A music festival in Detroit is taking a novel approach to ticket prices. And also to race.
The young folks’ AfroFuture Fest is offering tickets to “persons of color” — that would be, all human beings who aren’t white — at half the cost of tickets for pale partiers — that would be “non-persons of color.”
So the event’s decided that Martin Luther King was wrong after all — people should be judged according to the color of their skin. And segregation was right, as it turns out — everyone is either white or colored.
For early bird purchases, whites can get in if they fork over $20. Everyone else can slide with 10.
After July, white walkers will have to cough up 40 Big Ones, whereas the rest of the planet only has to pay half.
Check it out — and no, this isn’t from The Twilight Zone (which is an AMAZING show, by the way):
OFFICIAL LINE UP For Afrofuture Fest IS HERE✨✨✨
We’re activating the BLACK farm grounds of FEEDOM FREEDOM(866 Manistique) & YES, this is happening on BLACK Detroit’s Eastside
Early Bird POC Tickets are $10 & $20 for NONPOC’s & on sale until JULY 17thhttps://t.co/IAiMD22dRy pic.twitter.com/EUgf50EgqN
— Afrofuture Youth (@AFYDet) July 4, 2019
In response, popular ticketer Eventbrite announced that the festival will be taken off its site if the pricing policy isn’t changed:
“Our mission is to bring the world together through live experiences. We strive to provide a platform that enables people to gather for their chosen purpose, and that reflects diverse viewpoints, so long as they don’t violate our Terms.”
Eventbrite isn’t fond of race-based discrimination:
“We do not permit events that require attendees to pay different prices based on their protected characteristics such as race or ethnicity. In this case, we have notified the creator of the event about this violation and requested that they alter their event accordingly. We have offered them the opportunity to do this on their own accord; should they not wish to comply we will unpublish the event completely from our site.”
As told to the Daily Caller News Founder by a spokeswoman for Detroit’s own Jillian Graham, the rapper — known as Tiny Jag — pulled out due to the pay gap:
“Tiny Jag wants everyone to understand the effort to black empowerment is a mutual goal but not at the expense of morale.”
Jillian explained to the Detroit Metro Times that there’s whiteness in her own family:
“I was immediately enraged just because I am biracial. I have family members that would have, under those circumstances, been subjected to something that I would not ever want them to be in … especially not because of anything that I have going on.”
sorry ily guys💕💕🌸 pic.twitter.com/MfhuQeEX0U
— tinyjag (@tinyjaguar) July 2, 2019
Here’s AfroFuture’s explanation for its pay plan from the official Eventbrite page:
Why do we have POC(people of color) and NONPOC(white people) tickets? I’m glad you asked!
Equality means treating everyone the same.
Equity is insuring everyone has what they need to be successful.
Our ticket structure was built to insure that the most marginalized communities (people of color) are provided with an equitable chance at enjoying events in their own community (black Detroit).
Affording joy and pleasure is unfortunately still a privilege in our society for people of color and we believe everyone should have access to receiving such.
Guess they haven’t known poor white people or seen statistics on Asian Americans.
We’ve seen too many times orgasmic events happening in Detroit and other POC populated cities and what consistently happens is people outside of the community benefiting most from affordable ticket prices because of their proximity to wealth.
This cycle disproportionately displaces black and brown people from enjoying entertainment in their own communities.
As an AfroFuturist youth lead initiative the voices of our youth inform our resistance. Here’s what they have to say:
“If you don’t see my blackness, you don’t see me. Periodt!”
As I said, they’ve decided MLK was wrong.
So cough it up, you CrazyRich crackers.
-ALEX
See 3 more pieces from me:
Black Congressman Smacks Down Race-Baiting Nitwittery
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