Remember when stepping out of your comfort zone to try new things was considered a good thing? Back then, someone who refused to experience other cultures was probably a racist or something. That was when trying to find ways to expose people to new cultures was considered God’s work.
But that was then, this is now.
Today, we live in a world where the Sacramento chapter of Black Lives Matter has opted to protest a yoga studio. Why? Was the studio lending space to the local chapter of the Klan? Was the owner spotted at a neo-Nazi rally?
Nope.
One of the teachers, a white woman, wanted to incorporate rap music into her yoga classes.
Tanya Faison, the founder of the Sacramento BLM, argued as they protested outside the school: “Historically rap music has been a way of expression for black folks to talk about the pain that they go through in their neighborhoods and their lives. … We’re just trying to make change and we’re trying to get them to acknowledge what they’re doing and be accountable.”
The thing is, the teacher had already scrapped the idea after the initial backlash. She planned a class, found out it angered people, killed the class, and still got protested.
In other words, BLM wanted to make sure that a white woman knew her place.
Unfortunately for Faison, that’s not going to do a damn thing to help the black community. If rap music is a way of expressing the pain black people go through in their neighborhoods, then why wouldn’t she want that listened to far and wide? Why not help as many people from outside that world listen so they can begin to understand?
Faison and company aren’t willing to think about those questions, I’m quite sure. Meanwhile, they’re making it a lot harder for the rest of the world to care about what BLM says.
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