Adding to the list of people who just don’t get it: Brian May of Queen. May recently decided to bring up the subject of increased focus on diversity in culture today — he thinks efforts to make culture less overwhelmingly white and predominantly male is wrongheaded. As Spin points out, the Queen guitarist took a moment to speak on the subject with UK paper The Mirror after the Brit Awards decided to remove male and female categories from some of their main awards.
After noting that he thought Freddie Mercury would’ve found modern culture “difficult,” May continued:
“Freddie [Mercury] came from Zanzibar, he wasn’t British, he wasn’t white as such – nobody cares, nobody ever, ever discussed it,” May said. “He was a musician, he was our friend, he was our brother. We didn’t have to stop and think: ‘Ooh, now, should we work with him? Is he the right color? Is he the right sexual proclivity?’ None of that happened, and now I find it frightening that you have to be so calculating about everything. We would be forced to have people of different colors and different sexes and we would have to have a trans [person]. You know life doesn’t have to be like that. We can be separate and different.”
But perhaps what May doesn’t realize, as a straight white man, is that all the calculating previously had to be done on the side of marginalized people, who were constantly fighting to be recognized for their contributions, or find a way to stay safe in a very unwelcoming environment. If there’s a small amount of labor that goes into making sure those unheard voices are now recognized, well, then that’s an excellent swap.
