A few days ago, I get a call about 2:30 a.m. from my friend who plays in a band. I hear something in the cadence and sound of his voice I have not heard in the 15 some odd years we have shared a friendship. My friend is one of the original members of a band who have played together for over thirty-five years. The band received a Grammy; they have played on the Tonight Show, at Madison Square Garden, and play other various large and small venues across America and around the globe each year, and for many years.
The original members of the band are black men. White people and other people of color have also participated as members of the band in the past. What did I hear in my friend's voice on this particular night? It was a combination of anger, frustration, disappointment, and hope all expressed in the tone of a minor key. There was a series of racist events that transpired during this particular night's gig. The events were overt and offensive enough to compel a seasoned professional musician, who literally travels the world the over, to take pause and make a musician's personal proverbial mental note.
More details below the orange swirls that, kind of but not quite, resemble a horizontal treble clef.
My friend’s band played a gig at a venue where the wait staff, three ‘peculiar’ men in the audience, and venue management were overtly patronizing and exhibited racist behavior toward my friend’s band. It began in the green room. The green room’s wait staff was serving the opening band any items listed on the menu, but they would not serve my friend’s band some of the very same items. Please note: My friend’s band was the headliner for this gig and the opening band was a local all-white people band.
My friend’s band, a bit confused, continued to watch as the local band kept ordering menu items and receive the items while my friend’s band was being categorically denied the same menu items. The local white people band’s food orders were taken and brought out to them with no problem, simultaneously, the wait staff kept telling my friend’s band members they we not allowed some of the same choices from the same menu i.e. you can't order that item, that item is not available to you.
The menus from which each band ordered stated at the top: Dinner Menu for: and listed both band names. A manager of the venue was summoned to the green room by my friend. The manager told the wait staff, my friend’s band could order any items from the menu. After the venue manager left the green room, a wait staff person told my friend they (the wait staff) only do what the management says. Sit with that a moment.
Okay, the show must go on, and please believe me; two shows do go on, the racism show and my friend’s band show. During my friend’s entire band performance, there were ‘3 huge middle aged white guys’ standing absolutely still and spread equidistant across the middle of the dance floor a midst the dancing college age audience; lending only intimidating stares to the band as they played their set (not to be confused with bouncers, the three men were not staff as this question was asked of management by my friend). The three middle aged white guys never took their eyes off the band and never moved from position. My friend said their presence made him and the band wonder if there were more of these type men waiting in the shadows.
After the performance, my friend’s band discovers all of the green room’s beverages and snacks which were present and available prior to their set, were taken or consumed while my friend’s band (the headliner) performed on stage. The green room was not restocked for my friend’s band, it was cleared out. In now what was a blank green room, venue management told my friend's band there was a charge for any beverages or snacks they may now desire. Sit with that for a moment.
What adds insult to the injury is that my friend’s band played longer than the contract required. The venue approved the longer play due to the college audience’s overwhelming request for more, more, more. Not to mention, the venue may have agreed to let the band play longer because longer play equates to more revenue for the venue. However in this case, not more revenue for my friend's band. Generally speaking, college patrons who have fun longer, spend money longer which makes for a win-win scenario for the patrons and venue. My friend’s band couldn't get a free drink from the venue after they performed overtime which makes for a win-win-loose scenario for the band.
There was a point in our conversation when my friend's tempo transitioned from andante to adagio. It was with great somberness and a raspy voice in the tone of a minor key my friend humbly enumerates:
“Ya know, when you have been in the business as long as I have, and that’s my whole life. You know when someone is telling you to your face to know your place. You know what I am talking about- that all black males are boys mentality. They want you to know they think you’re a boy, and they have their own ways of showin' it… I keep sayin' racial shit hasn't gone anywhere. Ha, it’s alive and well, and it just bit a big chunk out of my ass tonight. I know how this business works, they make money off us- we make money off them, but damn. We are not fuckin' boys... that shit they pulled… Musicians are targets, we always have been. But this was some ol’ school racist ass bullshit.”
I have heard plenty and all kinds of stories from the perspectives of my friend, his band, and from other bands about gigs, life on the road as a musician, and life on the road as a musician who is black and/or a person of color over the years. This narrative was different. It rendered a severe acute pain from inside its testimony. My friend possesses enormously thick skin, and this series of racist events understandably pierced his skin in a real personal kind of way. This time the racist blade cut a vital organ, the heart of a man’s identity and dignity. Our conversation was putting pressure on and cleaning out a wound that wasn't so much new, as it was re-opened in a jacked up jagged profound kind of way this night.
And then, there was hope. My friend’s hope in and for the college students, an audience the band often performs for at numerous university and college School of Music departments located throughout the US and abroad, his hope in them endured throughout our conversation. I am not sure if my friend was telling me as much as he was reminding himself, but each time he told me of a racist event from this night, he optimistically referred back to his hope in the college students and their potential to move further past racism. Please, do not misunderstand. My friend acknowledges and is aware there are college students who are racist and he told me so this same night. His hope is placed on what he hears in conversations he observes and experiences with college age students from all over the world who are not racist.
All I know is that my friend has his ear to the ground in places on earth I and others may not ever see or experience. My friend is hopeful that college youth will do some of the work that should and needs to be done to dismantle different types and forms of systematic racism. Hope bittersweet was the chosen refrain in my musician friend’s otherwise melancholy melody, played from a minor key, over the phone this night to me.
I reminded my friend they have a really large platform (understated), and ribbed him that it was past time for the band to release a new CD. Then, I roughly half sang half recited a few lyrics from the Beetles song,"Taxman"[[https://www.youtube.com/...]].
Followed by, a few lyrics from the song by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, "Dancin’ in the Street" [[https://www.youtube.com/...]]- as a ‘hint- hint’. My friend's response was, " Ha-yeah, I know you right, no shit."
We laughed that laugh friends do after debriefing over such experiences. He caught my drift. It’s a risky proposition, but I have a feeling my friend’s band is about to crank out some original cross generational music tunes coupled with ultra-prolific lyrics. Déjà vu... “The revolution (against racism) will not be (completely) televised”.
The mental tenacity it takes to fight against racism while ‘keeping our wits about us’ is a task that is non-negotiable and a task under-appreciated or not taken into consideration by many people who are white. Some people do not understand how much self-discipline it requires to manage racism at school, the grocery, work, the library, pretty much anywhere one goes including here at d-kos. It really is like walking on a high wire with no net while people throw things at you from every direction hoping and wanting you to fall off the wire (act out of character), so that they can then say after the person falls, see we told you he/she couldn't perform, aren't capable. There are many casualties.
It maybe some people are tired of hearing about racism. Well to those people I say, “We are tired of experiencing it!"…par for the course as they say. I am quite sure racism would love for the conversation to end. That is precisely why the conversation will not and must not end. We black folk and our allies need for some people to try and move away from wishing racism away because it’s so bad and scary, and come to realize it is that kind of ‘wish it away’ mindset which aids to perpetuate the very things those people wish would go away. No disrespect, but we do not need assuaged, “Oh racism is so bad, terrible" or dismissed, " too complicated, unbelievable".
Try adding more definitive ways to help us please. Help us manage trolls in diaries that discuss race, and do not be a troll. Do not let the cashier or sales associate skip the black or brown person next in line to help you first, and send a letter to corporate HQ. Encourage other white folk to try to accurately pronounce what they consider unusual names, and do let them get by with making fun of the names or black and people of color culture because they are different. Receive that racist behavior is a weapon "loaded, cocked, and aimed to shoot" and that black people and people of color must dodge the weapon for as long as they draw breath. This does create trust issues, but doesn't mean black people think every white person is the (negative) same.
What we need is more awareness, acknowledgement, empathy, solidarity, and resolution. It would help if the information we share about racism wasn't so readily dismissed as invalid or subjectively deemed unbelievable by others. If you do not believe the people who experience racism and how it affects them, then who and what else is informing your personal construct of racism? Is it a person(s) who do(es) not experience direct racism on a daily basis? Is there a form of arbitrary and subjective cherry picking that occurs over what one will choose to believe is valid when racism transpires or is described by those of whom it affects? Why and how is it, some people insist on defining or determining for black people and people of color; what it is like to be on the receiving end of racism? When will some people understand, the absolute value of racism is always negative?
Systematic racism needs to be dismantled as systematically as it was put in place. It is a process not an event, and it is everywhere in all forms, shapes, and sizes. One is part of the problem or solution. There are many levels from which to choose to begin to dismantle racism. Be it on a personal or social level, do something other than use, “I am white, so I can never know how it feels” or “I am white so it doesn't affect me” or “It's too complicated or unbelievable" as:
A) Enablers to excuse you from doing nothing and having no responsibility or accountability for how you do or do not contribute to racism intentionally or by default
B) Excuses to say something insensitive, then walking it back as a joke. (Think it all the way out before you say/type something, and don't get all frazzled when you get a little more back in response than you bargained for because your "joke" offended someone.)
C) A cop-out for not trying to better understand the information being given by black people in good faith about black people and racism.
There is a degree of empathy required to understand how racism adversely affects the people it attacks, and in some cases, slowly or instantly kills. Racism aims to demoralize/paralyze its prey and seeks to assimilate into its sinister collective those people who really do inherently believe they are, for whatever reasons, better than those not like (the color of) them. For some people, racism’s logic says I am better than you not necessarily because I am white, but rather, I am better than you because you are black or a person of color. It's not that I am so good, it's that you black or brown person are so bad you cannot be good.
This is racism’s ultimate Jedi (flip the script) mind trick, in that, it shifts or projects the blame of racism from the racist person on to the black person or person of color it diminishes/demoralizes for not being white. I am not racist, you are black. Racism logic blinds one from being able to see the flaws in its own paradigm, in part, because it speaks to the very heart and center of a person’s ego and ego's desire to be better than/superior to somebody or a group of people who are perceived as a negative different rather than just different.
In essence, racism sets as one of its tenets: It's not who you are, it's what's your skin color is not. It’s not the racist’s fault/problem black people and people of color are not white (are not as good as me), therefore, no need for a racist one to acknowledge or reflect on racism. It is one of the reasons some people think black people and people of color have a problem rather than the racist. This rationale mutes any opportunity for the redemption/reconciliation/validation of the black person and person of color because their validity is measured solely by their skin color. Skin color is a primary determinant for first or second class citizenry in the dynamics of systematic racism. It is not what’s inside of a person that matters; it is the outside of the person that matters, very narrow and very shallow.
Empathy exercise:
Have you ever felt like there was a target on your back for no reason? Have you ever felt like you could not make the same mistakes (a single mistake), or do the same things as everyone else around you because you know you will have a penalty and be punished, but the others around you doing the same things would not be punished or penalized? Have you ever had people scoot themselves, their children and personal belongs away from you when you sit down because they don’t want your kind anywhere near their person or their stuff?
Have you ever had to work twice as hard to maybe be considered for a third of the opportunities everyone else around you is getting in abundance most of the time? Have you ever spent the same amount of money to attend a function or receive a service; only to be treated as though you should never have attended the function or treated as though you do not deserve the service? Have you ever had a person of a different race look at you and tell you there is no way you could be the race or ethnicity you claim because you do not “act like” the race or ethnicity you claim? Have you ever had to live under the above mentioned and similar double standards EVERY SINGLE DAY OF YOUR LIFE, and then be told by those who do not experience it to not talk about it so much or to just get over it?
All though the above items barley scratches the surface, maybe using those questions as prompts to visualize what it is like to be assumed as less than from the start based on shade of skin; can help one begin to imagine what it is like to not be white and to be treated as dung in some aspect or another every single day because of it. Think about the kind of constitution it requires to manage being on the receiving end racism every single day.
If racism had its way, it would have everyone believing that it doesn't exist and that it is not systematically woven and implemented in the social contract we all currently share. So, yeah we do have to keep talking about racism, it various devices, and how to dismantle and cope with its many levels. Some white people need to not take things so personal and I know it’s hard not to, but getting all defensive or dismissing our voice when we attempt a dialog in good faith about racism bears diminished returns for all. It becomes a defensive competition not a dialog.
Personal notes/observations/commentary:
If you are one who enjoys infiltrating diaries to publicly humiliate an author and/or guests in the comment section, a subscriber to the superior intellectual crowd of superiority, or enjoy resorting to the assassination of a person’s character and efforts in order to derail from the actual point of a diary, you do realize by doing so, you actually shrink the audience you are trying to impress and shrink any positive thoughts one may have had about you; unless your audience is made up of just yourself and/or your click.
There is an appropriate non abusive way to make a point or offer correction.
Please, click away from this diary with those behaviors as the expectation here is to participate in good faith and to not dismiss others' personal experiences as less valid than your own based on the person misplacing a comma or making a mistake on tags or your not liking the narrative writing style etc. Corrections are cool, but why throw someone under the bus who may really just need re-directed in a civil manner on what needs corrected or how to correct it, and why bully and kick people in the guts for all to see on a global public forum?
Sharing an opinion on racism is one thing, but coming to a diary to share you think the topic of discussion is stupid or irrelevant, or to refer to the people in the discussion as stupid or dumb asses for discussing it, or talking about the author or people commenting as if they are not in the discussion, is mean girls or mean boys high school behavior and is not welcome in this diary. Send a d-kos mail and keep steppin'.
Do not aspire to receive your daily intervals of five minutes of fame/superiority at the expense of those participating in good faith in this diary. This is a safe place and bully behaviors are not welcome. The way some of you talk about each other and to each other is enough to make one’s blood turn cold. Condescending, brash, and disruptive attitudes are not conducive to productive discussions on racism. The expectation here is empathy and respect. Thank you.
Thank you, to my friend in the band who gave me permission to disclose his experience with racism. Thank you all, for taking the time to read of his experience. I believe with my friend in the hope of college age students to take the baton and run as fast as they can with it to dismantle racism. I will add, I find it odd that there is not a larger college aged demographic here, but then again, maybe it is not so odd at all. Typically speaking, there is usually several disconnects that exist between the people who college students perceive as intentionally, unintentionally, or readily dismissing their contributions to a discussion or cause, and the college student.
It may behoove us to identify and acknowledge any disconnects that may exist between our predominately older demographic and the college demographic as it pertains to discussions and their participation (or lack there of) here at d-Kos. We may want to try inviting them, more talking with them, and try less talking at or about them. I am very interested in their perspectives, ideas, and what they can contribute to the d-kos community in general, is anyone else? The college demographic has allies to offer to many of our causes and political initiatives.