#phre

Welcome to the official Phans For Racial Equity Tumblr. If you haven’t heard of us, please check out our “About PHRE” section on our website. 

If you haven’t signed the statement pledge, we urge you to take a moment to read it, reflect, sign, and act. Should you have any questions related to the pledge, reach out to [email protected].

The first action item in the statement is as follows:

I say loud and clear that #BlackLivesMatter, and that none of us can breathe easy until all of us can breathe freely.

Over the past few months a sea of voices in the United States, as well as worldwide, has been shouting “Black Lives Matter.” We hear chants at protests, see it written on our social media feeds and crosswalks, and see it being used by businesses to claim their stance. The wave is spreading rapidly, but this isn’t the first time Black folks around the world have been trying to share this message.

 In 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi joined forces to not only create the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, but to create a movement. Black Lives Matter is an intervention, an principle, and arguably most importantly, it is an affirmation to Black folks around the world that their lives matter, despite the way they are treated. As we see a disproportionate amount of civil and police violence, often fatal, toward the Black community, this movement is a radical stance against injustice. 

But what is radical about claiming that Black Lives Matter? The vast majority of complaints about Black Lives Matter comes from the idea that “All Lives Matter.” While this is true, this is not the focus at the moment. When we march and fund raise for breast cancer, we don’t hear people shouting, “What about lung cancer?” When the Pulse shooting in Orlando happened in 2016, we didn’t yell, “Everywhere Strong,” we yelled, “Orlando Strong.” When we see a house burning and someone calls the fire department, we don’t tell the firefighters to spray down every house on the way because “all houses matter.” Right now, the metaphorical home of Black folks in this country is on fire. We can’t afford to wait for firefighters to stop at every house where their services aren’t immediately needed—Black folks are dying every day that we don’t take a stand.  

In the context of the jam band community, unapologetically saying and embodying the sentiments of Black Lives Matter means that we prioritize and value the safety and security of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) fans. It means that we recognize it is a privilege to experience live music (and other spaces of leisure) as a refuge and welcome escape from the complexities of everyday life, while many fans of color simultaneously feel unsafe and ostracized at shows. Yes, it is 2020, and fans of color are still treated differently by fellow fans as well as venue staff and security. Festivals attended by 20,000 white fans openly doing drugs are lightly policed with a focus on keeping everyone safe, while festivals dominated by non-white people are heavily patrolled. As much as we may wish that live music could be ‘love and light’ for everyone, it is still an inequitable experience. An awareness of this inequity and the privileges that whiteness affords fans at shows and beyond is the first step to remedying it—followed by a commitment to take action and educate the fans, bands, venues, and cities/towns that all comprise the jam band community. Love and light must come with action and solidarity. 

But it is not enough to simply say and believe that Black Lives Matter. White fans have to examine their own actions, take ownership of apologize for the transgressions they have made, and take real action to become not just “not racist,” but actively antiracist. As a “well-intentioned” fan base, it will take work to understand where these transgressions occur—not always involving overtly racist behavior or times when Black fans have been physically harmed; it is more often microaggressions committed by unwitting fans, like asking a fan of color if it is their first show when it is in fact their 100th.  For white fans, being willing to look at their own actions with a critical, antiracist lens is a crucial step, so that we can take action to avoid causing harm in the future. If I step on your toe, and when you cry out in pain simply say “I’m sorry, I didn't mean to step on your toe,” but take no action to prevent stepping on your toe again in the future, will you believe I am truly sorry? Even if I didn’t intend to hurt you, I still did - the impact outweighs my intent. I must acknowledge that injury AND show what steps I am taking to prevent it from happening again. The road to racial equity is not paved with good intentions. (You know what they say about that road!).

The Market of the Beast!

So, on Friday, February 2, the U.S. stock market posted a loss of 666 points. Or did it? The actual drop at the close of the market was 665.75 points, prompting most major news outlets to round up in order to obtain the devilish number of 666. This reminds me of the 777 point drop in the Dow Jones average on September 29, 2008 where the actual loss was 777.68 points, but most outlets rounded down in order to obtain the more auspicious number. Some Christians think that the number seven recalls the seventh day of creation and, thus, represents completion. The number six, on the other hand, is the number of man (created on the sixth day in Genesis 1) and, according the the Book of Revelation, is the number of “a” man known as “the beast.” Or is it? The number 666 in Revelation 13:18 is commonly thought to be a reference to the Roman Emperor Nero. This number is derived from the ancient practice of assigning a numeric value to letters of the alphabet--Hebrew in this case. This is known as gematria and it allows one to convert each letter of a word to its numeric value and total the numbers to arrive at the number of a word. It just so happens that the name Nero Caesar, in Hebrew, totals 666 when this process is followed. However, there are at least two ancient New Testament codices that list the number of the beast as 616. Could it be that the market of the beast has lost even more value that we thought?

I will often tell my students that it is impossible to be bored studying religion as the things that people do because of religion are endlessly varied and fascinating. I am currently working on a book about the Kentucky Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. This photo is from the recently opened Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Ky. The Ark Encounter is a life-sized replica, according to biblical measurements, of Noah’s Ark. This particular display inside the Ark Encounter is called the “Fairy Tale Ark.” The focus of this display are those very common depictions of Noah’s Ark and the Flood, designed for children, that depict an impossibly small boat stuffed with happy animals often framing a smiling and waving Noah. The Ark Encounter takes issue with these depictions because they soften or distort the horror of the flood event. Instead of being a happy and adventurous boat ride, the Ark Encounter would rather emphasize the horrible nature of God’s judgment in the flood event. Ultimately, their argument is that these artistic distortions of the biblical narrative undermine the authority of the Bible by turning the story into a fairy tale. Thus, children need more “realism” in artistic depictions of the Flood. Fascinating, right?