT acceptance is white as fuck, because that's
mostly who I see on TV as representation. A lot of LGBT culture is painfully cribbed from black culture, specifically the presumed mannerisms of black women. There is an unspoken of leg-up to making inroads with LGBT acceptance, and that is that white people can be LGBT which inevitably has forced white conservative fuckwads to confront their bigotry when one of their family members reveals their truth, which is not an advantage black people have. White people don't like us, they don't deal with us, they don't want to know about us. If only black and brown people could be LGBT, I guaran-fucking-tee you Obergefell wouldn't have even be a thing on the table. I mean hell, we're still fighting to secure goddamn voting rights.
So you better fucking BELIEVE I think we as black folks deserve July.
