In a few hours, you will be reading a wonderful recap of “Muni Diaries Live! Under the Influence.” There will be snazzy pictures from the party — our second spoken-word bonanza — and delicious tidbits from our awesome performers. But before we go into that, I need to get something off my chest: please do NOT say racist hateful shit on our watch.
During the audience-participation part of our spoken-word party, a woman approached us to tell a story on stage. Let me share a little behind-the-scenes information with you: Before we invite audience members up on the stage, we ask them to tell us about the story so we can vet out anything that we do not want to provide a forum for.
Off stage, this young woman had simply told us, “I want to tell a story about getting slapped on the bus.”
But when she got on stage, she told the story differently. It went something like this: she was slapped by “I guess I would call her a…black…lady.” Then she talked about a “Hispanic lady” who encouraged her to slap her back.
Maybe the storyteller didn’t realize the racial overtones in the way she told the story, but it was clear to me that the use of race here can convey stereotypes that were irrelevant to the story.
From talking to many people in the audience after the show, I know many of you felt the same way.
We’ve said this before: race is a descriptor that should be used very carefully, sparingly, and only if it is relevant in the story. I can’t emphasize enough that Muni Diaries does not tolerate hate speech, as we have been very clear in our posts and in our terms of use.
As hosts of the party and of the site, we take responsibility for having this kind of incident on our stage. And in the future we will be vetting even more carefully about the stories told at our event, as we have been doing on our site.
But as contributors, readers, or commenters of Muni Diaries, please understand that if you are using race as an irrelevant descriptor in a story, you are perpetuating serious stereotypes. It would be great if we lived in a society where the use of race is always simply factual. But that’s not reality.
At Muni Diaries we get many emails that begin with “I’m not being racist when I say this but…” or “I don’t know if you think this is racist…” If you find yourself saying something along those lines, it’s probably a good indicator to rethink what you’re about to say.
If you are going to make racist comments or use racial stereotypes to color your story, don’t bother coming to our event. Don’t write a post or make a racist joke in the comments either because we will surely delete you, block your IP, or allow other commenters to rip you a new one.
There are many things that delight me about running Muni Diaries. But like any other forum on the internet, we’ve also seen a lot of ugly sides of how people view one another. We welcome thoughtful discussions on race or any other issue that we face in our diverse city. Meanwhile, as a commenter said to me before, we can be interesting without passing along stories that perpetuate stereotypes.
- Eugenia
No related posts.
Right on. This sort of behavior needs a hard-line approach. Fudge all that.
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Well said, Eugenia. I did cringe during that story, thanks for the clarification.
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I think a lot of us had the same thought… thanks for addressing this topic.
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Yes! We had this very same discussion at our table after that story was shared. Thank you, Eugenia!
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I wasn’t at the event- did you say something on the stage to the audience about this or to the woman who told the story? Are you going to have to give a reminder at the next event?
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eugenia Reply:
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
I didn’t say something on stage – happened really quickly. But next time I will give a gentle reminder at the event. We’ve also come up with a way to host the audience portion of the evening a little differently so we can avoid this kind of situation.
I really love that so many people want to share their stories and are brave enough to go up on stage to do it. So it’s important for us to keep that part of the event alive but just run it in a different way.
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I find it very interesting that you proclaim absolute intolerance for propagating stereotypes, and yet, you do so very recently in your other site, RoommateDiaries. “Ambiguously Gay Transformers?” Give me a break, hypocrite.
And you delete my comment about how people shouldn’t be surprised a T/K line is full of rude people because of where the line goes… which, for the record, was poking fun at the very dangerous 3rd Street thoroughfare, race not mentioned.
I can’t count how many times you let posts go through poking fun at the choice Muni clientele in the Tenderloin.
Stereotypes become stereotypes for a reason. We’re all a little bit racist – stop ignoring that fact and let people speak their peace.
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jeff Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:27 am
To your points, M:
1. Neither I nor Eugenia is claiming perfection. Things slip through, and we have stated many times before that we often depend on our readers to help us call out bogus, racist, hateful shit that does nothing to progress whatever topic is at hand. We’re human, and we’re well aware of that.
2. The post you refer to on Roommate Diaries was parody. Also, Roommate Diaries, run by someone who isn’t Eugenia or me, has its own Terms of Use, which differ slightly from ours. The point is, Roommate Diaries, while in our “family” of sites, has its own moderation system set up. And I happen to think that person is doing a great job. He just needs more content! (shameless plug)
3. If your comment was deleted, I can assure you that we deemed it racist, hateful, not contributing anything to the discussion, or any combination of the three.
4. Can you please point to that “many times” we’ve “let posts go through poking fun at the choice Muni clientele in the Tenderloin”? Again, I’m not saying it hasn’t happened; I just don’t recall that specifically. But we’d love to take another look at it if it’s there.
5. Yes, we’re “all a little bit racist.” but that’s not going to stop us from doing our best to keep the negative stereotypes off this site altogether.
Thanks for reading and commenting, and let’s keep this discussion healthy and moving forward.
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I think this is a tough call generally because there are so many different cultures packed together in San Francisco (and on MUNI) that what may be racist to one person may be a cultural anomaly to another. I experience this all the time in the City and is one of the main reasons I live here. It’s scary but also mind-expanding. I’ll have to attend one of the “Under The Influence” events. I especially would like to hear from MUNI employees because I definitely have negative feelings about some of them which has nothing to do with race. Thanks for the explanation.
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Didn’t a racially-tinged episode happen at the last MDL event, too? Looks like it’s hard to escape race and riding Muni for many passengers. I wonder why that is?
Anyway, I hear the night was a success. I really need to start going to these things. Looking forward to the next one.
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Eugenia Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Brock,
We missed you at the event! And yes a racially tinged episode did happen last time as well, which is why it bothered me even more this time. Last time after the incident I wrote this post to discuss it:
http://www.munidiaries.com/2009/06/16/about-the-chicken-story/
I too wonder why we consistently run into this problem. I think that riding public transit means people of all races in one place, whereas this may not be the case in many other areas of our lives. We talk about race in our daily lives and sometimes inappropriately, but to have that in a public venue (online or on stage), it becomes a bigger issue of: are we going to provide a space for that?
Hope you can make it to the next event!
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I wasn’t at the Under The Influence event, but I remember at your last spoken word event a story being told about a older Asian lady bringing a live chicken on the bus, and killing it in front of the driver when he protested. I don’t recall anybody getting their buns in a biscuit over that. That was a story about a clash of cultures – an older, poorer, rural one where people sometimes personally kill their meals and the sterile modernity of urban life where chickens “come from the store”. Of course, there’s some countries and cultures where that is more common in certain areas that gives context to the story and that’s what exactly gives context to the story. If it happened on the 43 near the Marina, and the person was a white man and perhaps didn’t have thick backwoods accent, the story would have a more horrific subtext, as if this man was totally crazy.
Equally, stories involving gay men in drag have a whole different context than straight men in drag being comedic on the way to a Halloween party.
As somebody who grew up in the East Coast in an area where it’s far more common to find cities with a strong black middle and upper-middle class or better, it’s annoying to see a town as racially segregated (perhaps less so with non-American or non-Latin cultures) as SF act as if it’s transcended race (read the history of the Filmore district and how SF destroyed it’s thriving black jazz culture) or that it’s bad form to even mention it in a story, especially when it is only used as a descriptive detail in a story and not an overt suggestion that ALL blacks or Hispanics are INHERENTLY “that way or this way”. Leave it to the reader to draw from that detail in the story what they will based on their experience of living here. Muni-diaries does have as least some grown up readers that can do that, right?
It’s a slippery slope when you start saying a person can’t use race as a mere descriptor in a story, when sometimes it’s a part of the story at a certain level and is merely serving as a socio-economic short-hand in the storytelling, especially in a town where cultural and socio-economic distinctions exist. But if you want to go down that road, why not start a drive to get Huck Finn banned from schools too while you are at it.
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jeff Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 am
Points taken, but as to the so-called Chicken Story, I refer you to a post we did a few days after the fact: http://www.munidiaries.com/2009/06/16/about-the-chicken-story/
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Eugenia Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Yes, something similar did happen at the last event, and that story gave us a lot to think about. I wrote about that incident right after the event here:
http://www.munidiaries.com/2009/06/16/about-the-chicken-story/
It is a fine line when the use of race is ok in a story and when it is not. And I think that if you were at the event, you would feel that the use of race in this story, and the tone with which it was used, were overly suggestive and inappropriate.
I am not saying that people can’t use race as a descriptor. It should be used when it is relevant. And it should not be used as a shorthand.
I would say that 99 percent of stories submitted to Muni Diaries are published as they are. About the same percentage of comments are published as well. We are far from the kind of people who would, “get Huck Finn banned from schools” as you suggest. One obvious indicator of that is the fact that your criticism of us is published here for everyone to see.
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Tara Reply:
November 4th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
There were some buns in biscuits after the Asian-lady-chicken story from the first event, for sure.
Jeff, Eugenia, and a couple of us contributors determined that the use of race is often not relevant in a story, and we all stand by that. It’s a tough argument to make that getting slapped on the bus vs. getting slapped on the bus by a black lady, then further encouraged by a Hispanic lady, are that much different from a storytelling perspective.
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No one interrupted her and told her about the irrelevance of race in her story?
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eugenia Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:37 pm
No, and I think for good reason because I wouldn’t want the event to turn into a mob scene where we are burning someone at the stake, you know? It’s up for debate whether she meant it in a racist way or not. The way she told the story made me uncomfortable, and I felt race was not used appropriately. But at the same time I didn’t feel that it was a case where I should be going up on stage to stop her. I am still on the fence about what I should have done in that moment.
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I’d like to discourage you from “vetting more carefully” in the future. You’ll basically end up with bland boring stories that aren’t of interest to anyone. You’re not everyone’s mom, and aside from some basic screening for subject matter, it’s unreasonable for people to expect you to control an open mic.
Not having been there, all I can say is that if it made you uncomfortable, the right thing to do would have been to speak after the woman and say something simple to reinforce that you don’t support racial stereotypes and that you discourage folks from adding such ‘color’ to their stories. After that, everyone can just be an adult, right? “Words can never hurt me” and all that?
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eugenia Reply:
November 4th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Yeah I can agree with you to some extent…I don’t want boring and bland stories either! Our emcee Suzanne did say something after the story just to say that we don’t endorse etc. I’m glad to hear your point of view – makes me feel a little better to know that open mics are by nature an uncontrollable beast.
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I’m grateful for calling this out. thank you.
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I would say this to all of you who complain soo much about Muni. , smallApply for the job and give it a try. You will find out fast that you don’t have the balls to navigate the small 7mile by 7mile city, small streets, asshole in cars, cabs and bikes ying riders of SF. You Sorry crying Bastards! If you want to know it, every driver is in fear of losing their job because a fool will run out in the street, cyclist fools, and continues complainer with no patients, let alone being attacked by a phsyco. so you try, you try it and see what A driver in SF is dealing with. I’m a former SF Muni driver and I had to give it up. Why? the crazys and complainer pushed me to a point of Danger! Every day was like WAR. It caused PTSD. Can you emagine waking up everyday and praying you don’t “KILL SOMEONE”.
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