I recently finished a 6-week fitness program through Kaia Fit. Three days of insanity/P90X/TRX/Yoga followed by one day of trail running. Every morning at 6am we were sweatin' it out to fun music. All kinds of music, but mainly something with a beat to wake us up and get us moving.
In my class, I was the only African-American. There was one gal who could be of Asian decent. Everyone else was White. Including our instructors. There came a day when the music was starting to mess with my mind. And I didn't know if any one else was bothered. Could be that folks were too busy trying to hold the plank position to notice that almost every song was not a clean edited version, but the original version that was dropping the N-word left and right.
I felt uncomfortable and couldn't focus. But no one else seemed bothered. I wondered what this room looked like when it was all White people listening to this music with this offensive word. Did they really not notice or care?
Week 4 I finally spoke up. I told the instructor after class how I felt and told her I'd be happy to bring in clean versions of the songs. Most of the music was music I had at home. I was pleasantly surprised by her reaction. She apologized and said she would take care of it. She let me know it wasn't even something she thought about, but would now take more care with music selection. She told me I didn't have to bring in music, it was her job to provide it and she would do it. And again, she apologized.
I don' t know what I was expecting. But I was not expecting her to take ownership of the issue and fix it. Maybe because of my experiences and where we live (Reno) I was thinking she wouldn't take me seriously, brush me off, or give a fake apology and change nothing. The last couple weeks of the session there were no more N-words. Not everyone is racist :-)
I honestly believe some people are so oblivious to what is going on around them. I just had this discussion over dinner about the N word being in music. Some people do not see it as a negative word, some really believe the word is a term of endearment. Being that the word is in every song does not make things better. I’m sure the women were not purposely trying to offend you or be racist they were really just enjoying the music. Jeannette I must ask, if you work out class was all Black would you have felt the same way?
ReplyDeleteYup, I do. Great question :-) I would have said something. At our last family reunion, I made my cousins change the music at the BBQ. You can find the clean version of almost any song. Why not use it? I feel comfortable calling people out when they use the word, Black or not. Your question also made me laugh out loud, because my first thought was, "Are there all Black classes in Reno Where are these people and why haven't I seen them?" Ha! :-)
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