Yet you dragged it from post to post. That was my point. I didn’t see the post, but I knew about it because you made damn sure everyone did on every post that girl made. My point is you’re overly aggressive about things when ther is no reason to be.
Point being, you continued to make a big deal about something she fixed. She claimed money and sorry, from you’re behavior on these forums, I’ll believe her over you.
And don’t get me started on EquKelly’s comments with the helmet and how this poster needs to figure out her hair with a helmet.
My point is POC riders only matter to EquKelly when they conform to white riders.
It was two posts, and the only reason I remembered it was because the throat latch thing was THAT bad. … it looked as tight as her girth was. But since you brought it up, I actually ended up having a really good conversation with that girl concerning people of color and helmet fit issues. I had no idea about it until I read one of her comments about how hard it was for her to find a helmet that fit w/ ethnic hair. I honestly had never considered that issue. I just couldn’t figure out why this girl was so defensive over a helmet that clearly didn’t fit.
You couldn’t figure out why she was so defensive!!! Are you kidding me? Did it occur to your white privileged butt that she was trying to fit in? Holy moly I’ve heard it all. [edit]
That says it all. You had a revelation so we all must flog ourselves in this thread, yet you are the one slow on the up take. SMH. [edit]
For those reading the post on reddit we are talking about happened a short 4 months ago.
Yes being able to find a helmet that fits my head and I can stuff my hair up into it is actually is a really good example of white privilege in this sport. I admit I was completely ignorant to that until I listened more and now I know.
You guys would like that if you ran yet another person out of here with the toxicity wouldn’t you?
This thread really is getting ridiculous. For clarity,
I think the name was insensitive but no one was racist for that alone.
I think the reason for a lot of the backlash and ugliness going on here is due to white fragility, or in other words white people’s defensiveness, unwillingness, and uncomfortableness with discussing race issues.
I think comments about how white people are losing jobs/ scholarships to people of color are racist because saying things like that means that you think people of color are automatically less qualified and less deserving by default. I don’t think that’s ok and I am very concerned with how many “likes” that post has because I want to believe the majority of us really don’t think that.
White privilege is real whether we want to admit it or not. Some people don’t want to admit that (which goes back to white fragility.)
I’m not perfect and there’s been times where I’ve also failed to recognize my own white privilege but THIS is where I stand. The personal attacks are completely out of hand. This experience has evaporated my interest in ever getting into eventing. My mare loves XC so I was actually flirting with the idea of getting into eventing but there’s no way in he** after this. Thanks for the eye opener.
Bye felicia.
I think Equkelly and Ajierene present an excellent illustration of two ways the conversation about racial sensitivity could be approached. I think one should think hard about one’s goals for the conversation before choosing.
In other words, Equkelly, reread your posts and hers and ask yourself which of you has advanced the cause more in this thread. I don’t think it’s you.
I agree that the personal attacks on this thread are out of hand, but please don’t let a few posters on the COTH forums keep you from giving eventing a chance. While I agree this issue and the discussion around it has been quite an eye opener, I actually doubt that eventing is any more racist than any other equestrian sport. I think we would have seen a similar reaction from any other subset of the equestrian community asked to consider that something they were doing was offensive to people of color. Just look at the discussion about the names of certain colors in the foxhunting forum. Clearly equestrian sports has a long way to go, but I think it’s encouraging that these issues are at least starting to be discussed.
Honestly, good riddance. Why should we welcome someone into our sport who’s been consistently calling us racists for a dozen pages? With no actually onhand experience of how welcoming eventers are? Yet apparently is judging a ethnic equestrian for not stuffing her hair up into some ill fitting helmet because it meets her acceptable fashion standards?
Wait…there’s a reddit?!:lol:
If the worst you can find on reddit is that I “dragged” someone for cranking the shit out their throat latch then I think I’m doing fine.
The helmet thing was ignorance on my part 100%. I honestly didn’t even notice that the rider was a person of color which is again, also on me. All I noticed that this girl’s helmet was terribly ill fitted. It was sitting on top of her head with her entire back of her head and forehead exposed. I’m not going to post the photo because I don’t want to embarrass the girl but basically she was stuffing her hair in her helmet which made it completely not fit at all. I’ve seen helmets that are a tad too small, this one was straight up sitting on top of her head like a hat.
Turns out this girl just really liked the look of the hair stuffed into the helmet so that’s why she would do it like that. That broke my heart because I never considered how hard it would be to have ethnic hair and maintain that “look.” That was the first time I even considered that the way we style our hair is not very inclusive because people with ethnic hair might not be able to do that without sacrificing the fit. We talked more and she mentioned that she couldn’t find any guidelines at all for how to fit a helmet with ethnic hair. I then looked at popular helmet brands social’s and I couldn’t find one picture of one helmet model with ethnic hair.
That was just ignorance on my part and it took me a little while to understand it that the issue was a lot deeper than somebody just wearing a helmet that didn’t fit. That was on me, I apologized and made a point to write to helmet brands on the issue.
We should welcome them because we want to hear what they have to say. Because eventers are tough, scrappy hardnosed individualists who respect other people who are the same. Because we don’t want to become pampered lapdogs who loll self indulgently on soft couches waiting for others to come around and rub our bellies to make us feel good.
Because we are tough enough.
Please don’t prove me wrong on this…
I think it’s more than a few… it’s nearly everyone going after me because I pointed out several specific examples of racism. I might be more hated than Leslie at this point.
You’re probably right though I think this would have been just as bad had this happened in another discipline… it just feels personal right now. Maybe I’ll get over it eventually. I have gotten a few very kind messages from some users that were here but got chased off. (can’t imagine why.)
I think some need to consider context before throwing the racist card in there. Was the property owner racist? Did they think, "hey, there’s a great history of slave labor on old southern cotton plantations, so let’s honor that with “Plantation Field”? No. The place’s name actually had nothing to do with that. It was just the proper word for where a bunch of trees had been planted. Does a landowner or company have a responsibility to consider what some might associate with that? No, not really. People are allowed to show their hesitation by not participating. Should they have considered this when it was brought up? Yeah, I think so personally, but if they went about it by engaging the way Equkelly has on this thread, then I can see why the property owner felt like they were being bullied by a bunch of ungrateful children who’d been offered a beautiful playground and shut it down. The conversation should have come from a position of gratefulness and opening a dialog, not trying to force an outcome. “Hi there, thank you so much for the amazing venue! It’s a favorite for so many competitors over the years and it’s kind of a shame that the name is being misinterpreted by POC. Can we talk about how maybe we can do some PR to make it clear that there is no racist history behind it and make it a more inviting venue to those that have a knee jerk reaction to the word?” Might have had a different outcome. Maybe not, but it couldn’t have been worse than how it was handled.
The problem with assuming the name originally had no malign intent is that it very well could have. The “Lost Cause” had little tentacles that stretched far and wide.
Follow that up with the Southern Strategy, Dog Whistles, Gaslighting , and Weasel Words. Maybe some people got a little too tricky with this nonsense and it is too late for them to be asking for our good faith this far down the road.
Just read a review in Garden and Gun magazine of A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South. Sounds like a good read.
It could have, but it didn’t. That was a big Quaker & abolitionist area for many years and the story behind the name was in every program I could find online since 2009, if not from the very first program printed.
In Garden and Gun? Really? That’s whiter than Wonder Bread and mayo.
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