midwayfair
Well-known member
pucho812 said:
I respect that you're going through a very stressful time. Baltimore's been really quiet the last couple weeks and even when we had riots alongside peaceful protests my house wasn't going to be affected and certainly not my business. (I live in a fairly idyllic mixed neighborhood a few blocks from a historically black college.)
However, I will observe the following about your post:
1. It reads like you came to a place that was "safe" -- I have no doubt that there are people of color on this forum, but literally the only person I know who said they were left because they felt like a lot of people here made racist comments and they no longer felt welcome. So you weren't likely to get perspectives of people who might have first hand knowledge to discuss (impersonally) the accusations made by a person who wouldn't listen to "facts." If you have friends who are people of color who work in the industry, especially if they've ever had a booth at NAMM give them a call, describe what was said, and ask if they've ever experienced something similar. Just to be clear: It doesn't *matter* in this situation whether the person you were arguing with was factually correct or incorrect. They could be wrong, and you could prove that they're wrong, but it might be that they're only wrong in this particular instance.
2. It is perfectly possible that person has actually experienced racism in the industry, and that your argument read as "I haven't personally observed this so it doesn't happen." It's okay to just listen, reflect, and move on without arguing or even discussing it with people.*
3. Any even vaguely political thread here attracts the exact same group of people. Some of them base their entire "discussion" tactics on bringing up unrelated topics after giving their two cents. So I feel like this isn't the best place to just vent ... it's always going to become a political $%#&show.
*Here's a personal story for this: I have a friend who posted that NPR was disrespectful to President Obama for calling him Mr. Obama. At the time, NPR followed a conventional news reporting standard and I linked to articles going back to President Clinton that always referred to the president by name. I got told off (gently -- the dude is seriously one of the nicest people I know), deleted my links, and instead just read the thread. The world is no worse because I did that. They might have detected some other biased from NPR's usually favorable coverage. Hell, they might have thought that NPR's often overly favorable coverage was itself a problem whose origins were racial. [Side note: The only NPR programs I can get on my local stations that have black voices are Kojo Nnamdi in DC and Morgan State's, and NPR as a whole, while very liberal, still has a representation problem in their on-air presenters that can affect the breadth and depth of their coverage. (The difference between NPR and other broadcast news sources, as far as I can tell, is that NPR acknowledges its limitations on air and makes an effort to overcome them.) This isn't just a public radio problem. Music stations are extremely segregated in this country, to the point where my college's station had to give a 2-minute speech about how they'll "play anything" before airing a listener-voted Kanye West song during their year-end best-of. If they really were willing to play anything, they wouldn't have to warn their listeners that they're about to hear a damn pop song that uses some hip hop elements.]
