I came here for a summit. Unfortunately it happened to share a conference with a church at the same time. Before I continue on, let me give you a quick brief of my background. I'm a 24 yo baby faced, autistic, adhd, conversion disorder (amongst others),genderfluid, viromantic bisexual aceflux, white-passing card-carrying ndn, eclectic Pagan. As you can see, I am what people would (insulting) refer to a snowflake. Obviously I'm an activist.
Now I entered this building an hour late for my grouo, which was no big deal since it was several hours long. But I saw a confrontation going on between a group of black people and a security officer. As a BLM supporter, I went up to go listen to what they were saying.
It was an arguement over the officer having told them to turn their noise down. The officer was nervous, being crowded by angry minorities and under prrssure to, you know, behave. And he was handling it well, actually. He was saying, repeatedly, that he politely asked them to lower their volume down. I don't know if his initial request was polite or not, but it was a frustrated polite now. At least in this instance, a cop was trying not to be a pig.
And these people were asking him what *defined* loudness. Was it the voices? The music? How loud was too loud? How did they measure that?
The poor guy answered "volume" and "your room is far iver there, and I can hear you from way over here" which was way passed their room and even my conference room. This was repeated a few more times, eith emphasis that this was their religion, and they can't whisper to the Lord.
"Well that's BS" I thought. Because I'm Pagan and, grumpily or respectfully, we know we have to turn our chanting volume down. The Gods understand that we have to be respectful of other people. I didn't see why they couldn't be. It sounded like a mix of twistings complicated with a cultural conflict: white people are timid and try not to take too much space in some situations; whereas black gospel music is LOUD. It seemed to me like an unfortunate situation. But I thought that if they could be heard from over 20ft away and thru walls, then maybe they could sing a little quieter.
I left them, and didn't see the security officer for the rest of the day. I wonder what happened to him?
Now the summit, we could hear the church. Very well. It was very distracting. I couldn't concentrate on the speech, and nor could at least one other person with an audio disability. I ended up being on my phone for a majority of the speech in order to cope. At one point, the preacher decided to do a repeat-after me routine with his audience. I'm not sure what they actually said, but it sounded like:
Oh!Oh!!OH!OHH!!!OOOHHH!!!
Later that day, I spoke with two of the people from the church and spoke to them. They explained to me that white people tend to shut black ppl/spaces down. Ok, I already knew that. And I could see how it applied to their situation. The cop was more likely to tell them to turn the volume down because they were black. Whereas if they were white, he would be more hesitant to and might not've. Ok. I get that. But they were still too loud, and I let it slip that I was sympathetic to the officer because, as I mentioned earlier, it seemed like a cultural confluct between loudness and quietness. They then tried to educate me again, asked me what I was there for. They said it sounded like a good thing, but because of what I'd said, they'd already shut me down. I was completely confused. Eventually they managed to wrap my autistic brain around the fact that since I sympathized with the officer at all, I was now the enemy. The fact that I considered it a "cultural conflict" and not 100% on their side, I was suddenly the racist. Or rather, the sad ally who didn't get it.
Now let me tell you, as an ally to black people it is my duty to listen to them. It isn't my place to say what is and isn't racist against them or not. But as a disabled, Indigenous, Pagan; I also realized that what they were pulling was BS. They were actually pulling the race card on something that, while race was certainly influencing it, wasn't the main problem. The problem was that they were being LOUD and it was rude in normal cases, as actually disrupting the summit amd ruining the first half of it for two disabled people.
I told them about my disability and that I'm indigenous. They told me to get earmuffs. I told them that i already had earplugs and that I could put them in, but not only would it not entirely drown out their noise at their volume, but i would have more difficulty hearing my group. Plus, they hurt. They're shaking their heads like I was some lost cause, and I'm sitting in my wheelchair wondering why these ablebodied ppl are telling me how my disability and items should work. And as an NDN, we have our powwows and we get spaces for such noise.Long story short, dont reserve a room for sunday mornings read more
