#all-con

Los Bastardos is teaming up with All-con to give you not one, but TWO awesome shows at this years convention.   On Thursday night we’re performing Moulin Rouge at 9pm, and Friday we’re doing our yearly Rocky Horror Performance with hour-long pre-show entertainment starting at 11pm.  We’ll be hosting the afterparty in our suite after the show ,come out and join us for drinks and…

So this year was our 2nd year of attending All-Con in Dallas. For the most part, both Tiff and I had a great time and ran ourselves ragged bouncing from panel to panel and geeking out. However, I did have an experience the first day of the con that almost prevented me from returning.

A panelist from Geeks 5 Ever hosting the TMNT vs. Power Rangers panel blurted out the n-word. In a room front of people, one of which (me) who happens to be black. This dude came out the gate clearly wanting to start shit, using racist jokes to demean his fellow panelist (who didn’t seem happy, btw, and made that perfectly clear how it pissed him off), giving little to no parameters other than us trash talking each others’ fandom (and each other), then asking to record the whole event for his Youtube page. When audience addressed the racist origins of both fandoms, the panelist said “the best way to defeat racism is to not acknowledge it exists at all” and uttered the n-word a minute later. Oh, the irony.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to not have too many non-black folks say the n-word in my vicinity, but the feeling I get when it does happen is always an ugly nauseating shockwave that renders me angry and speechless. It often takes several minutes for the shock to wear off, because usually its usage is unwarranted and unnecessary.  I always have to question whether it’s worth me being the “angry black woman” and going clear the fuck off. Google is free, wikipedia exists, and I don’t get paid to educate non-black people on not being shitty human beings; nor is it worth my emotional and mental energy to tell off every fuckface who believes ignorance or good intent is an excuse to be racist.

I know good and damn well the context behind a non-black person using the word vs. someone black using it is completely different. Marginalized groups reclaiming an ugly slur as a way of empowering themselves and recognizing a shared experience of oppression is vastly different from saying it just to appear cool and edgy. The former is about reappropriating a word used to demean and oppress, removing and reframing the symbolic power behind it; the latter is about flexing your own privilege in using a word that doesn’t affect you in any way and has no negative consequences for your people.  For this dude, it was definitely about being edgy, and I wish I could’ve gotten out of my shock long enough to tell him off.

The thing is, there wasn’t any reason or context for him to use the word other than he just wanted to. What made this situation worse, however, was the fact that out of the 20+ people in that room, no one stood up for me. No one called him out and scolded him for his behavior.  The white self-appointed leader of the TMNT clique who argued passionately about the legitimacy of TMNT and had no problems pointing out the racist origins of both fandoms had nothing to say. The Asian defender of the Power Rangers clique was silent as fuck. And the panelist, who is Latino, seemed to catch himself for a second, scanned the room until his eyes met mine, and then laughed uncomfortably before launching back into his point. The experience upset me so much that I left the con for the rest of the day.

Conventions should be open and safe places for all geeks, and All-Con is a welcoming space for fans of all walks of life; I know the lack of professionalism and basic human decency in this specific panelist is in no way a reflection of the Con itself. But it does make me question if I, as a black woman, ever will be safe to geek out without having to worry about racism within these spaces, and how they will be addressed if and when it does happen.  For 3-4 days, conventions give me a break from the microaggressions and casual racism which permeates my everyday life. I just get to be - be a geek, a gamer, a fangirl, a person who just happens to be black. Those moments don’t come often, and most people, especially the people in that room, will never understand what that experience feels like.