Atlanta blogs today: Is Drive-Invasion racist?
September 4, 2007 at 12:52 pm by Andisheh Nouraee in NewsYou see, it’s all about the Femme Troopers. And helping strangers with their cleavage.
-Shelbinator narrating his excellent short video documentary of Dragon*Con.
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Walking in the scorching Atlanta sun shouting “I’m Black, I’m Out and I’m Proud”! was life affirming and reminiscent of the civil rights movement, a different struggle, but a struggle I identify with nonetheless.
-Darian at Living Out Loud on marching during Black Gay Pride
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What I doubt she understands is that she is trapped in a classist dilemma. She’s a Little Five Points hipster, which means she has to be very carefully correct about tolerating diversity. However, she’s an educated child of the haute bourgeois culture of mid-town, , which means she has to hate everything about the DriveInvasion, which is working class, not-so-covertly racist and anti-intellectual to a fault.
-AnselPixel’s surprising take on Drive-Invasion
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September 4th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
If you’re in Atlanta for a two-day event where there are a lot of Confederate battle flags, no black males, twelve bands and no blues, no rap, no rhythm and blues, nor even a teeny bit of funk, I think there’s only one conclusion to be drawn.
And it’s not a surprising one.
The only African Americans I saw at DriveInvasion were attractive, light-skinned women being escorted around by older white men.
I heard the Nfamous Nword more than I’ve heard it since leaving Alabama in the
And all that is perfectly fine with me.
I’m just not going to politely ignore one of the most obvious facts about it.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:50 am
I wasn’t there, so I can’t comment on Confederate flags or the number of people uttering racial slurs.
But no r&b or rap does not make an event racist. Every concert or gathering does not have to express the musical tastes and racial make-up of the entire population. Rappers don’t typically have country and tejano acts opening for them.
September 5th, 2007 at 8:31 am
I pity the fool who wouldn’t welcome me to DriveInvasion!
And by Nword, do we mean Njibbajabba? Becasue I say that a lot.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Andisheh, I love your style , but I think the only appropriate point you make is that you were not there.
Neither were any other brown people.
I left out the Maltese crosses and the SS lightning bolt tattoos so as not to appear alarmist, but I can assure you at least one major national rockabilly act opened its performance with a hearty “hell no we ain’t forgettin’” rave that had the crowd going in no time.
All I’m pointing up is our general denial of the racial and economic stratification which play a major role in our culture.
Of course there is black racism.
I never saw a bunch of white guys throwing frisbees during Freaknik.
As for the music, it’s simply disingenuous to make an argument that implies white artists don’t perform all the genres I mentioned.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I was there, and saw quite a few black males enjoying themselves. There were also plenty of “dark skinned” (typing that makes me cringe, but you made the initial distinction, Mr. pixel. Does that really make a difference? If so, who’s the racist here?) females, also having a good time. And while there were no genre-identified Blues bands on the bill (they usually play “Blues” festivals, where there are no heavy metal or country bands on the bill), you obviously missed the several heavy blues influenced songs done by the Blasters and the other rockabilly bands. I guessed you also missed Phil Alvin’s heartfelt tribute to James Brown, and Georgia’s soul music legacy in general, didn’t you?
And regarding the Conferderate battle flag, yeah, there were plenty of them there. After all one of the events was the “Dixie Fried Car Show”. Get it? “Dixie”? Like it or not, the flag is still displayed in many places, and it is a matter of personal preference whether one chooses to display it , respect it, or not. I think it is a function of context, and it was not “out of place” at this event, seeing it was a retro car show.
Personally, I did not hear anyone use the “N” word, nor did I see anybody waving the stars & bars as an act of defiance or in anyone’s face , nor did I see anyone being hanged from trees. As Andisheh said, the absence of something does not necessarily signify purposeful segregation or exclusion, but the actions of people who look for such things where they don’t exist are the symptoms of a bigger problem.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
AnselPixel-
I wasn’t there. I’m not arguing about Drive-Invasion 2007 or your experience there.
However, “twelve bands and no blues, no rap, no rhythm and blues, nor even a teeny bit of funk” is not an example of racism.
Andy
September 5th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
James Kelly nailed it, especially with this comment: “As Andisheh said, the absence of something does not necessarily signify purposeful segregation or exclusion, but the actions of people who look for such things where they don’t exist are the symptoms of a bigger problem.”
And for what it’s worth, I’ve been going to Drive Invasions since they started having them back in ‘99 and I’ve never heard the n-word uttered there in any context.
September 5th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I attended my first DI this year. I was a part of the whole Redneck Underground that gave birth to this festival, and while on the surface, it may appear racist, what with the confederate flags, and the symbols of that crowd, I assure you it is a minority, and really always has been. Let’s flip the tables here. Are the Nation of Islam types who might show up as security at a rap festival indicative of the racial feelings of the whole crowd? All the performers? At the DI, at least in my neck of the woods and surrounding, ANYONE was welcome to sit down and hang for a while. I was right in there, in the trenches in the Star Bar back in the day, and I look nothing like what you might imagine someone who was in that era would. No tattoos, no PBR apparel, hell, most of the time you might think I had gotten lost on the way to a Phish show. But these are my friends, and that means it doesn’t matter if I’m in a Brooks Brothers suit, Chinese, Black, whatever. As a friend of mine puts it, “its the last outpost of anarchy left in Atlanta”. As I saw it, wandering around, that translated into a laid back “don’t tread on me” attitude. Didn’t look all like a lynching party to me. It actually looked like a certain strata of our culture just getting together for some shared interests in the sun. So to call the whole affair racist based on what you described, shows a shallow understanding of the subject, IMHO.
September 5th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Mr. T, I’ll be there next year and I’ll whip your old fat ass to the tune of “Dark Side of the Moon Pie.”
September 5th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I didn’t attend Drive Invasion, either. I’ve been to some of those types of events, and I know Lee well, so I don’t know if it’s necessarily a paragon of post-millennial racism and antebellum Southern heritage. I can sympathize with AnselPixel, though. I’ve seen too many similarly confusing scenes since I’ve been here, and I strongly argue that there is some racial subtext to them — if not necessarily outright racism.
A parking lot full of white dudes waving the Confederate flag and talking about the pre-Civil War South? Yeah, that’s fucked up. But it was also fucked up when OutKast was on the cover of the Source wearing Confederate belt buckles, and it was also fucked up when Lil Jon rocked the Confederate flag on his first major album, “Put Yo Hood Up.”
It’s fucked up when the Black Lips call themselves “white niggers.” But it was also fucked up when a black tranny got up on stage during MondoHomo at Drunken Unicorn and started talking about “house niggers and field niggers” to the mostly white audience.
Other fucked up things I’ve seen: a car wash where all of the supervisors were white and all of the car cleaners were black. The list goes on and on. Atlanta can be a weird place fraught with unacknowledged racial tensions and taboos.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Sorry James. I get you and Lee confused sometimes…
September 5th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
No problemo, Mosi. Just remember I’m the smart, good looking freelancer with a real job, and he’s not.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I’m awash in reverse-reverse cultural irony. More than anything, there’s that hint of brutish survivor mentality handed down to us southerners — black or white — when we brandish our ancient war symbols and slogans. We simply have geographic and historic entitlement to them, as blacks or whites. That’s what gives them their continual appeal. As tee shirts and belt buckles and pickup truck plates or drunken tranny-babble. Southerners ARE America’s special needs kids.
September 6th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
I’m bringing the entire A-Team, skippy. Except for the dead ones.
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Yo, Analpicture (sp?), I wish you could have dropped by our little compound on the east side of the front row. You would have been able to hang out with a black gay man, at least one redneck PhD, tattooed females of various ages, hues and sexual proclivities, a rotating gaggle of musicians who probably know more about American roots culture than you will ever forget (that would include black, white, brown, beige, ochre, thistle, burnt sienna, funkadoodle, corndodger and Jews harp, among others), and assorted other bright-eyed and rainbow coalition-type folks who might not fit into any of those inconvenient classifications you carry around so as not to be caught impolitely ignoring really important stuff.
Having said that, nobody in our camp would deny the occasional manifestation of an exclusionary attitude or unsettling glimpse of the dark side of the moon at the Drive-Invasion. The whole friggin’ scene grew out of an inclination to band together and revel in a shared POV that celebrates aspects of culture that tend to irritate the status quo. Said POV both self- and sub-consciously incorporates the demystification and deconstruction of cultural symbols that clearly represent divisions among classes, races, sexes and other occasionally useful schema.
For example, by reincarnating the discarded remnants of the once-beheld (e.g., cars and parts that were originally designed by U.S. auto barons for profit-generating obsolescence) or the academically disabused (“lowbrow” ideograms and pop artifacts including vintage “drive-in” films, not to exclude the drive-in venue itself), and by reinterpreting the music of America’s past for a new generation raised on ADD-inducing media, the denizens of the Drive-Invasion, together with its attendant hubs, spokes and spinoffs, are engaged in a largely artistic, socially provocative, movement that is at least as old as modernism itself. Even you seem to have picked up on some of that, but, I gotta say, your meta-filter is all screwed up.
Did you actually attend the same D-I 2008 at The Starlight that we did? That you somehow failed to hear more than a trace of blues, rap, rhythm and blues or funk while you were on the grounds indicates a dire need for a new pair of ears.
I’ll admit, all that southern-fried rabble-rousing can and does attract truly unsavory types who have been rejected elsewhere. Kinda reminds me of the crowd at an Auburn-Georgia or Alabama-Florida football game, only less inclined toward rapacious business modeling. No worries. We’re working on the poorest of the souls. As you probably know, salvation is not an easy day’s work.
Too bad you couldn’t find a comfortable posse or, presumably, round up one of your own at this year’s Drive-Invasion. Keep coming back, though, and bring your friends. They’ll be welcomed, I can assure you. Next time, though, leave the laser pointer at home, OK?