And I would add that HOW you approach the situation has a lot to do with success.
In my situation, I had a supervisor threaten to fire me for “insubordination” when I called him on his power tripping…and yes I was insubordinate, and my reply when he threatened termination, was “Ok, let’s talk to HR.”
But in the same time frame I had a man ask me how I got a bunch of the guys in the maintenance crew to do my bidding at 2AM working a shutdown.
It all has to do with picking your battles…and knowing how to approach the problem.
But in this PF case…I think it was a case of, “If you play with the bull, you are likely to get gored.”
Obviously someone(s) did not know how to pick their battles
That’s why it’s disappointing in this thread to see how many people are putting 100% of the blame for this dispute on one woman because she didn’t show the proper deference to men who are wealthy and have “done a lot for the sport,” or because she didn’t use kid gloves and ass-kissing when interacting with an older man since he’s known to be “difficult” and to hold certain political views.
I’m not suggesting that Leslie Wylie approached the situation in the best way possible, but this sort of mess also takes more than one person to devolve to this point. I’m hoping that maybe people are thinking that if they show support to Glaccum and Walker, Plantation Field will be reinstated … rather than the alternative, where they give certain individuals a pass for bad behavior because they’re wealthy and influential and therefore deserving of respect no matter how they behave, and shouldn’t have to deal with questioning by (as one poster so eloquently put it earlier) “young whipper-snappers.”
I fully understand and appreciate how ghastly his behavior and posts are, he’s got some seriously messed up ideas. That doesn’t matter to the issue at hand, except that one should note it and expect it and work around it.
When he acted out in that email she needed to adjust her sails and take a new approach. Passive aggressive “OK” was not the right way to proceed.
I think every generation has to learn how to influence others around them of all stripes. 30 somethings haven’t discovered something that older people passed over. As a 50 year old woman who is fiercely independent and successful in my own right and under my own steam, I could pound my fist and be right or I could work smarter and achieve my goals through tact, diplomacy, and relationship building. Getting someone to think your idea is a good one and one they can not only agree to but eagerly support— it’s an incredible skill to develop and use.
Some of the posts in this thread make me wonder (once again) why any landowner ever lets people use their land. Darn are we ungrateful. How dare that land owner be male and have money … How dare they want to be appreciated for allowing people to use their land for year after year… How dare they want to be asked not told about what to do with their own land…
We were approached by a local search and rescue dog trainer who wanted to use our land to train his dogs on. Sure. After the first session he picked a fight with me on FB over something completely silly in our town’s community group, I don’t recall the specifics. I do recall misogyny and snark. When I declined to let him come back and he was perplexed. I’m like dude, you need me, i don’t need you, what’s so hard to grasp about that arrangement???
This is not new. What is new is the inability to “read the room” and adjust one’s strategy to get the desired outcome. That’s not treating people with kid gloves. It’s called diplomacy.
Again I don’t think anyone here disagrees with LW’s position. What many are saying, and it seems to be going over a lot of heads, it is the way she went about it. It seems to me, she read an article in the NYT that she linked in her email and felt PF should join the fight.
“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to h*ll in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
As far as the article title, people really need to get a grip. Too many people read a headline and jump off the deep end. Should Maya Black change her last name or pick events based on potential headlines so as not to offend the masses?
It’s not a matter of deference. It is just that you (general) need to “know your audience!” Especially when you are dealing with a known “old fart”, who is under stress getting a major event underway, while dealing with additional outside stressors (Covid).
As people get older, they generally just become more of what they are. If he was difficult in the past, the person will be more difficult as age comes on. I’d say that’s just a given.
And also, true societal change does not usually happen in short time periods.
For example, although laws about gay etc. persons and marijuana seem to have happened quickly, the undercurrent of change, where the mainstream of people accept these as norms, has been happening for many years.
For many years, black people have tried to engage the white population about (for example) how they are treated by police etc., and have had some limited success. But the changes that have happened with BLM etc., in which many more whites now “get it”, because of George Floyd, are very recent – within months recent.
Although progress is being made, we’re still not at a point where THE WHOLE OF SOCIETY is on the same page, in the same way that LBGTQ are being accepted. Admittedly, there are still some fringe groups that want to treat people differently, but they are now a very small number as percentage of population.
This slow progress is aggravated and set back by certain persons in high authority who seem to be working to actively set back the progress toward wholeness that’s being made, and seem to want to “put them back in their place”. It is my hope that this negative influence will be removed shortly.
But I digress.
EN needed to know their audience, and act/write accordingly. They did not.
The whole idea of “Don’t compromise our principles” and “Don’t kowtow to the crotchety, conservative older guys” might make sense if we were dealing with, say, government-owned land, because as citizens we would have a valid claim that our voices should be heard. But here, the land is private and the event is run by a private company. So sure, you can take the “no compromise” tack, but we see how that worked out.
So it all comes back to the question: are you willing to give up this venue for the satisfaction of knowing that you stood your ground and from this moment forward, no one will ever have to say the horrible word “plantation” again?
Doesn’t seem like the right trade-off to me, but EN took it on themselves to make that decision on behalf of all eventers.
Tangent topic - it is amusing that “this generation” thinks they are the only generation to work to change stuff. That the old people do not know anything about it.
This! Some[one] thinks that she can dictate to a landowner how to name his land and dictate to an event organiser what name they should use?! Systemic racism does not exist except in conversation. White children are being taught that they are privileged because they are white and are being “guilted”. What IS RACIST is assuming you as a white person have a voice for black americans. It is condescending. YOU are creating the problems we are seeing in this country today. If you don’t believe me check out the following Black Americans:
Shelby Steele
Thomas Sowell
Candace Owens
David J Harris
Kash Lee Kelly
The HodgeTwins
Joel Patrick
Jason Riley
Jason Whitlock
…
I freely admit that I do not have the resources to do so. But, if a progressive land owner did step up, I would be happy to contribute towards the development of a more inclusive venue.
Which is particularly funny as the person who coined that phrase (that was frequently used by Boomers) was of the Silent Generation. Jack Weinberg - born in 1940.
I hope it comes to pass and remember that it’s not a one-time expense. That landowner will need stable ongoing financial support to keep the venue usable.
