Earlier in September, famed music festival of the marginalized Afropunk set course for an internal meltdown when founding editor-in-chief Lou Constant-Deportes resigned from Afropunk.com, leveling allegations of selling out against the news outlet and its parent company.
“Selling out” is fighting words within any given subculture, whether it be punk or hardcore. To sell out is a serious offense and not just a term to be thrown about willy-nilly. But what does it really mean? What does selling out look like for an outlet for people that exist on the margins?
To understand that, two things. First, it’s important to dial the events back to August. Ericka Hart – one of the most prominent faces of the Afropunk festivals – detailed her experience of being escorted out from an Afropunk’s VIP section by security, along with her partner Ebony and a friend. According to Erika, Afropunk management wasn’t feeling her partner Ebony’s t-shirt, which boldly stated “Afropunk Sold Out for White Consumption”. Afropunk Festival founders have since addressed the criticism and attempted to clear up the sequence of events, but the damage has been done: two of the faces of Afropunk were escorted out of an event over a message that clearly didn’t come out of nowhere.
Another piece to understand here is the nature of selling out in punk subculture and the place of people of color in the punk scene. Punk subculture has always been home to the invisible, to the underrepresented, to poor and working class folks bonding together across racial. That seems hard to believe now when the image of punk is overwhelmingly white and male. But black and brown folks have existed in punk since the dawn of time and at one time were represented prominently before several breaks in the scene. That’s a story for another day, but suffice it to say these days, you’re lucky to see a mention of black punks outside of Bad Brains. Taking up punk’s core tenant of DIY ethics and focus on community, the Afro-punk movement became a refuge for black and brown punks to meet and sound off away from the expectations from the mainstream. A documentary appeared in 2003 and the festival kicked off in 2005 and has been going steady more or less ever since.
But not without hiccups. Rumblings of dissatisfaction with the Afropunk festivals (which have spread far beyond small gatherings in the US) have been around since the festival’s initial launch, often found directly on the site’s message boards and social media. Punks tend to be skeptical of events organized and run by a central board rather than community-organized events, and not without reason. Historically, when one or two people run the show things get out of hand very quickly. Just look at every major punk music label, eh? For Afropunk attendees, increasing ticket sale prices (jumping from free to as high as $75), an uptick in white bands over black musicians, lack of space for black and brown folks as white festival goers began to pour in, and lack of accessibility for disabled folks have been some of the factors contributing to a lurking sense that Afropunk isn’t as punk as it claims to be.
Staff being mistreated, targeted demographics ignored, and organizers accused of greed? For some of us, this sounds painfully familiar. See Universal FanCon’s explosive non-debut for a more recent example.
“Selling out” is often misunderstood as a group or individual selling their soul for cold hard cash or some other materialistic benefit. That definition isn’t too far off, but much too simple. For punk, selling out means an abandonment of values and giving up community for personal gain without putting anything back in. It’s signing a record deal and going from a scrawny punk on the streets to a suit and tie in an office. It’s buying into the worst of capitalism. It’s greed. It’s trading authenticity for security for yourself only. It’s taking advantage of popular rebellion and commercializing it, flanderizing it out of existence. For folks of color, it’s all of this and watching your spaces to exist and be free slowly disappear, watching space get eaten up by whiteness and be told that it’s good for you. Without money, the event can’t continue right? So you keep quiet and grow disillusioned as something you believed in and supported is whitewashed. The history of black and brown punx in a nutshell.
The thing is this: is Afropunk wrong for expanding the focus of their group? Not in theory. There’s nothing wrong with trying to be inclusive. But “inclusion” should be making an event more available to those it serves. It should be ramps and accessible pathways, low-cost hang outs for lower income folks, safe spaces for queer folks. It should mean telling all that they are welcome with the caveat that privileged groups aren’t the focus. Inclusion for events focused on marginalized folks almost always comes at the expense of the marginalized. And when our representatives are in charge it hurts even more. Making money to fund an event isn’t selling out. But what Afropunk has done and apparently has been doing is a total betrayal of their own spirit. That is selling out.
What started out as tense verbal altercation and possible misunderstanding has blossomed into an ugly conversation and hopefully some soul searching. If not for the organizers for Afropunk, at least the attendees. It’s frustrating because Afropunk is portrayed as the Big Meet Up for fellow outcasts of color, usually at the expense of smaller events that are following Afropunk’s ethos far more closely than they are. For attendees, it may be time to start looking around for local groups who are doing the work and talk to Afropunk with their wallets. After all, if they’re going to act like sell outs, shouldn’t we treat them as such until they get the message?
Photo: Scott Dexter