The more I read your comments about this, the more it seems to boil down to:
He was complaining about something.
Someone he had assaulted pointed out there was something he could do to fix what he was complaining about.
And he struck back. One because he didn’t like the idea he could do something about the situation, and two because if he could control something as basic as finding other musicians to play with, he could bloody well have kept himself from assaulting you.
Conclusion: he will only act to defend himself. Not to help himself.
Posting this here, because feminism is more than just about women (and black women get slammed with the Angry Black Person trope too).
Thread:
White people, especially white women, are masters of passive aggression. We’ve learned well the tactic that if you make your opponent lose it, you’ve won. Older white women play this game mercilessly.
Essentially, you can assume that if you see a black person being restrainedly rude to a white person (especially an older white lady) that there’s a lot more aggression coming from the white side of that equation.
The stories we tell matter. If we remind ourselves of these stories, instead of the “did you see how that young man treated me” ones, maybe we’ll start to put our empathy in the right place. Because this shit happens every day, and every time we cluck and soothe Aunt Penelope over her hurt feelings instead of calling her on her bullshit, loudly and publicly (“That was rather rude of you, Aunt P. Just let the man enjoy his food in peace, and admit you might be wrong.”), we’re enabling it.
(Oh, and the “we don’t want alcohol and live music” is so much of a dogwhistle. It was a dogwhistle before we domesticated dogs.)
He mentioned the flap over Afrofest. I happen to live close to the park where it was a controversy to have it there.
I thought having Afrofest in the neighbourhood was awesome. At the risk of sounding snobby, it encouraged the “right” people to visit – people happy to spend a day in the park listening to music and then maybe supporting alocal business by staying for dinner.
Unfortunately, the park is surrounded by the worst type of NIMBYs. They have shut down or badly influenced even non-music festivals before. The Food Truck Festival had to move to a more distant, less accessible part of the park because of their noise complaints (and seriously, it wasn’t that noisy). Despite the huge bandshell and other obvious festival amenities, these entitled jerks seem to think the entire park exists for them to view from their balconies.
So when Afrofest finished late one year Sunday night, they complained… and the city tried to deal with it via a stricter event permit.
And the accusations of racism started immediately.
And the thing is, there no doubt is racism in it. But it goes further than that. White-but-not-WASP little old me is too out there for these NIMBYs.
So by making it an exclusively racist issue, the argument got diluted, and left the NIMBYs free to shut down white ethnic events in the park because, you know, they’re not being racist then.
I can understand this situation, but we’re talking mainly about highly developed territories (neighborhood all the way up to country level) that practice zoning laws and such, right? Neighborhoods that are “white and fake polite”?
Here in Tijuana, people just buy up land on residential streets and plop down a club or party salon, where the decibel volume is very high and music plays until dawn, doing no favors for any of their neighbors who have to get up at dawn to go to work.
And I am serious about location. Right in the middle of residential streets full of working families.
This is a great example of a better way of dealing with it. The Real Jerk used to be on my way home and their music was never too loud, even, say, on a Friday night. Some of the pubs in my 'hood, though…
There are phone apps for measuring decibels these days. Record some of it, take some readings and screen shot them, and yeah, if the local laws are on your side (and they typically are in Toronto the Good), you’ve got a case.
BTW, the Real Jerk got replaced at its original location by a pub.
Looked back through the thread to see that The Real Jerk was in fact, replaced by an exactly same (food & live music) but different color owners. So definitely that argument is about racism.
That’s where I accidentally skimmed and missed the important point.
So I say to her “Consider that you are the one incentivized here. It’s in your interest to remove ‘race’ from the dialogue because you agree with boxing Black businesses out of certain neighbourhoods, but you can’t stand the thought of being in support of segregation.”
Which is different than down here, where it’s Mexican vs Mexican, with no zoning laws, and no help from the police or even neighbors who can’t afford to pursue grievances.
So, much like 911 or “management” or zoning, when tools are put in place to benefit the community, you can guarantee white people are going to abuse the power.
This is part of the problem. People don’t want to see that racism is part of an issue, and it’s more likely weaponised by those with power. To the point where they double down on every other excuse, right up to cutting their noses off. My family would swear at you that they’re not racist, even while they buy whole-heartedly into the tropes. Try to claim that there’s even an element of racism, and it’s denials and excuses.
I have seen a similar argument for excluding certain restaurants based on “noxious smells”(before they’ve even opened up, no less), while claiming that the emanations from another place down the street are simply “delicious”.
And yeah, I would rather live near a restaurant with live music at a listenable volume, than a pub cranking the tunes so loud, you can’t hear, and that probably violate several workplace health and safety codes doing so.
It sounds like what happened over Afrofest was at one of the worse intersections of racism and classism. Especially if Afrofest was the first of the big dominoes to fall. Once you’ve taken out the one that bothers the largest number of people the most (the one with the most intersections), you’ve established a precedent to go after anything else that annoys you. Food trucks are poor people’s cuisine (doesn’t matter if they really are, it’s the perception) and a lot of them sell “ethnicx things we’ve never heard of, so let’s send them to a far corner,” etc.
It’s the age old story of those with power being able to weaponise laws meant to help everybody, and use them to preserve their bubble free of outsiders and poor people.
EXACTLY. Why. Fucking. Bother? No, I couldn’t 100 percent say what would happen if I told the world what happened, but I’m not the risk-taker I used to be. And if anyone says “But he’s running around loose…you owe it to other women!” (Yes, I’ve been told that by someone, too. And don’t think I’ve not considered it when I had thought about naming his name.)
But do I? No. Because the resultant backlash against yours truly would be greater by far than the chances of him running around doing it to someone else to the best of my knowledge. If that makes me a selfish bitch, then get me the t-shirt that says, “I’m a selfish bitch.” It still boggles my mind, too, that people STILL believe that most rapes and sexual assaults are by guys in leaping out from behind parked cars, NOT by acquaintances, boyfriends, fiances, husbands - in short, by someone whom the victim knows.
I know one thing: Buddhist-leaning or not, my brother would tear the guy’s throat out, given the chance. And my son would be working to help him do it.
The average rapist rapes 14 people. And we’ve been shown time and again that even if all 14 (+) people line up and testify, they can and will be disbelieved.
Starting with the survivors is starting from the wrong end IMHO.
I feel sympathy mixed with a bigger dose of pity for this guy. And if I told him that, he’d react with anger towards me - because as I well know myself, it’s so much easier to blame someone else for one’s own negative actions and feelings than it is to own up to them oneself. That was a hard and painful lesson I HAD to learn; and I don’t think anyone has a lot of chances to learn it. Seems that either one does or doesn’t, nothing in-between.
And I wonder about myself - forgiving someone for such a thing. But I can’t help it. Grudge-holding is also something that I’ve learned would damage me more than the person against whom I’m holding it.
