The superiority of white has long been associated with strong views of gender, masculinity and sexuality.
Make a long-forgotten attack on the Ku Klux Klan at a gay nightclub in today’s Miami-Dade County. In November 1937, nearly 200 members of the Clan, dressed in spectral attire, publicly burned a cross during an inauguration ceremony.
They then went down to La Paloma nightclub, where they attacked visitors in an attempt to close a fugue that the Clan saw as an insult to tradition.
Julio Capo Jr., an associate professor of history at the International University of Florida, analyzes how the attack and transnational forces shaped the city’s history in his 2017 book, Welcome to the Land of Fairy Tales: Queer Miami Before 1940. Capo wrote before the Clan claimed that his actions during the attack and elsewhere “constituted his commitment to saving White homes, families, women and traditions.”
To further explore the dynamics of white supremacy shown last weekend in Idaho, we spoke with Capo, whose study focuses on how gender and sexuality have historically intersected with ethnicity, race, class, and other aspects of identity.
Our conversation was slightly edited for length and clarity.
Why would white supporters turn to a Pride event? Isn’t their bigotry focused elsewhere?
Homophobia is often rooted and embedded in anti-black, in forms of white supremacy, including in building a concrete vision of what a nation should look like or how they (white supremacy) imagine what a nation should look like. Homophobia, whether it looks like an attack on a gay club or various forms of politics, has a lot to do with white supremacy. Homophobia and the superiority of white are often part of the same structure.
The names of the white supremacy groups change over time. But their main ambitions remain the same: they want to maintain a strong social order. Could you give an example of a historical parallel that can put in context what happened last weekend?
As progress is being made on, for example, LGBTQ rights, there is some fear among white groups that they are losing their power. This story is decades, if not centuries old.
While writing my book, I discovered an attack on a gay bar on the outskirts of Miami called La Paloma. He was invaded in November 1937, but not by the police. He was attacked by nearly 200 members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Many people wanted Miami to be a city where they could live what they imagined to be moral life (or) or live in what they wanted to be a model city. The city relied heavily on its tourism industry and on things like queer culture and strange entertainment that provided forms of tourist dollars and pesos from the Caribbean and Latin America at the time.
There was a debate about what Miami should look like, and Klan wrote to the city council, essentially saying, “Hey, it’s all happening, and if law enforcement looks the other way, we’ll take it into our own hands,” and they did. Invasion of the club.
We could even take this to Charlottesville, where some of the chants you heard were “damn it, go home.” So this is not a new story.
Some groups of white supremacy are talking about declining birth rates and changing demographics. Are there any links between these ideas and the perceptions of white races about LGBTQ communities?
So much of this is at the root of anti-black and anti-LGBTQ sentiment. Whether it’s integrating black children into schools that have historically been white, or something else, people have always talked about caring for children. Save the Children modeling and language are often used by many of these groups – which undoubtedly happened in the 1970s with Anita Bryant’s campaign. Much of this has to do with child protectionist language and a very specific idea of what morality looks like or doesn’t look like and the dangers of exposing LGBTQ people or history. And the same with the history of blacks. This is such an interconnected story.
What do you think is important for people to take away from trying to revolt against the white race near the Pride Parade? It seems difficult to separate this conspiracy of rebellion from the insistence of many Republican leaders to demonize LGBTQ Americans.
We are in a certain political climate and in a very difficult time for a number of reasons. We see this tension boiling, and not in a new way, but perhaps in different ways. Anita Bryant won this battle in the 1970s, but did not win this war.
I think it’s really important to find moments of hope. With the Idaho Pride event, someone announced it. Someone expressed concern. In 1937, La Paloma reopened in just a few weeks, although the Clan tried to close it.
When people are still hosting events of pride, when people are still advocating for each other – these are forms of resistance and resilience and should be understood as such.
The FBI is investigating what happened in Idaho, and a number of cities with upcoming Pride celebrations are paying attention to their security measures. They work to prevent violence in the short term. But what do you think needs to be done to find a long-term solution?
One of the things that needs to happen is that we really need to understand these issues – the fight against blacks, homophobia, misogyny, classicism – as interconnected and thus fight them. There is no one quick fix. Rather, there is a structural one that we need to work on.
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