arisia | atmospheres and attitudes (Reply)

I've been to one previous S.J. Tucker show, and attended (part of) this afternoon's program. Much as I hate negativity, this is preying on my mind and I think it requires a public comment.

Previous impression: S.J. Tucker (

s00j) does pagan folk/filk-ish stuff, with a couple of songs that appeal to me and a whole lot more that's pleasant, sometimes precious, mostly just not really my sort of thing. But I know a few people who love her, so I've kept listening.

Today: well, she started with a few songs that fit the various categories above...and then she introduced a song about a "single mother" who is urban-tough, trying to take care of her babies, etc. --oh, and teaching them to steal the cat-food left out on

s00j's band-mate's doorstep. OK, I'd figured out this was a raccoon shortly before she said something like "and she's the leader of the local ring-tailed gang." And that was the beginning of serious discomfort.

And then she went into a parody of "Summertime and the living is easy"--in a Southern-influenced-Black accent. And then a song in the voice of "Miss Tough-Titty Cupcakes," as she and band-mates have apparently christened the raccoon...same accent, plus every stereotype in the book about urban Black women and single mothers.

*sigh*

My companion and I left after that song. I saw

s00j in the hallway after the show, and asked her please to think about what she was doing with that song, and said that I found it offensive. Her eyes welled up, and she said that she was sorry that I'd found it offensive; as I left, it seemed to me that her friends gathered around to comfort her.

I don't mean this to be a personal attack on the singer, who is probably a well-meaning lady who envisioned an amusing anthropomorphism and perhaps a provocative subversion of some sort, and who may even be young enough to be unaware that--quite aside from the numerous stereotypes embodied in the song--"coon" is all by itself a highly-charged term, adding an absolutely unmistakable and inescapable flavor of racism to the piece.

But it is a challenge, to all of you, to all of us. We've had a lot of conversations recently, at cons and in LJ and elsewhere, about diversity and such. Numerous fans of color have talked about feeling unwelcome at cons, about the pervasiveness and sometimes encouragement of the same racist attitudes they find outside fandom. I can only imagine how alienated and isolated someone might feel, listening to that song and its enthusiastic reception (by an all-white audience, so far as I could see). And therefore I'm asking people to think about their attitudes and what these do to our community.