#she was just going to point out where implicit biases can go and how its affected past seasons!

[crabappleblossoms]

angela PLEASE stop shaking poor cedric

[sunandmoongobrrr]

Korra and her Brutalization: A Legend of Korra Meta

In honor of International Womens’ Day, I want to talk a little bit about Legend of Korra and the treatment of Korra (and to a small extent other women) throughout the show. Content warning: there's some disturbing scenes that I show here, but if you've watched all of LoK, you should be fine.

Korra starts off confident; she is a young avatar who is eager to learn and feels suffocated from the isolation she is kept in from a very young age. But that doesn’t stop her, and like the headstrong girl she is, she moves to Republic City to make a difference and step into her role as the avatar.

Korra immediately starts to doubt herself; she becomes unsure of her abilities and frustrated with herself, and through that she learns to become emotionally vulnerable with Tenzin. To me, this was really great. It showed that you can be confident and vulnerable, and that the two aren’t necessarily independent of each other.

(I’m going to be honest, the 2nd season I didn’t really remember much of, so I’m just going to skip over that. Because what I really want to talk about is season 3.)

In season three, Korra faces the Red Lotus, an “anarchist” group that essentially wants to kill her. And they get pretty close. First, I want to talk about how Tenzin is beaten by the Red Lotus. This has been brought up in Lily Orchard’s (in?)famous LOK video, and while I disagree with her on many many topics of the show, I really think she has a point here. When Tenzin is being brutalized by the Red Lotus, the camera pans away. It is SO painful to see him like this, and the directors know it. It’s TOO painful to see it, so they don’t show you it, and the episode ends before we can see him be defeated.

Contrast that with Korra. They show you every detail of this. And I mean every detail.

It’s disgusting, and they refuse to treat her with any sort of decency or respect like they do Tenzin. It’s almost like they want us to enjoy her torturing. It’s genuinely gross.

People will often refute this by saying “LoK is just a darker show! Look at what they did to the Earth Queen!” And while yes, it is marketed towards an older audience, there’s still no point in brutalizing Korra this way. The main difference between Korra and the Earth Queen is that… well, Korra’s the protagonist. We’re supposed to be rooting for her, and while the Earth Queen being suffocated was definitely dark, it wasn’t unprecedented. The audience was never supposed to like the Earth Queen—she exploited and kidnapped her own people, so of course we wouldn’t care THAT much if she died. But we’ve been with Korra since the beginning. We’re supposed to want her to be happy, and why on earth would we want her to be tortured brutally in such a disgusting way that gives her absolutely no dignity? If we want her to succeed?

(here Zaheer uses the same technique used on the Earth Queen to suffocate here on Korra. for some reason)

In Season 4, the main focus is on Korra and her healing from the brutal things the Red Lotus did to her. She is clearly still struggling, and it could have been another great way to show how being physically strong and confident doesn’t mean you can’t be vulnerable. But they make a lot of bad choices in this season.

One of my main gripes is that in order to heal, she has to return to her abuser, Zaheer, and HE has to teach her how to feel better.

I don’t want to compare LoK to ATLA, although it’s very important to mention that a show that’s a direct sequel, uses its old characters, and banks off of references, should be able to be compared to its predecessor. But I think it’s important to compare Korra’s arc here to Zuko. This doesn’t come out of nowhere; Korra has a lot of similarities to Zuko. The chopping of her hair is a significant turning point in her arc, and there’s an episode called “Korra Alone” (which is clearly a direct callback; shown below).

The difference between Zuko and Katara is that, a. Zuko never had to accept his abuser, and b. Zuko started off as a villain.

One of Zuko’s major points is when he confronts his father—his abuser. He does not bow to him and give in, saying that maybe he had a few good points or his heart was in the right place, but he directly says that Ozai was wrong for what he did. This isn’t the case with Korra. For some reason, Korra has to learn to trust her abuser. The person who did this to her:

And she has to hear him out.

This leads me to my second point, and what’s basically the complaint I have; despite being a protagonist, the show treats Korra like a villain. It frames her torture scenes as if we’re supposed to be excited that she’s being brutalized, as if we’re supposed to think she deserves it. And it’s not even handled properly as one of the villains we know so well—Zuko, who was able to overcome his abuse and become a protagonist who we root for. Again, Zuko and Korra aren’t directly the same characters, but there are parallels between the two and the show encourages their comparison. When it comes to Korra, however, we’re supposed to believe that she deserves everything that comes to her; the brutal scenes and the lack of dignity, even if she is a protagonist.

And in the end, that’s what we’re meant to believe; that Korra deserved what happened to her. In the finale, Korra says, “I finally understand why I had to go through all that. I needed to understand what true suffering was, so I could become more compassionate to others.”

This is, to put it short, ridiculous. I hate this so much I can’t even begin to say how much I hate it. No, Korra did not have to go through the torture she went through. She did not have to go through the mercury poisoning. She did not have to go through every hardship she did. This “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is so harmful because Korra’s healing revolved around accepting her abuser and thanking him for the awful things he did to her. Korra wasn’t even that cocky by the end of the first season, so what it’s essentially indirectly teaching girls is that if you’re confident, you’ll pay. It’s disgusting.

Zuko got a banishment to the Earth Kingdom, got to have his ideas and practices challenged, but he never got physically tortured. I truly, truly believe that one of the main reasons why Korra is quite literally villainized by the show is because she was a confident, brown teenage girl. None of the male characters are treated with such disrespect and we never get told that they need to be “humbled” by abuse.

This is not completely resolved to LoK; there are some aspects in ATLA that I think could’ve been fixed had there been more women in the room. I tag her a lot (bc her metas are awesome), but I really recommend you read @araeph 's Katara: Consumed by Destiny series. I also have a meta here about how Katara is treated in ATLA, specifically in “The Fortuneteller.” (I want to emphasize that while I am anti-Kataang, I don’t believe that Katara’s treatment had to do with the ship itself or that kataang is inherently anti-Katara. It’s just a note about how her character is treated in this episode and beyond.)

I’ve heard a lot of people say that they’re ‘glad’ that LoK didn’t feature Suki or Mai or Ty Lee, because they can’t imagine how poorly they’d be represented. And honestly, I can’t blame them.

This isn’t to say that we need to stop watching LOK or even ATLA. I think the internet has this weird problem where we’ve been told that the way to get rid of problematic media is to just stop consuming anything even remotely problematic altogether. But certain aspects of media will always be relatively problematic, since as content creators we sometimes input our biases into the things we create. The solution, then, is not to banish anyone who puts any harmful stereotypes into their content from society, but to actively and healthily criticize it. Bryke are not God, but they’re also not demons put on the earth to suppress woc. They’re white guys that have implicit biases that have worked their way into the content they produce. I think the lesson learned here, is to have women, especially BIWOC, in writing rooms, to prevent atrocious acts from happening to future Korra's.

Happy International Women’s Day, y’all.

[frenchfriesoverguys]

the falcon and winter soldier series (2021) *SPOILERS*

i graduated 2020 with a film degree and am now in real estate so this is my outlet for my film experience :*)

i’ve always been a big fan of these two characters and am so happy they created more content that focuses on them.

the story line, so far, is good. the show sets up the characters very well. they show sam’s experiences as a black man trying to make ends meet while still trying to save the world. its the financial aspect of being a superhero that they never got into when tony was around. this leads me to believe that the original six didn’t have funding outside of stark and shield, both of which are gone. sam talks about having contracts that prove income, also leading me to believe that he gets paid by the government for his missions. probably not much and considering how often this probably happens...it doesn’t seem like he’ll get much out of it. i can’t wait to see more from him. especially his reaction to the “new captain america”. the way my jaw DROPPED. i was both shocked and completely saw it coming. marvel had hinted at his character but when that guy said “it was the right thing to do” and i had a feeling they were going to screw him over, i was hoping i was wrong. sam wilson deserves so much better.

bucky’s character is actually flushed out, which is a nice change of pace. he’s healing and learning how to be in the world now. i thought they might talk about how he’s used to the world when it was 1944 - and they sort of do. but they talk about dating, not about social issues like i expected. at this point i don’t think they will as they’d rather pretend that he just doesn’t have those implicit biases. it would be interesting to explore. it’s why i want a reaction from him about the “new captain america.” like will he say “oh that makes sense” or will he be like “we ride at dawn.” my guess is the later. his therapist scene was so funny but it is proof that he’s trying to recover and reform. he just wants to make up for his mistakes. i also love that he’s like “i’m not the winter soldier, i’m bucky barnes” with that smile at the end. can’t wait until we see more.

i want more joaquin torres. he’s so sweet and cute - i mean badass... in all seriousness, i like his character and can see him growing into a full fledge recurring marvel character. in the comics, torres takes over as the falcon. if sam wilson does decide to take up the captain america mantle, we might see him as the new falcon. or maybe he’s mephisto. who knows.

they better not mess with sarah wilson. she owns my heart. more importantly, they are setting her up as a recurring character. she has dimensions and isn’t a flat character in the first episode. the trailers suggest there might be some flirting between her and bucky. similarly to sharon carter, i don’t want her to be a delegated love interest. i can count on my hands how many black women are in the mcu. lets not minimize or belittle her character to support the men of the show. 

the only real critic i have about it was the pacing was off. the audience had to sit through sam’s part, then sit through bucky’s part. the only cutting between the two happened in the end. it made the 50 min feel longer and yet much too short. its honestly just an editing problem but it’ll be very disappointing if it continues as it is an amateur mistake. once the characters are together on a screen, the problem should be solved. this is a common issue in scripts that involve two seperate main characters. this is not a critic on anthony mackie or sebastian stan as the editor/writer/director are at fault. the audience didn’t see the second main character until half way through the show. i am also not criticizing how long sam wilson’s part is as it does set him up well and really gets into his family situation and fighting abilities. 

all in all, i did really love it. i didn’t really doubt i would since these are my two favorite marvel characters. we’re in a time right now where not exploring sam’s experiences with systematic racism would be so inauthentic. anthony mackie has talked a lot about this show addressing these issues and i’m looking forward to seeing more from him both in the show and in future marvel movies. sebastian stan and him are phenomenal actors who are finally being utilized. both are underrated but the acting in this one episode alone proves how talented they both are.

[podcastlimbo]

My honest honest opinion on second citadel season 3

Uhhhh... short answer? I didn’t like it much.

Okay wait before I go on to my long answer I need to say that this is all just my opinion and it’s all subjective. If you liked sc season 3 that’s awesome! I get why you do and I’m glad you enjoyed it!

But I really wasn’t a fan of where they went with it (even from episode 1), and I’m gonna go on a long rambly and repetitive rant about it.

I’m not gonna talk about the way the season ended and the setup for s4 because I haven’t fully formed my opinion about that - to form my opinion means to relisten to the season and i don’t really feel like doing that.

Anyways, these are my unfiltered 2am thoughts about the Rest Of It - maybe I’ll neaten it up later to make it more palatable but for now it’s wordy n messy and you can just. Not read it bc it’ll probably make you mad, or feel free to pick it apart and tell me I’m wrong, or unfollow me (and at least one person has already done so lmao) but like that won’t change the fact that I just wasn’t feeling s3 so uh. That said.

Long answer? I love the second citadel... at least the first two seasons

I love the world building, how the setting is such a unique, deliberate step away from eurocentric fantasy, how refreshing all that is! The Second Citadel (the place) is rich with culture and history from the brief glimpses we get of it (mostly in knight of the crown). Not to mention the monster society, with its own rules (or lack thereof) and environments and personalities.

I love the storytelling, how different mediums are woven into the way each episode is formatted. Rilla has her tape recorder, Damien his prayers, Caroline her letters, and each medium is so well suited to each character, and it truly lets us get a glimpse of what’s going on in their minds, and I find it utterly fascinating how a protagonist of one story could just as easily become an antagonist (or at least, an annoyance) in another

And the characters! Each one so compelling, with their own goals and motivations, their own intriguing backstories and potential.

Most importantly, the way these characters play off of each other is what makes second citadel amazing. Getting to see people with similar experiences but different world views clash (Caroline and Mira), people with fundamentally different beliefs reconcile and meet in the middle (rilla and arum), just, Kabert created so many interesting characters, and watching them bounce off one another is a joy.

And that’s what made season 2 so great for me. The exploration of each character, getting to see their good sides and bad, through either a medium tailored for them, or through interactions with others, as they explored a fascinating world.

The end of season 2 left me so satisfied, but still with so many questions and excitement about what was to come. I wanted to see Talfryn come into his own and step out of his brothers shadow. I wanted to see Damien, Arum and Rilla navigating their new relationship. I wanted to know more of the fate of Rilla’s parents, Damien’s past, the consequences Arum would surely face after defying the monster court. I wanted Marc to finally be recognized by his fellow knights, to watch as Caroline lead the journeymen knights, while learning to trust in others as she was beginning to do. I wanted Angelo continuing to unlearn the implicit biases that had been instilled in him as a result of his upbringing, or more details on Caroline and Quanyii’s relationship. I was also curious!! How would human and monster relations change after the events of the finale? And would we learn more of the past, when humans and monsters lived together in peace?

I was buzzing with excitement for season 3, and then.. it came, it aired, and then it went.

And I felt... meh?

Don’t get me wrong. There were moments that I liked. Some of what I hoped to see did happen (see the above paragraph lmao), getting a glimpse of the western wastes with its own culture a joy. The dynamics between Olala and some of the characters were really fun! And the direction the story took at the end was one I didn’t expect, but left me open to more.

That said,,, everything else about the season just. Didnt gel with me.

Everything I loved about second citadel pretty much wasn’t there??? Aside from Caroline, Angelo and Quanyii, all the characters they spent so much time introducing to us and fleshing out over 2 seasons were just relegated to the side??

I think my main problem with season 3 was that it felt like a completely different show. Characters introduced as part of an ensemble became side characters in (what was supposed to be) their own stories. Character arcs that got set up were dropped, and mysteries/backstories teased were forgotten. Heck, the monster court and senate wasn’t even brought up! The aftermath of the fear bugs attack ont the citadel went unexplored! It’s like nothing in the past season even happened!

And I’m sorry I gotta say this, but the problem is Olala.

I mean. Okay I don’t wanna be super mean- she’s perfectly fine as a character. We root for her, we cry when she cries, and we cheer when she wins the day.

But since all the episodes were centered around her, we didn’t get to see anyone else’s inner worlds. And like okay, yes, they did it for this season of Juno Steel too, where Juno, the previous POV a character for 2 seasons, became a part of an ensemble, and was a side character for many episodes. But this choice worked for Juno and not Second Citadel, because it was a natural progression for his story! We spent 2 seasons exploring Juno’s character, his backstory, his motivations, we saw him come to terms with his family history, grow and change as a person, and by the time he joined the Carte Blanche, we’d gotten to a point with Junos story where we’re okay to step away for a while, and see events through the lens of others.

But that just?? Doesn’t work in second citadel? Because unlike Juno, the characters introduced in s1-2 are virtually unexplored! There’s still so much about their stories we don’t know, and so many ways for them to progress.

But we didn’t get any of that! Stuff established in s1-2 barely got payoff in this season. Characters stagnated, and when previously it was amazing to watch them interact with each other? Having each episode throw different combinations of characters together and seeing how they clashed and came together? Yeah we didn’t get that, it was all the same characters bouncing off of Olala, which is fine at first, but honestly? After the first couple episodes, it got stale.

And remember how before, we would get to see the characters tell their story through a medium suited for them? Well I noticed that the format of this season was a lot moreee audio drama-y (basically a TV show but with no visuals) and while there’s nothing wrong with that, one of SC’s strengths was in using the medium in unique ways, presenting the episodes in unique formats depending on the POV character. And with the exception of a few moments, the season really lacked that!

I know there were episodes in s1-2, like caves of discord and the Janus beast which didnt follow that format, but I think it’s a fan consensus that the episodes that do (moonlit hermit, KOTC lots, lady of the lake) are favourites, because they fully embraced the advantages and limitations those framing devices offered, and were truly perfect for character exploration.

It’s like. Idk. Imagine wolf 359 s3 where the si5 were introduced, and there was like 1-2 episodes of them interacting with the rest of our cast, but then after that the rest of the season just completely focuses on Eiffel and the new characters, and everyone else just disappears n twiddles their thumbs and doesn’t even do anything during the finale. That’s what happened this season, and that’s the kinda weird vibe I’m talking about.

Since I’m already rambling, I might as well just say some more stuff. I was disappointed with the music this season. I can tell Ryan Vibert was trying to figure a way to make SC sound different from Juno, and he was getting there in s1-2! The pieces that stand out now are the soft, acoustic guitar pieces, like Rillas song, or the lone melody line of the guitar in the SC theme. I thought he was getting it with s3e1, when Marc fought the dinosaur while traditional Japanese instruments were playing!! But then for the rest of the season, it was just samey echoey ambient electric guitar, like how it is for Juno. There could’ve been so much potential to give this world its own musical identity, but in the end, that attempt was dropped (at least that’s how it come off to me), just like so many other elements introduced in s1-2!

I’ve gotten this far in my rant, and I haven’t even talked about the story. And the story is. Hmmmmm

Like. It’s completely serviceable? Kabert are good at what they do so the story is a okay I guess? But to be completely honest, the characters and story were so tied together in previous seasons, so much so that in this season, even though the plot was just fine, it stayed just that. Fine. it always felt like there was something missing because the characters were the story, and to have just. So many holes in that department meant that the story itself was fundamentally empty.

Anyways uh. All of this is to say that this all boils down to character. I had my nits to pick with other elements but the fact that Rilla, Arum, Damien, Marc and Talfryn got completely sidelined (Tal most of all) when so much of the previous seasons were spent setting them up- in favour of a completely new storyline featuring new characters and settings when there was still so! Much! Left! Unfinished! From unfulfilled arcs to dynamics left untapped, and creative potential lost, the essence of the show was watered down and it left me with the intense feeling of

:/

Idk. Season 3 felt like a completely different show. I liked s1, I loved a2, but s3 just. isnt second citadel for me. I’ll probably still listen to the next season out of loyalty, but I don’t think I’ll ever feel as passionately about the shows future as I do it’s precious seasons, especially if they continue this way.

Sorry.

[jyndor]

I swear, WHY are these people harassing MINORS. The atla fandom is mostly adults at this point, that they're SEARCHING KIDS OUT is just so absolutely disgusting. Those kids got to miss the initial ship wars, let them go through 2020 in peace.

Anon I feel you. Full disclosure, I have had a bottle of wine and spent four hours talking to my family on zoom so I’m heated. Okay, here we go. Let me say this. I am 29 and neurodivergent/ADHD so I prefer explicitly-stated social rules of engagement. Like I don’t always pick up on social cues and that has gotten me into interpersonal conflicts in the past with my peers.

BUT. I am 29 so I also understand that I am in a different place than I was when I was 15 or 12 or 17. I have different needs, different expectations, from those who interact with me than I did when I was a kid. Fuck, I know how it might have felt back 15 years ago to hear adults say “she’s a kid, she doesn’t know what she needs, her brain isn’t fully developed and she can’t legally consent” yeah that pissed me off and in some ways it wasn’t true but with regard to consent it was. Of course it was. But what I’m hearing from these minors, these teenagers who I don’t know if they’re 12 or 17, but they’re not asking to be treated like adults - they’re asking to be treated with respect.

Now all of what I am about to say is not me excusing this behavior, but analyzing why it happens. And yes, I am about to say that all of these anons are white I can smell the entitlement in the air.

I know why these fools are targeting minors and poc zutara shippers. I know why. You know why. We all know. They are EASY fucking targets. It’s sick, picking on kids. Absolutely sick. Harassment, predatory. And they are also acting in bad faith - if they were working in good faith, they would come off anon and say, “hey x I truly believe that zutara is harmful and I am confused as to why a poc would be cool with something that other poc say is harmful to them, can we have a discourse?” now granted, this is fucked up and essentialist garbage, and no one is entitled to discourse~ with random people on social media.

Now I want to make something clear before I get to my next bit: the zutara fandom is not the r*ylo fandom. First off, the zutara fandom has experienced hateful shit from TPTB since early on in fandom; we don’t have a lot of support from the creators. In fact, the creators have been outwardly misogynistic and hostile to us. Okay, Dante Basco and some of the writers MIGHT ship zutara but that’s like, not institutional support. And also there is a history of SOME fan creations being really fucking racist. That shit, the “dark enemies hate sex” shit that zutara is stereotyped as being about, is almost completely purged from fandom. Not that it doesn’t exist still. And not that it shouldn’t be corrected and that we shouldn’t try to grow as a fandom. Have I seen shitty politics from zutara shippers? Yes. And I cringe every time, but like I don’t expect every person to agree with my politics. We have grown so much as a fandom - and you can tell by the fan creations. Fanworks are not about non-consensual domination anymore (like they often were in the early days of atla), they are about respect and reconciliation. And they have been for YEARS, like I’m talking s2 onward, when zutara took off. *sips wine*

‘cause here’s the thing. Fandoms are groups of people. People, as a result of centuries-old imperialist/racist constructs, are racist. We have to actively unlearn so fucking much. And any fandom is going to have its shitty elements. This is not something non-zutara shippers are exempt from. Actually, the zutara fandom has done a lot of work to make the fandom safe for poc and minors over the years and I am so proud of it. I have never seen that in a fandom. Ever. It’s not to say it’s perfect, of course not.

We did that on our own. Not because kataangers or sokka/zuko shippers were like WTF RACIST lol no because poc in the fandom were like, HEYYY before you write capture fic please learn about x, y and z, and the white parts of fandom were like, oh shit let’s get educated, this ship is about reconciliation and growth, let’s live up to that. I mean honestly from what I’ve seen from the larger atla fandom, which has a hard time dealing with the criticisms about why atla is racist (lol shocking that bryke appropriating cultures for their financial benefit would be considered racist but /s) could learn from the zutara fandom. js.

Honestly I assume most of these anons are just fuckin white asshole anti-zutara trolls who have never actually interacted with the zutara fandom. As a white person I do think that we white people have a certain level of entitlement to spaces that are not ours. Like, I don’t see poc who have had to be in more collectivist or communal settings as a result of colonialism and white supremacy invading spaces they don’t belong to in the same way that white people do. This is a LEARNED behavior, not an essence or in our DNA. Like, many white people get pissy about not being allowed by social contract to say certain slurs, but like... A) it’s not a legally enforced LAW lmfao and B) those white people only get annoyed when they realize they aren’t allowed to say it. That’s an extreme example, but I think it’s emblematic of a larger problem - because of colonialist ideology, white people feel entitled to ALL spaces and ALL things. We get annoyed when things don’t work how we feel they should. I grew up expecting things to change when my social class put pressure on those things, so it is always going to be somewhat jarring for me to know that that isn’t the case for marginalized communities.

I know some of my friends who are black have said things like, “lol cait why are you so shocked and appalled that x is the way it is, that’s how it always has been.” Not always, and not all of my friends, but like it happens. In those instances it’s like, I see something happen that is racist or fucked up, and they’re like... yeah. Obviously. But for someone who is not exposed to something, they might find it hard to swallow. When it comes to fascists and capitalists, I don’t have any sympathy left to offer - just get fucking educated or have a fist to the nose. But ships are not at that level. And like people work with political bubbles, where they often get isolated to what discourse is happening in other bubbles, fandoms and subfandoms (like ship fandoms) also exist in bubbles. (I am not saying that fascists/capitalists are soul searching in their bubbles, but they do exist in clear bubbles on and offline and that is terrifying to me; their discourse cannot be GOOD and I hate not knowing what they are plotting).

Example. I don’t interact with r*ylo unless it interacts with ME, and what I see, I don’t like. (let me be clear, I am not comparing zutara with r*ylo because they are NOT equivalent; I would not be a zutara shipper if I thought they were similar). But I don’t go into shipper tags and harass children who support r*ylo. I hate it, I really do it fucking sends me up a wall, but I only ever interact with anti-r*ylo content. and in that way, I don’t know what discourse the r*ylo fandom is doing to correct its horseshit. I only know what I see, and I see r*ylo shippers being toxic and racist.

So I hate fucking r*ylo but you don’t see me going out of my way to interact with r*ylos about their ship. I can’t begin to tell you how much I am ANTI-r*ylo. It is antithetical to everything I believe. But again, I am not going into the tags, searching for r*ylos to harass. Maybe the r*ylo fandom is working on its toxic shit, maybe it isn’t. I have no idea, and I am not going to harass r*ylos about it in their inboxes unless they come into my inbox and harass me. And by the way, even then I am not going to have private conversations with shitty people - that’s all gonna be public, bitch.

Wow... IDK if this is coherent because like I said, wine. At best, these anons are racist white people who think that they are helping the anti-racist cause by attacking people who they think are pushing racist narratives... but are not challenging their implicit biases and so are picking on the most vulnerable people, who because of essentialist garbage, they feel like are traitors of the Cause or whatever, and also are minors so they assume are incapable of fighting back.

It’s racism, my friend. I’m drunk, but it’s racism. Hopefully I don’t have much to edit in this tomorrow morning lmfao. Please tell me if anything doesn’t make sense.

[lastsonlost]

This is what it looks like when you can't see past your own bias.

Aka: what happens when your lived experience is inconvenient to the narrative.

By Andrea Thompson

Watching the movie “Brian Banks” is...awkward. To some extent, it's a classic sports underdog movie, but the struggles Brian Banks had to overcome are anything but conventional. As the movie continually points out, he's exceptional. And he is, in more ways that this movie is aware of.

Based on a true story, which the movie is quick to point out with dramatic music (uh oh), the title character, played by Aldis Hodge, muses on his great love for football, which he was on track to play professionally until he was stopped in his tracks at 16 years old. It's how he was stopped that would make anyone pause; Banks was falsely accused of rape by a classmate.

After some bad legal advice leads to jail time and some years struggling to navigate the conditions of his parole (and having to register as a sex offender), Banks struggles to simply find a job while simultaneously fighting to clear his name and reclaim his life. He also repeatedly writes the Innocence Project and asks them to take his case. Refusing to give up even after they reject him, Banks goes to meet with the lawyers on the project in person, first convincing them to give him advice, then take him on, and finally, actively fight for him.

It's impossible not to get invested in just how much Banks had to overcome, from his poverty-stricken childhood and the various legal road blocks that threaten to end his fight before it even begins. Banks wasn't imprisoned, so he was not a priority for the Innocence Project, and since he took a plea rather than going to trial, he needs completely new evidence rather than simply using what was already discovered. He also has to stay sane in jail, especially when he's put in solitary. Banks even took the initiative and managed to record his accuser recanting her confession.

Except. Except. Well, there was going to be misgivings about this film being released during the #MeToo Era, wasn't there? That the film would fully embrace Brian's perspective and his struggles is natural, even admirable. However, this type of story demands more, and what the movie doesn't say is far more noteworthy than what it does. It doesn't mention that the percentage of false rape accusations are not only incredibly low, the conviction rate for them is even lower. It limits its empathy for what many women have gone through to one scene, where Banks's love interest Karina (Melanie Liburd) reveals she was raped in college, and how devastating the aftermath was for her.

Even if there's little to no doubt of Brian's innocence, it's hard not to wince as his accuser is subjected to the kinds of questions which are used to discredit actual victims, as the men questioning her ask just what she expected to happen when she went off alone with Brian, why she didn't shout, etc. It also doesn't help that Brian and the people assisting him are all easily identifiable as various levels of middle class while his accuser and his family are...not so much, let's just say.

Yes, Brian Banks suffered a terrible injustice, and he proved himself to be exceptional not just for his athletic prowess, but the strength of character it took to fight for the truth over a period of years. The performances are also incredible, and help to elevate this movie above the simplistic melodrama it would otherwise be, although it also depicts faith and how it can be a bedrock for those in pain more respectfully than most mainstream films are typically capable of. It's all in service of someone who deserves to be vindicated, but it shouldn't have to come at the expense of so many other victims.

Rating: C-

Fortunately I wasn't the only one who took issue with this "review".

Cassandra3

This is a disgusting review of a great film. I can not believe that I read what I just read. And also why did you put "(duh duh)" after saying it was a true story. You give Feminism a bad name and I am embarrassed to even have someone like you even pretend to fight for women's rights. SMH

Andree4

This is a wretched review, that quite possibly reveals deep-seated implicit biases, on your part. You didn't review the movie, you made a political statement, rooted in radical feminist, and male-hating rhetoric. This man, along with other men of similar misfortunes, is the victim-not the woman who accused him. He is a human being, that has every right to have his story told, unmolested by contrived issues that would shift the focus off of him, onto a non-victim. And so what if his economic status is above his false accusers status: does it then justify her lies against this man, that resulted in his imprisonment? Nice attempt at a fake out, but I'm sorry-you miserably failed. At the core it appears as if you feel more sorry for false accusers of men, than the men who are falsely accused by these liars. It appears that way, in light of you inserting that jab. This pitiful analysis betrays your binary agenda: all women are truthful and good, in spite of potential liars and deceivers amongst them, whereas all men are just BAD-because they're men. And God help the men if they are assertive, confident and forthright, for then they'll be accused of having TOXIC MASCULINITY, whereas a woman with those same qualities will be labeled a BOSS. Look at the woman in the mirror...

Crystal4

This is a horrible review of the movie. It doesn’t even review the movie. It more about your perspective in the Brian Banks case. I have never seen so much bias. You make it sound like the movie forces you to see Brian Banks as a victim. When in all reality he IS the victim. He was accused of raping his girlfriend and it was completely false. It was prisoned and register as a sex offender. His whole life changed on a lie from a girl who’s family wanted money. What other victims did it come at the cost of ? He just telling his story. SHOULD HE LIE OR WATER IT DOWN, BECAUSE IT HURTS YOUR SENSITIVE IDEALS ? Should he not get justice? Please explain to me what you are trying to say.

Jesse4

Even in the face of a story that proves there are two sides to this extremely challenging issue, you demonstrate that you have no regard for men who can see their lives completely destroyed when false allegations happen. This review is equivalent to me watching The Accused then writing about how it was important to shine a light on violent gang rape, but not if the movie didn’t properly explore situations where men were jailed over false allegations. I also love how you threw in the problem with WHITE MEN when the movie is about a BLACK WOMAN FALSELY ACCUSING A BLACK MAN OF RAPE. Your ideology clouds your vision to where the hierarchy of victimhood drives all understanding of right/wrong and how any narrative should be interpreted. It’s transparent to 90% of us, but your kind lives in an echo chamber. You aren’t more educated...you’re more indoctrinated and I’m looking forward to the cultural shift that sees your viewpoints thrown in the dustpan of history.

Gordon Shumway4

At no point in this cinematic review did you review the movie on its story-telling, 'watchability', acting, or general movie presentation. You took your biased, personal opinion about the story, and decided that it does not fit your false narrative that the female is always the victim.

[dgcatanisiri]

So... I have had THOUGHTS swirling in my head, and, well, I need to word vomit some. This gets LONG. I apologize for the lack of a cut, but nowhere really seemed fitting during my writing.

If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s going around - an article about fandom hating on women. A very long, very researched article. And I absolutely do not dispute that core premise. I am not going to dismiss the work that the writer put into it. I am not standing here saying to dismiss it at all. And, hell, I DO feel a little uncomfortable, writing this massive response to it, being a man writing something that is directly responding to a female experience. Just... My brain would not let me focus unless I wrote this all down, and wrote out my feelings on the matter to a conclusion.

When I first saw it the other day, it sparked a rant of my own, because something about it didn’t sit right. Its focus is on how this hatred of women has gone after those who ship a certain ship, one I avoid calling by name for a very specific reason. That reason being I legit fear being bombarded by people who search the tags for that ship getting a ping of me commenting about it negatively and lashing out at me.

Now, I am not saying that I discount the article writer’s experience or research. Far from it. This is, much as I am loathe to use the term, something I am willing to say that, within the fandom, develops an element of “both sides” to it, where an incident with one side (those in favor of the ship) leads the other (those against it) to respond on the defensive, and back and forth and back and forth, intensifying in each volley, because one random stranger attacked another random stranger and made them hostile to a third random stranger saying things similar to the first, and so on down the chain. It’s like the game of Telephone, just played with tactical nukes.

But, the thing for me in that rant, is that there is a very blatant MISSING of the element of racism that fueled that ship that will not be named, of there being a significant element of the fandom around that ship transplanting the characteristics and even history of the character played by the black man onto the character played by the white man. Like, talk about sock puppet accounts fanning flames and all, but I’ve SEEN fics for this pairing that vilifies the black man and props up the white man. I have SEEN the massive metas that try to explain how the white man kidnapping this woman involved a bridal carry that expresses his true love for this woman he’s just met, interpreting and reinterpreting and pouring over the screentime they have, and only a fraction of it being spent on what seemed like, in the first appearance of these characters. I have SEEN the ignoring and transferring of character backstories repeatedly. Like... Those are a lot of work for it to be mostly the work of sock puppet accounts - A Tweet is easy. A 15000 word fanfic takes time and effort. A meta dive that rivals the length of this post takes time and effort. 

That’s been MY experience in seeing this ship. That’s why I’m being non-specific, because I’ve SEEN the hostility come in and I am taking the steps that I can to avoid that coming in to my inbox. And even when it’s not hostility... I’ve gone and explored the tag for the female character in this pairing. On those occasions, frequently content solely for her is drowned out by the content for the pairing, or about her influence on him. His tag does not have the same issue - there, it’s probably around half shipping content, half individual character content. What I see is that she is neglected by those who claim to see her as part of the pairing they love, and he gets glorified. 

That’s the sexism that I see. That’s where I see the hatred of women happening. On the part of those who claim to love this pairing, but that really seems to just mean that they love him and want to make her stand in emotionally for everything they want to give him. That those who are against the pairing, at the least, want to see that character in particular, her unique characterization and dynamics, in a relationship with someone who is going to treat her with compassion, consideration, and respect.

And, of course, there’s the issue of the fact that this pairing EXPLODED in popularity, while her relationship with another character, with a black man, was from pretty much day one minimized and reduced and ignored, and the damage reflected into the on-screen portrayal so that they never really had any character rebound from the imposed separation in the middle of this content, while strengthening the reduction of this female character to the white guy’s sexy lamp.

It’s not that I’m opposed to women in fandom or that I see something inherently wrong with whoever ships this pairing. It is that I have seen the blatant and thinly veiled racism implicit in the ways that these people go about shipping it, dismissing and denouncing the canon portrayal of an interracial relationship, to the point that when even the (notoriously tumultuous) production came back to write the stories that followed up on their initial appearance, that black man and his relationship with this white woman was downplayed and rendered “less important” to her connection and relationship with the white man - the white man who, in that first appearance, had kidnapped and tortured her, greatly wounded her friend, and killed her mentor. 

Like, I’m just saying, I do not see how one goes from that point to everlasting true love, but I CAN see how that leads to a deep abiding hatred. And yet, you know, nearly 16000 fics for it on AO3, while only about 10% of the other pairing. So, hey, I guess I’M wrong.

This is, again, to say nothing of the reductionary way many portrayals of this ship approach the female half - she loses her characterization in their portrayals to become a stand-in for the (predominantly) female writer/reader, whose love redeems the bad boy from the darkness in his soul. Her contribution, as a singular, unique character vanishes so that she becomes his reward for turning around, and she cheers him on, supporting him while never upstaging him.

It’s the Twilight phenomenon all over again. And I say that as a fact statement, not a value judgement, that this is the kind of thing that we saw within the reactions to Twilight, a vocal segment dismissed it entirely, and we saw a relationship be romanticized when you could actually use it as a bullet-point list of abusive behavior (I say this because it has been - there are plenty of articles using those characters as such). 

I mean, I can easily see this whole thing basically as being “well, the Twilight readers are now adults, let’s throw them a bone and “grow up” the characters for them” on some level. And... Actually, this is going to get off topic, let’s stick a pin in this and come back.

So, look, if this ship is your jam, fine, okay? I’m not making any individual value statements on the subject. You do you. I’m not shaming that act in and of itself, even if, as I’ve made very clear, it is very much NOT my thing. Likewise, I won’t discount that it was investors and shareholders, a notoriously conservative group, who got cold feet and basically wanted to excise the “risk” of an interracial relationship, as opposed to trying to “appease the fans” or something like that.

Like, I know I’m not immune to propaganda. I know I don’t look too deep when a random post crosses my dashboard and talks about this group of people behaving badly - because I’ve seen fandoms and productions be racist. I’m not trying to start a round of victimization Olympics here, but in this case, this is discussing an issue that is wrapped up in BOTH sexism and racism. And on the one hand, that certainly makes it all the easier for bad faith actors to kick up dust and turn people against one another.

BUT...

As important as it is to bring up these issues on their own, you CANNOT. DISENTANGLE. THEM. FROM. EACH OTHER. Like, there are patterns to fandom. You see this repeat itself in every fandom. Fandom at large latches on to a pairing, and shoves most others to the margins. And frequently, when the media in question centers on a character of color, THEY are shoved aside in order to prop up a pairing of white characters. Major canon characters who are not white become secondary - or tertiary - characters in terms of their fandom’s creative output. This happens frequently enough that to try and say “well, maybe the character is just not appealing to the fandom” is actively ignoring the issue.

And this often takes the form of shoving aside healthy relationships and solid, established friendships in the name of pairing up antagonistic characters, declaring the antagonism to be “sexual tension,” that the characters dislike each other not because... y’know, they dislike each other, but because they’re repressing a deep-seated desire to fuck, and THEN they’ll miraculously starting being nice to one another.

Like, this is NOT an isolated thing, you can look beyond the scope of this particular fandom and this pairing and see the pattern repeat itself across media. It is still the outlier when the main fandom pairing is an interracial M/F pairing. 

It’s not isolated. But it’s magnified given the massive size of this fandom in particular. This is a generational fandom, where parents - even grandparents - are sharing it with their children. And those biases we as an audience have reinforce themselves on subconscious levels, we don’t even acknowledge these things until we finally have it pointed out to us - and then we see it everywhere, because we have been blind to it, but it is all over our media, our fiction, baked into the very tropes we are using to assemble our stories.

Pull out that pin, we’re back. When something engages with multiple generations, when this is something you can look back on as a fond memory you shared with prior generations, with people you love, you will become protective of that thing. So when someone comes along and says “hey, [thing] has issues with [whatever],” a gut reaction is to get defensive, coil protectively around it. 

I mean, tell a millennial you don’t like The Lion King (original animated version, I mean), and you’re liable to get crucified. And it traces its lineage to (at a minimum) Shakespeare and probably further. So if, for example, you want to criticize it for, say, only have three female characters of note, none of whom actually interact, in opposition to the nearly three times as many male characters of note, you need to approach the subject with some delicacy (okay, maybe not the most fitting example, since this was part of the reason that the Broadway version made Rafiki a woman, so the issue Is Known, but it does get the point across, okay?).

And it’s the same when it comes to a subject like this particular fandom and media that isn’t just something many get hooked on in their childhood, but is also something that may be among the fond and cherished memories of family figures, some who may have passed on. To say “that thing you love is flawed” becomes a personal attack, not just on you for loving it, but also that beloved family member who brought it into your life.

And absolutely, this is not a rational reaction. It’s pure emotion. But we are emotional beings, and we need to acknowledge that emotions will make us respond and often respond quickly and respond poorly.

Here’s where I think the bigger issue lies if what you want to talk about is how fandom hates women - rather than look at it in the lens of “this ship is called abusive and racist,” go in the direction of “why is THIS ship the one that seems to resonate?”

Because this is the kind of ship that fandom, as a monolithic entity, often gravitates to - the dynamic that says that being enemies will inevitable lead to being lovers. 

Once again, I do not want to shame anyone for enjoying this dynamic. Lord knows my search history has instances of them. BUT... We don’t really know how to approach the dynamic. It is frequently reduced to “well, we made out, so now I’m gonna become the snarky asshole friend no one likes and we’ll bone.” 

Like in general, writing redemption arcs seems to be a hard thing for media, but it really seems to only work when the active narrative endpoint does not end in a major romance - when a romance becomes a major narrative element in said redemption arc, it frequently reduces the subject to “[character] was bad, now they’re in love, so they’re good!” No further work needs to be done.

And so when you have a character who is in need of redemption, it is a problem to just toss them at another character and have them make kissy faces. But that’s what you can sum up much of the concept of enemies to lovers in this fashion. The work isn’t done to show the earning of redemption, just declaring it attained because of another character’s love.

And I’m being intentionally non-specific with gender, because I do have a prominent example of this happening in a female/female fanon relationship in mind, which I am also avoiding mentioning in the name of discretion. So this isn’t solely a M/F phenomenon. This is a media thing, this is an “our understanding and approach to these dynamics and portrayals in media seems flawed and needs examination” thing. 

I mentioned Twilight above, and how that features a relationship that is used as an example of domestic abuse. Now, look, we can go back and forth about interpretation, the thing to acknowledge about it is that there are a great many who walked away from these books, their movie adaptations, and saw this particular interpretation. While you can probably take any relationship in any media and spin it in such a way, I think there is something to be said for the ensuing argument: When this is exposed to young people who are beginning to seek out romantic relationships, if their example for what love is, what love looks like, has a basis that, based solely on interpreting the text alone, the actions and words of the characters involved, the narrative text, the exploration of their thoughts, is unhealthy, is something that doesn’t need to have a word or action changed to be legitimately cited by experts within domestic abuse counseling as the warning signs... What does that say about our perceptions of what love even is?

And this isn’t getting back into the element of racism, either. Because we could go in that direction, where the black characters in fandom see this selective reinterpreting of their characters, turning what are gentle, caring, loving men into scary figures who loom ominously when they feel threatened, which starts to seem like all the time. There are a set of stock characterizations for black characters, for really any minority character, and the fandom will make them exhibit them in their interpretations, even if it does not fit anything established on screen.

There are a lot of threads that tie into the problems within this fandom and in the approach to this ship in particular. I feel like just pulling at one of them is doing so at the expense of the others, ones that run as deep if not deeper. And it seems like a disservice, both to the complexity of the issue and to anyone impacted by these matters, to only do that deep dive on the one. And, if you are not capable of doing it alone, which, I understand, this is a tall order, then I think it also is important to acknowledge this and actively seek out the alternate views and perspectives that aren’t just total opposition to you (meaning the references to the groups that sprung up in alt-right forums and such), but also those who are going to say “okay, maybe you’re right about x, but your statement on y are missing a lot of context you do not have from your position,” and seek the necessary education.

While I can appreciate the time and effort put into this article and the points it wants to make, it IS wrapped up in elements that run far deeper than any single ship, and just really seems to ignore the intersectional element of fandom at large, how fandom’s problem run deeper than just hating women. To talk about how fandom hates women, you are also needing to open the door to how fandom hates black people, hates people of color.

There is a hierarchy to this, and at best, you are missing a lot when you only focus on the top layer of the issue, rather than even acknowledging the deeper dive that inevitably comes from this. Like, it’s bad for a white woman, dealing with sexism. It’s worse for black women, dealing with sexism AND racism. It is something of a position of privilege to only examine the sexism in fandom, without exploring or acknowledging the racism.

Fandom’s hatred of women IS real. I am in no way disputing that. But I do not think that this is the best example to that point, because it becomes all too easy to dismiss the valid complaints and concerns with the trolls and bots and sock puppets found in the process that deserve legitimate consideration - this is one of the things I have been over when I have (oh god, I’m about to break the self-imposed rule and directly reference the media and characters in specific...) been over the problems I have with The Last Jedi. It’s not that I dislike Rose or Holdo, but I feel like they came into the narrative to teach Finn and Poe (both men of color) lessons that either comes at the expense of the previous’s movies arc for Finn or the previous movie’s characterization for Poe. It is not the characters themselves, it is the utilization within the narrative, using these women to impose a lesson on these characters. That, as I said above, Rey is reduced to a sexy lamp, there to try and bring back to the light a character she has no reason to ever even care about.

That was my experience with The Last Jedi - I had honest issues with the film that weren’t “women? In my Star Wars? Unpossible!” But the surrounding discourse CONSTANTLY felt so toxic to anyone who disagreed with the idea that it had been a win, that it was a bold new direction for the series, and that anyone who disagreed MUST be a sexist/racist/whatever who couldn’t take a changing face to the franchise. 

Hell, that may even be why I got this ultimate feeling of defensiveness, both in my opinion of TLJ and the ship in question (yeah, that one I’m still not acknowledging), because what I saw was a lot of really prominent voices not seeing the issues I did, and making it come across like the people who disagreed with them HAD TO BE the ones who were mad on the basis of characters like Rose and Holdo existing, or complaining about Leia’s Force use, or things like that. But... THOSE things weren’t my issues. But I couldn’t talk about those issues on any platform where there was regular engagement on the subject, considering the amount of explanation I would have to do.

Probably also explains some of my inherent response of trying to figure out how I feel about this article, too, come to think of it...

That was how things were after TLJ, and that’s when a lot of this push and pushback really started to gain traction as far as I can see. And maybe we could go and blame this on *ahem* bigger issues that were happening in 2017/2018 that proceeded to exacerbate matters. Like, we’re still in the midst of cleaning up the worst of all of what went on because of the time we live in, since things are still getting messier while we deal with prior fallout.

So... I honestly don’t know how to sum this up as a TL;DR. It was kind of a process for me to get to this point, and I don’t even know if I really have a conclusion. The best way I can go about summarizing is that I do not disagree with the article’s core idea. But I do not agree with its focus, while I understand that a portion of it, if nothing else, justifies why it is the focus. We are dealing with a very complex and complicated web of issues on this, and while I understand focusing on a single thread of that web, it feels like doing so also fails to acknowledge the various connected threads that wrap around that singular thread, in particular the racial elements, which, considering the profile image included, I do not believe this article was written by someone who is inherently aware of these aspects (while I’m also aware that, as a white person myself, I only have so much room to talk). This is all a very long way for me to go about saying “fandom has a lot of issues.”

[thesinglesjukebox]

JAMILA WOODS - BALDWIN

[8.20]

Her legacy is secure on our sidebar, but she clearly has more lofty ambitions...

Alfred Soto: Absorbing James Baldwin's incantatory power into musical history that encompasses soul horns and a unforced communitarian spirit, Jamila Woods remains skeptical of his legacy anyway. She understands how an influence is a menace too. [8]

Nellie Gayle: How do you live a legacy, honor a history, that's equally heartbreaking and triumphant? Jamila Woods brings brightness and joy to her reflections on African American history in the United States, without ignoring the trauma implicit in its story. "Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put in on your head" the video quotes from Baldwin. Much like the author she named the track after, Woods will not gloss over the daily suffering and indignities of white supremacy in the US. But also like Baldwin, she's an optimist who derives happiness and hardwon joy from a history of resistance. So long as there is a vibrant culture and community whose stories deserve to be celebrated (not just told), Woods will literally sing its praises with melodies reminiscent of Bill Withers - upbeat, sunny, and heartfelt. Another Baldwin quote for Woods, one that deserves to be framed & hung up on bedroom walls in times like these: "To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I'm forced to be an optimist. I'm forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive." [9]

Nortey Dowuona: A warm, dreamlike roll of piano chords swirl with the wind as a loping bass limps alongside dribbling drums as warm bursts of horns drift past Jamila, who gently stirs the cauldron, which bubbles warmly as the kids gather around in cautious excitement. [9]

Kylo Nocom: "BALDWIN" is a perfect explanation of how the idea of (argh!) optimistic and loving resistance can (often justifiably) feel like a pointless endeavour, especially when applied to the struggles of black Americans. Poetic descriptions of gentrification, police brutality, and non-black inaction are painfully outlined, betraying a central exhaustion that lies in Jamila's doubts of her friends' and icons' messages of hope. Jamila's croon also reads as tired, perhaps unintentionally, but with the help of some tasteful vocal accompaniment the sincerity beneath her uneasiness is allowed to flourish. Despite the underlying hesitance, "BALDWIN" is ultimately inspired by a real desire to see love as a means towards building community. As for Nico Segal, it seems he was just invited to aim at my weakness towards percussive horn blasts, punctuating the lines that seem to resonate the most powerfully: "we don't go out, can't wish us away." [9]

Joshua Lu: Utterly sublime and warm, like the aural equivalent of a hazy summertime sunset, which is startling for a song with this subject matter. "BALDWIN" touches on the different ways racism manifests, bringing up not just images of black fathers dead on the streets and white women clutching their purses, but also referencing the "casual violence" in white speech and white silence. It's subtly damning, and Jamila sounds too weary to accept the solution she's been offered, to extend love to the people who will never reciprocate it. The song ends uncertainly, hanging on a cryptic line and an unsatisfying melody, as if daring the listener to provide their own resolution. [8]

Joshua Copperman: "BALDWIN" struggles with its namesake's theory that "you must accept them with love" - 'them' referring to white people - "for these innocent people have no other hope." How is love even possible, even in Woods' definition of love, with the aggressions both macro (police brutality) and micro (purse-clutching) addressed in the lyrics? Obviously, there aren't easy answers, but Woods' educated guess on surviving is not just resilience, but community. That chorus starts with "all my friends" for a reason. It's not quite as anarchic as "You can tell your deity I'm alright/Wake up in the bed, call me Jesus Christ," but it's the same eventual conclusion. Instead of defying religion, Woods defies the expectation of being respectable. That's the interesting thing about this beat too, from Slot-A, mixing more traditional R&B instrumentation like Rhodes piano and canned synth pads with trap snares and horn stabs. He takes advantage of Woods' thin voice, not only contrasting it with those heavier textures but also giving it space to breathe. Another hook of this song - there are several - is "You don't know a thing about our story/you tell it wrong all the time," suggesting that if love alone won't overcome, telling your own tale will be more than sufficient. [9]

Will Adams: So many (usually white) musicians handle the topic of racism as deftly as if it were a hot potato slathered in grease. Jamila Woods cuts to the core in a single verse, addressing police brutality, gentrification and purse-clutching casual racism. The arc of the song is balancing that anger with weariness of those who preach civility in the face of hate. If that all sounds a bit too down, Nico Segal's punctuation in the form of bright horn stabs are there to keep the message alive and resonant. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Not the most transcendent piece on LEGACY! LEGACY! (see "BASQUIAT"), but a close competitor. The jazzy production sets the groove well, and the stabs of Nico Segal's horns and Gospel-adjacent choirs fill the space beautifully. But it's Jamila herself who takes "Baldwin" from something pleasant to something glorious. She bridges romance, protest, and memory like no one else can, melding them with her sweet, pointed voice into the album's best demonstration of its thesis. [9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: "BALDWIN" is a song that finds Jamila Woods detailing the outright, inescapable racism that occurs against Blacks every day. In referencing James Baldwin, she makes clear how such fear and hatred-fueled actions have persisted to the present day. But what makes this so fascinating a song is that Woods muddies the waters; she spends a bit of time wrestling with the positivity that Baldwin espoused throughout his lifetime, finding herself conflicted by the effectiveness of such praxis. In a way, listening to this feels like a legitimate Sermon on the Mount moment, where "lov[ing] your enemy and pray[ing] for those who persecute you" comes as a shocking command instead of a spoonfed Sunday School lesson. Miraculously, "BALDWIN" doesn't end up feeling knotty and tense, but overwhelmingly triumphant. You can sense it in the gospel choir and Nico Segal's horns, but it's Woods's own silk-smooth vocals and circuitous melodies that announce her impossible serenity. Has she found truth in such ostensible cognitive dissonance, or is she too elated to be bothered by this disagreement? That internal struggle finds no conclusion here, but Woods transcends it all by being an inspiration herself. She embodies something that Baldwin had written to his nephew in 1962--a specific instruction that feels ever necessary today: "You don't be afraid." [7]

Iris Xie: With such a clear, gentle series of asks here, you would have to have an adherence to bigotry, or at least avoiding the discomfort of examining your own internalized anti-Black biases, in order to avoid considering what Woods is saying here. I think about this a lot as a queer Asian American, what my responsibility is to the project of helping not contribute and help demolish the project of anti-Blackness as enacted by white supremacist institutions and those who are complicit and facilitate them, especially when I see the amount of pain in both the news and what my friends experience. The line of "All my friends / Been readin' the books / readin' the books you ain't read" cuts deep for me especially, because I have an Bachelor's degree in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, which is an enormous amount of privilege in itself to receive and is due to countless activist histories that made that possible. It also made me think of the sheer amount of books about queer Black feminism that I genuinely feel I've barely scratched the surface of understanding, but am always in awe of the brilliance exuding forth. All of it is already written here for anyone to read, with new scholarship and articles and media produced all the time to help digest and made accessible for the rest of us. The loveliness of this song is that in its quiet neo-soul tempos, with the subtle snares, synths, and horns, results in a vibe she is secure in itself and asks the listener to move towards Woods. Black activists have put together the work and articulated these for decades, for any of us to read. The least we can do is listen and pay attention, as a complete bare minimum. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[housmania]

In Defense of TJLC

A response to this Slate podcast and to general misconceptions.

Hello! Call me soe. I like cats, BBC Sherlock, and friendly online communities. I hope you do too.

I also blog about TJLC. So, when a Slate podcast came out this week portraying TJLCers in a jarringly negative light, I was dismayed. What I heard was not the community I know.

This post’s aim is to tell the other side of the story. I’m writing both for people who support TJLC and were shocked to hear of the podcast, and for people outside TJLC whose initial impressions have been skewed by the podcast or other outside sources.

I’ll address four of the most common arguments against TJLC through the lens of the argument presented by Willa Paskin, the podcast’s creator:

TJLC, as a theory, is “far-fetched” and merits no serious consideration.

TJLCers are dogmatic, ideological, and close-minded.

TJLCers have hated on people outside of TJLC to an unusual and appalling extent.

TJLC has brought more harm into the world than good.

I intend to refute these points. In the process, I hope to represent your run-of-the-mill TJLCer: not a hateful extremist, but rather someone who supports a theory, enjoys discussing it, and is happy to let those who don’t live their happy lives.

It also means adhering to the standards of a good TJLC meta writer: going through the podcast thoroughly, addressing Ms. Paskin’s correct insights as well as her failings; reading and acknowledging critics and downright opponents; citing all sources; and remaining civil and open-minded. I wish Ms. Paskin had afforded us these privileges.

I genuinely believe that Ms. Paskin meant well. Nonetheless, the biases of her sources, combined with several misconceptions and imperfect research, result in a piece that portrays TJLC inaccurately.

To understand what the podcast got wrong, we first need to cover:

What is TJLC?

TJLC is the theory that the characters John Watson and Sherlock Holmes will end up in a canonical romantic relationship on the BBC show Sherlock. People who support this theory are called TJLCers. TJLCers write analyses of the show, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and numerous other sources known as “metas”.

TJLC is short for “The Johnlock Conspiracy.” I must immediately clarify that this name is a joke. It began humorously and is always, always used tongue-in-cheek. Keep this in mind: Many misconceptions about TJLC arise from the fact that we take very few things seriously, as I’ll discuss later.

What isn’t TJLC?

TJLC is not the same as Johnlock.

Johnlock refers just to shipping John/Sherlock—thinking they’d make a cute romantic couple, without necessarily having any expectation of that happening on the show.

More fundamentally: Johnlock is about creating transformative, creative content. It’s about making something new. In essence, it’s fiction.

TJLC is about analyzing evidence that’s already there. It’s nonfiction.

Ms. Paskin frequently blurs the lines between the two and mourns TJLC for not having the same level of creativity. She explains, for example, that fandom reads into tiny elements of a show to create a transformative space. But TJLC is not transformative. That’s Johnlock.

Neither is TJLC based on wanting the show to “bend to [our] desires”—i.e., Johnlock shippers projecting wishful thinking onto the show. I’m happy to serve as a counterexample for that! I actually didn’t ship Johnlock at all before discovering TJLC. Rather, I found the theories plausible and loved the idea that a show centered around deduction and analysis could also be the subject of deduction and analysis.

Of course, people who already ship Johnlock are more likely to be attracted to TJLC. But the basis of TJLC is not to “see in the story that you have, the story that you want” (46:40)—that’s shipping—but to analyze the story you already have.

I cannot stress this enough: TJLC is analysis, NOT shipping.

TJLC and the “Great Game”

As the podcast explains, TJLCers aren’t the first analyze Sherlock Holmes. Fans of the originals have been analyzing the stories since the 1880s. These early theorists actually gave the name to two kinds of fan analysis: Watsonian and Doylist.

Watsonian fans played the “Great Game,” treating the stories like a real world. Doyle didn’t exist, so every detail had to be explained in-universe rather than attributed to author techniques or error. They’re closer to your modern shippers, creating headcanons to fill in gaps.

Doylist fans acknowledged that (no duh) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a real person, and therefore analyzed the stories as works of literature. They are essentially literary analysts and critics, the kind that wind up on JSTOR.

TJLCers are Doylists. Obviously, someone made the show. That means we analyze character arcs, cinematographic techniques, and rhetorical devices in the dialogue like a researcher in film studies or literature would.

Ms. Paskin warns that in the Watsonian Great Game, people kept “tongues planted firmly in cheek; TJLCers, not so much.” And yet, that’s the point! You wouldn’t expect a literary analyst to go “lol maybe The Great Gatsby criticizes society but like who knows” any more than you’d want Watsonians to really believe that because John Watson’s wife called him James, his middle name is Hamish (Scottish for James) rather than acknowledging that Doyle just forgot. A ridiculous premise entails a humorous approach. A reasonable premise entails a rational one.

TJLC isn’t quite the same as highbrow analysis, however, for three reasons:

First, we use our analyses to speculate about the future of the show. We don’t have the privilege of analyzing a complete work. In that sense, the closest analogy I can think of is that of political analysts: examining what’s already been said and done to predict what will happen next.

Second, we evolved from a fandom space. That means that the barrier between TJLC and Johnlock, between nonfiction analysis and creative fiction, is never as solid as it would be in academia. Furthermore, a significant number of TJLC meta writers also engage in fictional fanworks, making it more difficult to distinguish where hard analysis ends and transformative work begins. I’ll go into some of the nuances of meta in a bit.

Third, the people in TJLC are generally queer women and often young. And we can’t discuss biases against fandom and TJLC without acknowledging sexism and homophobia. When a film critic writes a theory, it’s deep; when we do, it’s ludicrous. Paradise Lost is fanfiction just as much as AO3, but only the former is treated as legitimate literature. Theories about straight couples are plausible; ones about queer ones are suddenly delusional or fetishization. Adult fanboys are mature content creators; fangirls are hysterical.

Conversations about the implicit biases in media depictions of fandom aren’t my focus here. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to bear in mind that highbrow criticisms of fandom that focus only on its ill effects and ignore the complexity, depth, community bonding, and social change that fandom (analytical and transformative) creates often denigrate fans as immature and delusional without considering whether that accurately represents even a significant minority of a fandom. It’s a bias that we should all keep in check.

As progressive as Ms. Paskin may be, the podcast also falls into this trap. In particular, she emphasizes sensationalist depictions of TJLC theories—highlighting far-fetched theories and glossing over deeper points—and the contemptible actions of very few TJLCers while glossing over the far more plausible mainstream theories and kindness of nearly all TJLCers. As a result, we naturally look hysterical and delusional.

So let’s tackle each of those issues: TJLC as a theory and the behavior of the TJLC community.

TJLC as a Theory

If you don’t support TJLC, I’m not asking you to be convinced by a few paragraphs. The aim here is simply to explain why TJLC is plausible.

Ms. Paskin asserts that (1) TJLC is completely unsupported by the original Sherlock Holmes stories, (2) that romantic coding in the show is simply “a knowing wink,” and that (3) TJLC “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.” In fact:

1. TJLC is supported by the original stories.

The Sherlock Holmes canon contains significant, documented evidence of queer coding similar to other works of the same time period. It’s also reasonable to theorize, based on biographical data, that Doyle himself was bisexual.

The extent to which the stories were deliberately coded is a matter of debate. Yet Ms. Paskin simply asserts that “Conan Doyle wasn’t trying to create a homosexual subtext when he wrote the characters, but he did write a deep and committed friendship.” As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

How on earth can anyone possibly know if the homoeroticism was intentional or not, when ACD could’ve been persecuted for admitting it, or making it more obvious?

Ms. Paskin’s assertion, which does not acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, again conflates Johnlock shippers with TJLCers. Johnlock is about transformative fiction; TJLC is about nonfiction analysis.

Ms. Paskin also suggests that TJLCers are “queering” the text, except that queering generally implies a queer theory approach to something that wasn’t queer to begin with. Our whole objective is to reveal that the text was originally queer.

2. The basis for TJLC is the show itself.

Ms. Paskin supposes that TJLC is “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.”

But TJLC isn’t based on anything the creators have said. It’s based on analysis of the show itself.

There’s a whole lot of analysis; good summaries are here and here. Essentially, we argue that given the level of coding on the show, the most probable outcome is that there is deliberate subtext meant to foreshadow that John and Sherlock will become a couple. Elements like Sherlock being indifferent to women, yet “romantic entanglement would complete [him] as a human being” suggest that the subtext isn’t just a “knowing wink,” as Ms. Paskin asserts: it would be poor writing (not to mention queerbaiting) to complete such a setup and not follow through.

3. The creators

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that TJLCers believe Moffat and Gatiss are deliberately lying when they say that Johnlock will not become canon.

And normally, I would agree! Except that Moffat and Gatiss have a long history of lying through their teeth about plot developments. For example, they vehemently repeated that The Abominable Bride would be a stand-alone episode completely independent of the show, but it turned out to be a drugged Sherlock’s theorizing about Moriarty’s plan. And before Series 4, they said that Mary would become a long-running character, then killed her off in the next episode.

So it’s not a stretch to think that they could be lying about one more thing, particularly when TJLC relies on independent evidence from the show itself.

In fact, Paskin argues that TJLCers, like Watsonians playing the Great Game, base their theories on a “contradiction”: “On the one hand the author might as well not exist, but then on the other hand, this person who doesn’t exist has made this perfectly explicable logical thing.”

Except that unlike Watsonians, we do acknowledge that the creators exist. We analyze the show as a work of fiction, with narrative techniques that can be analyzed just as much as plot elements.

Furthermore, the fact that the creators lie constantly doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention to what they do say. They have large incentives to keep upcoming plot twists secret, but that doesn’t mean they can’t reveal their motivations and influences. A lawyer questioning a lying witness can still gain information from what they do say.

Take a closer example: Say I went back to 1897 and asked Bram Stoker if there’s queer coding in Dracula (which is now well-documented). He would probably respond along the lines of “I’m not a sodomite; also, what???” But he might wax poetic about homoeroticism in Walt Whitman’s poetry and mention that his charismatic but domineering idol Henry Irving was the basis for Dracula.

So no, there’s no contradiction between analyzing the show and the creators’ influences while still believing that they don’t want to reveal upcoming plot points.

The Behavior of the TJLC Community

How Theories Work

Ms. Paskin rattles off several far-fetched TJLC theories that make TJLC as a whole sound ridiculous. Furthermore, she implies that TJLC is a monolithic community with a “dogmatic” belief in all of these theories, such that criticism and discussion don’t exist.

Guess what? I’m in TJLC, and I don’t believe half the theories she mentioned. That’s because TJLC is much less uniform than its detractors would believe. Furthermore, the general level of confidence that people have in a given piece of evidence depends on its strength. In other words, the more evidence for something, the more likely that TJLCers agree on it. The less evidence for something, the more likely we are to treat it as just something cool that could turn out to be coincidence.

We can divide TJLC meta into five basic categories:

1. Foundational meta

These are well-respected analysis of character arcs, dialogue, and other clearly deliberate plot elements such as this one. Pretty much all TJLCers agree with them. These are your best-researched, most widespread meta; they form the true basis of TJLC. Here are some examples. And yet they hardly show up in Ms. Paskin’s discussion, because they don’t make TJLC sound too far-fetched.

2. Circumstantial evidence

TJLC can stand on foundational meta alone, but there’s also secondary evidence to support it. This includes the “drinks code” (the theory that beverages serve as symbols on the show, supported by subsequent creator remarks) and similar theories that can’t hold up TJLC by themselves, but do provide extra evidence and add nuance to theories about character arcs and plot development.

3. Accessory meta

These are analyses of elements that could well turn out to be coincidence due to scarce evidence. If true, they allow us to establish character arcs in greater depth, but it’s perfectly possible that any given one is coincidence. These include the theories on wallpaper and lighting that Ms. Paskin reports as though they were the pillars of TJLC. They’re theories that I read and go, “Hm, interesting; maybe.”

4. Spinoff theories

These are theories that deal with specific paths the show might take. They generally have groups of supporters within TJLC, but each spinoff theory usually only has a smaller group of supporters within the larger TJLC community.

It’s important to note that many major theories don’t have to do with Johnlock at all. Take M-theory, the idea that Mycroft and other characters are under Moriarty’s thumb, or EMP, the idea that some episodes take place in Sherlock’s mind palace. If, as Ms. Paskin asserts, TJLC is about wishful thinking and wanting Johnlock to be canon, what would be the point of these? Furthermore, if TJLC is monolithic and dogmatic, why do we constantly discuss and critique these theories in constructive discussions? I had to make a whole table of theories after Series 4 because everyone’s opinion was so different!

5. Crack theories

These are usually clearly labeled “crack” and are never meant to be taken seriously. Again, TJLC contains a lot of humor. So sometimes, we goof off and write theories like this one that are clearly ridiculous, usually with an exaggerated conspiratorial tone, to have fun in the spirit of the Watsonians. Unfortunately, some people outside TJLC think we actually take these theories seriously and accordingly treat us as crazy people. Guys… Ctrl+F “crack” first.

To summarize:

TJLC contains theories with varying levels of evidence that are treated with corresponding levels of seriousness.

TJLCers are far from dogmatic. Different people have different views, and that’s OK.

TJLC is founded on criticism and discussion (here’s an example). By disagreeing on meta, we gain better insight into the characters.

Addressing Ms. Paskin: The theories she dwells on are EMP and M-Theory (40:04 and 10:37), both spinoff theories. They do not form part of the main body of TJLC, and fans are far more flexible about that stuff because it’s not nearly as firmly supported as foundational meta. She cites a clip analyzing Mycroft’s theme in the score, which is accessory meta that could well turn out to be coincidence. (By the way, I have serious doubts about all three of these theories. And TJLC is perfectly accepting of that!)

She also talks about loudest-subtext’s meta on the 2009 BBC queer representation report, whose objective was to demonstrate that it was possible for TJLC to happen from a production/permission standpoint, not to prove that TJLC was happening on the show. In that sense, it’s closer to circumstantial evidence.

She also fears that TJLCers “try to find order and logic and reason in every detail.” Again, sane TJLCers treat less solid evidence as less likely to be true. Caveat: Some TJLCers do go overboard. But they do not represent the overwhelming, sane majority.

TJLC Culture

Confidence and Criticism

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that many TJLCers regarded TJLC as far more well-supported, even certain, than “an opinion or a possibility” or “just one ship among many” (14:50).

And yet, in an academic setting, isn’t it normal to think that the theory you researched and support is correct? Again, we hit the boundary in how the public perceives highbrow research and fan analysis. TJLC was not “just one ship among many” because (again) it’s not a ship, it’s a theory based on research and analysis. So naturally, we had a higher level of confidence in TJLC becoming canon than a shipper with an unsupported ship would.

Ms. Paskin implies that this confidence led directly to TJLC being unable to take criticism and therefore hating on people outside the community, since “denying [TJLC] was denying the truth” (14:55). But—first off—confidence does not directly lead to thin skins. Again, we debate everything. If good meta writers couldn’t change their minds given new evidence, TJLC wouldn’t exist.

Yet even when some TJLCers were more certain about TJLC than could be reasonably expected, the overwhelming majority was perfectly nice. We can, in fact, agree to disagree with others.

But this brings us to the most painful part of the podcast:

Fandom Toxicity: The Broad Picture

The podcast, having painted TJLCers as delusional, dogmatic crusaders, goes on to argue that TJLCers hated on people outside TJLC to an unusual and deplorable amount, such that TJLC’s main effect was to increase toxicity in the Sherlock fandom.

For starters:  Yes, a few TJLCers did fit this despicable mold. I universally condemn people who went out of their way to attack people outside or inside the community. They are an insult to TJLC’s values of inclusivity and rational debate. And my heart goes out to the people who suffered as a result of them.

But guess what? All the TJLCers I’ve talked to agree with that. Because the fact is that awful people form an incredibly small minority of TJLC.

Most of the TJLCers who listened to the podcast found this to be the most insulting and painful part. They’ve reiterated time and again that the community as a whole is not a toxic place.  @artfulkindoforder put it best:

So many TJLCers were never mean to anybody.

You can think we’re unrealistic, immature, delusional—fine. But at the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of us stuck to our circles of courteous people and just had fun.

In broad terms, there were several inconsistencies between the podcast and what I found. First, the podcast attributes toxic behavior to large swathes of TJLC, when in fact it tended to be a small group of repeat offenders, many of whom would attack people inside TJLC as well as outside it. loudest-subtext, a longtime TJLC blogger, discussed this here.

Secondly, the podcast makes absolutely no mention of the hate that TJLCers—often perfectly civil ones—received, which makes it easier to paint TJLC as engaging in vicious, one-sided attack. TJLCers, especially at the beginning, received shocking quantities of anonymous hate. Like attacks on people outside TJLC, I’m sure that the attacks on TJLCers were also due to a tiny minority of toxic people. But to gloss over them entirely is to paint an incomplete and biased picture. As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

I’m not going to pretend that there was never nasty behavior from TJLC, but I’m also not going to say her description of us was accurate. She presented the TJLC fandom like it was a toxic cult.... She talked about fandom bullying as though we were never on the receiving end of it, and weren’t ever ridiculed, or called stupid, or sent anon hate, or harassed. To imply that tjlcers were only dishing it out is just flat out inaccurate.

The anonymous attacks on TJLCers had several results. First, TJLC developed a culture that stresses avoiding confrontation with outsiders: leaving other shippers be, unless they seek out TJLC posts. For example, some of the first things I learned were to misspell other ship names on TJLC posts so they wouldn’t show up when people wanted content promoting that ship, and not to reblog posts from outside shippers’ blogs with TJLC-related comments. Far from attacking outsiders, the whole point is to let people who disagree with TJLC do their own thing.

Second, the vast majority of TJLCers despise anon hate because they receive it unusually often. I’ve never seen a community with so many posts reminding people never to resort to it because they’ve seen how it hurt TJLC bloggers.

Third, a handful of TJLCers who got repeated and unwarranted hate did get more combative. But when looking at their later behavior, it’s important to understand that many of them became less willing to compromise on TJLC because they’d seen toxic fans remain unwilling to compromise or debate with them. And most of the conflicts I’ve seen as a result came from anti-TJLC people coming specifically to comment on TJLCers’ posts, not from TJLCers going out of their way to fight non-TJLCers.

Specific Incidents

I didn’t want to rely on secondhand knowledge about hate to write this response. In the spirit of TJLC, I wanted to be fair and impartial. That meant looking through the blogs of people who had received hate inside and outside TJLC. So here’s what I found out:

First off, it was awful. I was looking 4-5 years back to find the worst instances of hate in the community, and I wasn’t used to it because the bloggers I interact with are universally inclusive and civil.

Ms. Paskin discussed three specific incidents on the podcast: top/bottomlock, the 2015 221BCon incident, and post-Series 4 anger.

When top/bottomlock came up, I was baffled. First off, that discussion is ancient. It’s so old that by the time I joined TJLC in late 2015, it had practically died out. More importantly, a “debate” that Ms. Paskin describes as “very specific and dogmatic fanon” was—as I’ve understood—never taken seriously. Again, TJLC is not a very serious place, and people outside it are bound to misinterpret inside jokes. 99% of TJLCers saw top/bottomlock as nothing more than fodder for crack theories, and yet Ms. Paskin’s sources on this issue—none of whom are actually in TJLC—describe it as a debate of monumental importance.

The 2015 221BCon, on the other hand, was a serious conflict. As far as I can tell, people like Emma genuinely suffered, and the fact that neutral fans received anonymous attacks is shameful. But the results of this stretched to TJLCers as well as people outside TJLC, something that the podcast conveniently neglects to mention.

The end of Series 4 disappointed people throughout the Sherlock fandom. I’m not talking about Johnlock: plot inconsistencies, weird characterizations, and plot pulled from a horror movie resulted in its lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating ever. TJLC is too small to have that kind of clout, so to say that TJLCers were the only ones disappointed is clearly inaccurate.

Ms. Paskin claims that Series 4 “seemed straighter, not gayer, than before” and yet John telling Sherlock that “romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being” is uh…pretty gay. For many TJLCers, the problem wasn’t that there wasn’t Johnlock; the problem was that the quality of the show seemed to have drastically decreased.

TJLC immediately split into two groups. One group left TJLC, believing that Moffat and Gatiss had been queerbaiting. Many of them began constructive anti-queerbaiting discussions. Unfortunately, a few took their anger out on the creators.

The resulting hateful messages do not represent the views of the vast majority of former TJLCers, let alone people who still support TJLC. The fact that Amanda Abbington received a death threat is disgusting; and yet in TJLC, she’s always been regarded as a sort of beloved “fandom aunt”. In addition, Ms. Paskin cites an article that claimed that fans “dampened [Martin Freeman’s] enthusiasm.” But that interview has already been revealed as a clickbait-seeking misinterpretation—by Freeman himself.

The second group—those remaining in TJLC—were a bit desperate, and I’ll be the first to admit that several theories with scanty factual basis became more popular then than they would have in calmer times. The Apple Tree Yard theory, for instance, is clearly ridiculous in retrospect. But even I was willing to consider it. (Not my finest moment.) As a side note, however: the far-fetched “China cancelled Johnlock” theory she mentioned is by someone who’s not only outside TJLC, but also notorious for hating it

But regardless of the quality of these theories, 99% of the remaining TJLCers were certainly not hating on people—because who was there to hate, if there was no queerbaiting?

Ultimately, the podcast’s descriptions of hate related to TJLC are one-sided, distorted, and do not reflect the conduct of the overwhelming majority of TJLCers.

Podcast-Specific Errors

There’s a reason why the podcast comes off so different from reality: its research is seriously flawed.

For a podcast about TJLC, Ms. Paskin interviewed a whopping one (1) actual current TJLCer, whom she apparently interviewed after building much of her argument. Every other interviewee was outside TJLC and specifically disliked it. That will hardly make for an unbiased final product.

As a result, she culminates with several remarks that are genuinely insulting. She likens TJLC to “any other standard conspiracy where you have a Judgment Day,” suggesting that we’re irrational and fanatical. She summarizes the entire community as “people being cruel to one another because they disagree about how a fictional TV relationship should turn out,” combining every misconception of (1) TJLC being a ship instead of hard analysis, (2) blaming every TJLCers for the actions of very few, (3) TJLC being a silly fan thing rather than a starting point for meaningful research into queer representation and literary analysis, and (4) ignoring TJLC’s vast contributions to TJLCers’ lives while overemphasizing those who were harmed by it. Both remarks are in keeping with standard media portrayals of fans as irrational and immature. I expected better of her.

Ms. Paskin says that she “had a dream about…digging deeper, talking to more people, ones who could perfectly explain the allure of TJLC to me.” She had the opportunity to interview more actual TJLCers, but didn’t take it.

But the offer still stands! Come talk to us! Learn about what we’re actually like! Criticize our theories, if you think we’re dogmatic. Ask us what we think of TJLC, if you think it ruined our lives. Our ask boxes are wide open!

What the Podcast Left Out

Swimming in descriptions of TJLC as a source of hatred, the podcast glosses over one tiny little detail: that TJLC genuinely improved the lives of the vast majority of TJLCers.

I came out because of TJLC. I learned how to analyze literature because of TJLC. I discovered new parts of history and the queer people who have always been part of it. I found a community of curious, passionate, funny, and kind people who I could talk to.

And I’m just one person. I know people who found lifelong friends because of TJLC, wrote books because of it, became students of gender and sexuality studies, found a community of support when they had mental health, financial, or other personal problems, and had a blast theorizing about the possibility of landmark LGBT representation. Heck, Rebekah of TJLC Explained filmed hours of people talking about how much the community meant to them. And I even know former TJLCers who, though disappointed with the show, still appreciate how much it taught them about queer theory, queer history, and themselves.

Evaluating TJLC as a whole, it’s not far-fetched, dogmatic, or primarily a source of “darkness.” It’s a legitimate theory, supported by debate and rational analysis, that improved the lives of far more people than it ever hurt.

You’ve read this. Now what?

If you’re in the media:

This Slate podcast is now the #1 result when I search The Johnlock Conspiracy. Thousands of kind and logical voices on Tumblr and other sites are immediately silenced by well-known publications. So yeah, I care what the media thinks. Few voices have widespread effects. I want people trying to find out about TJLC to get a well-researched, less biased view of it.

Please, take your research seriously when discussing fandom. Interview actual members of the community. Be aware of the public bias of fans as unworthy of serious attention and unable to construct rational, legitimate arguments. And fight against it.

If you’re inside TJLC:

Researching for this meant a trip into the darkest parts of TJLC. We need to acknowledge that not everyone in this community is nice to everyone all of the time, and this resulted in incidents that seriously hurt some people. Remaining civil, especially when faced with disagreement or outright malice, means we keep this community friendly for everyone.

If you’re outside TJLC:

Thank you for taking the time to learn about a topic from someone you don’t necessarily agree with. We need more of your open-mindedness in the world.

If you completely disagree with me, please don’t send me anon hate. Constructive criticism is cool. Anon hate is lame. Be cool. But I welcome questions, comments, and constructive debate. My ask box is always open.

 Thank you for reading.

-soe

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@thesaltofcarthage @devoursjohnlock @waitedforgarridebs @one-thousand-splendid-stars @garkgatiss @shinka @witch-lock @jenna221b @sarahthecoat @inevitably-johnlocked @the-7-percent-solution @artfulkindoforder @warmth-and-constancy@marcespot@whtboutdeductions@tjlcisthenewsexy @bluebluenova @heimishtheidealhusband @tendergingergirl @sagestreet @ebaeschnbliah @221bloodnun @marcelock @watsonshoneybee @victorianfantasywatson

[sheikah]

I’m sick of the Papadakis & Cizeron camp shitting on their fellow athletes so I’m going to rant about it 

So a friend showed me today that Papadakis retweeted this article. 

Seems innocuous enough, right? Who wouldn’t want to retweet something so flattering, something complimenting your skill and your art. It’s an honor. 

Except that the article is a grossly biased opinion piece, and its author’s comments about P and C’s competitors are frankly disgusting. I think it says a lot about Papadakis as a person that she would retweet this article, spreading its claims to her followers and showing implicit support of its ugly criticism of both the Shib sibs and Tessa and Scott. In case you think I’m exaggerating, let’s look at some of the more glaringly offensive passages, shall we?

“[T]he art of self-expression can be questionable, too. I still can’t wrap my head around the decision by Maia and Alex Shibutani, who won the bronze medal, to skate to Coldplay’s sensual ‘Paradise.’ 

This American brother and sister, revered for their precision and joie de vivre, are elite athletes. But when they pressed together in head-to-toe camel spins — each holding onto the other’s extended free leg and waist to the lyric “Para-para-paradise” — it gave me pause. I couldn’t have skated to that with one of my brothers. (And I know that reading this, they are relieved.)”

Um, what? What? I don’t even know where to start with this. This is billed as an article about how great P and C are, but right out of the gate it starts tearing down the teams they shared the Olympic podium with. And why attack the Shibs like this? 

Full disclosure: The first time I heard about a brother/sister ice dance team, I was well and truly squicked out. I had only ever really watched Davis/White and Tessa and Scott and with the memory of their routines fresh in my mind, it made my skin crawl to think of doing some of them with my brother. But then I actually watched the Shibs, and I saw that there is a very evident difference in tone when one watches their skating alongside someone like Tessa and Scott. Passion and sexual tension are replaced with beaming, innocent smiles. They’re just a brother and sister having fun. Dancing doesn’t have to be sexual. I’m from South Louisiana, and in the past have done my fair share of Cajun and Zydeco dancing with every member of my family. Watching the Shib sibs reminded me of those times. It’s wholesome. And their song choices are usually careful to be sensitive about this. Their Olympic free dance was no exception. “Paradise” is not a “sensual” song. It’s about a determined girl chasing her dreams. The commentators on my stream during the Shibs’ dance talked about how special the song is to Maia. You can read the full lyrics here. There is no mention of a man. There is a no mention of a relationship at all. It’s about a little girl growing up and finding out how hard it is to succeed, to find the “paradise” you dream of when you’re young. I found it incredibly moving to watch Maia and Alex skate to a song about the difficulty and eventual payoff of chasing your childhood dreams as they made their own dreams come true by medaling in the Olympics. 

So what I can’t understand is why the author of this article had to denigrate and sexualize their performance. The only creepy, sensual, incest-y things happening are the ones in the author’s mind. So I imagine that actually, her siblings would be perturbed, not relieved, reading this article. 

But the hate doesn’t stop there. She goes on to attack Tessa and Scott next, reducing their Olympic skates to being “sentimental,” implying that they are only the favorites for sentimentality and for their long tenure rather than their passion or skill. 

Most egregious of all was her description of their iconic Moulin Rouge free dance. She said they skated across the ice with “gaping mouths” and that their performance was a “red light.” In skating terminology that is, as far as I know, synonymous with a failure. To skate “lights out” is to get “green lights”--full technical approval from the judging panel--on all required elements. A red light means something was executed incorrectly or was in some other way not adequate in its required category.

In what world was their beautiful performance a failure? 

Maybe their mouths were open because, oh, I don’t know, they were breathing hard as they worked their way through their extraordinarily athletic and technically complex routine--one that garnered worldwide recognition and acclaim because it fucking rocked.

Or maybe the author is referring to Scott’s mouth being open as he literally sung the words of “Come What May” to Tessa while they skated. That’s the kind of on-ice chemistry and passion Tessa and Scott have. They get totally and overwhelmingly caught up in the music, the moment, each other. It’s why the world loves them. It’s part of why they won gold. But instead of recognizing that and focusing on strong points of P and C’s own free dance, the author has to try and tear Tessa and Scott down. 

So if the author is this hard on Tessa and Scott, surely she can recognize the faults in even P and C’s performances, right? Wrong. 

She had this to say about their short dance: 

“This wardrobe glitch cost the pair points and put them behind the Canadians going into the free dance. Skating, especially on the Olympic level, is a sport with a mystifying judging system. But as a dance critic, I judge skating by different rules, and to me, no team, gold medal or not, matches the artistry of Ms. Papadakis and Mr. Cizeron.”

I had a lot of pity for Papadakis and what she suffered with her “wardrobe malfunction” in the individual short program, but it was not easy to retain that feeling watching her attitude for the rest of the games. It was she and Cizeron’s first Olympics and they got a silver medal, but instead of gratitude I constantly saw what looked like anger and resentment on her face. Still, I told myself that she was just upset because of the embarrassment of having her dress come open in the short dance. Totally understandable.  As time goes on, though, I’m finding it harder to sympathize with her. I think that the dress fiasco actually worked to her advantage. Why do I say that? Well, let’s look at two moments that I noticed in their short program. Disclaimer: I’m a new fan and no expert in ice dance but I know enough to know that the following are mistakes. 

Here’s their lift:

She nearly topples over backwards. To prevent this, she flaps her arms in a desperate attempt to retain her balance, fumbling before her arms finally settle in the position she was meant to take when she gets into the lift. 

Again, I am sad that this happened and believe her dress could have factored into this. She clearly was preoccupied worrying it would slip off in front of the whole crowd when Cizeron lifted her. But that doesn’t change the fact that she made this obvious, wobbly mistake in the lift. 

Then there are their twizzles.

I’m not sure how well you guys can tell, but these are not in sync. I broke it into two gifs so that you can see that in the first one, Cizeron drops his skate first. They didn’t start or end these at the same time, and they were much too close, moving even closer as they got into the last set in the second gif. This should not have been given a level 4 and a green light. But it was, along with the lift above.

Why I am bothering with this? Because it’s insane that they still received the score they did. I am not a professional or a judge and I noticed these two mistakes. There are probably more. Despite that, they received an overall score of 81.93 for this performance. To compare, at the world championships with the same routine they scored 76.89 with no wardrobe malfunction. The judges essentially took the wardrobe malfunction into account and were overly merciful with the scoring, instead of docking them for what happened. In spite of that, P and C seem to believe--and their supporters certainly won’t stop saying--that they were somehow unfairly robbed of gold because of what happened in the short dance.  It just isn’t true. Their mistake-ridden routine still earned them a score 3 points ahead of the third and fourth place teams--Hubbell/Donohue and the Shibs, respectively. And they trailed behind Tessa and Scott’s innovative, nearly-perfect, world-record-breaking short dance by less than 2 points. 

So I don’t want to hear any more about how their supposedly earth-shattering free dance should have won the gold if only Papadakis’s dress hadn’t broken. Because that’s a lie. 

Their free dance is lovely. It shows skill and precision and is beautiful to watch. But it’s not groundbreaking. It’s not memorable. And for fuck’s sake, it isn’t “ethereal.” Ethereal is defined as “of or relating to the regions beyond the earth; celestial, heavenly; unworldly, spiritual.”

The Northern lights are ethereal.

The whole Pemberley sequence in Pride & Prejudice 2005 is ethereal.

Jon Snow’s booty? Ethereal.

This? This isn’t ethereal. 

It’s just pretty good ice dancing, with gaping mouths.

[livvyplaysfinalfantasy]

The shuttle takes you down to the sands of the Dalmasca Desert, where lies what are now the ruins of the Royal City of Rabanastre.

Rabanastre, Ramza explains, is a city with well over a thousand years of history. However, Jenomis discovered during his past research the foundations of another settlement beneath Rabanastre - and Lina knows at once that he can only be referring to Lesalia, the capital city of Ivalice.

To compare and contrast the references to their source material: In the timeline of the Ivalice Alliance, the events of Final Fantasy Tactics mostly take place about twelve hundred years or so after XII - and well to the west of Dalmasca. In fact, the name “Lesalia” is pronounced in Japanese as ルザリア, Ruzaria - implying that its name came from the empire that stood in its place during XII, ロザリア, Rozaria.

But as Lina reacts to this news with joy at the potential of helping to break one of the biggest stories of pretty much ever, Ramza scolds her by saying that “her kind” are “all alike.” Before he can clarify whether he’s scorning Eorzeans or non-Garleans or just reporters, he drops a line that’s chillingly similar to one from Delita Heiral in one of Tactics’ most crucial scenes.

Ramza bas Lexentale: “Famous”? Are you sure you don’t mean rich? Pah! Your kind are all alike. Ramza bas Lexentale: Parasites grown fat on the sweat and suffering of others.

Delita Heiral: I was given the wardrobe of a nobleman, and so I played the part. A puppet, ever dancing for the amusement of patrons unseen. This wretched world does not reward endeavor. It is the patron and his troupe who are receipt - maggots grown fat on endeavor's corse.

In its original context, Delita’s dialogue is part of a heartfelt conversation with Princess Ovelia about how those in power have manipulated them into certain roles for all their lives; the scene ends with Delita’s violent declaration that he will make the nobility of Ivalice pay for using him to achieve their own ends, and that he will create a new kingdom for Ovelia. Delita’s saying that it’s impossible for anyone to succeed based on perseverance, or “endeavor,” alone - because only the ruling classes will profit from the efforts and aspirations of everyone beneath them. (The word “endeavor” is used consistently throughout Tactics to drive home the theme that inequality is the product of deliberate, systemic abuse by the nobility, and not of any personal failings of the oppressed.)

And so, Ramza is directing his resentments at you and Lina less for your race and class and more for the fact that he sees you as opportunists: people with the capacity to use his family’s quest for Ivalice to fulfill their own ambitions while Jenomis’ life hangs in the balance. There are still undeniable biases and prejudices implicit in a young Garlean from a famous house referring to Eorzeans with “your kind,” “outsiders,” and “foreign rabble” - but this single line points straight to the heart of Ramza’s insecurities. It also gives us a hint as to how he might possibly grow throughout the raid’s questline from a sheltered young noble into the crusader for justice for whom he was named.

Lina, to her credit, calls Ramza out - but while she insists that her only interest is to share the truth, her words don’t really address Ramza’s suspicions of self-serving motives. While the two argue, your instincts give you a hint at something else lurking within the desert... and Ramza agrees to return aboard the Prima Vista while preparations for the expedition are finalized.

That “something else” just so happens to be a group of bangaa - and though they go unnamed here, they are XII’s infamous bounty hunter Ba’Gamnan and his siblings Bwagi, Gijuk and Rinok. This group went relatively underutilized throughout XII, so seeing them get a cameo in Hydaelyn is surprising but kind of great.

[stoweboyd]

Work Futures Daily - Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Almost everything is done better when you reflect, rather than react.

2018-04-20 Beacon NY - We have learned a great deal in recent decades about human cognition, in the realm of science, but very little has trickled through to the conduct of business. The theme today — in the aftermath of the mess in Philadelphia, where two Black men were arrested for trespassing at a Starbucks while waiting for a friend before buying their drinks — is about countering bias and slowing down to get there.

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On Implicit Bias Training

In the aftermath of the recent expulsion of two Black men from a Philadelphia Starbucks, and the company's plan to expose the entire US staff to implicit bias training, Katie Herzog did some research:

If you haven't taken the test, it works like this: You are shown a series of images and asked to pair them with a series of words that have either strong positive or negative correlations. For instance, I just took the test for sexuality bias, and positive words (Laughing, Happy, Friend, Friendship, Glorious, Attractive, Adore, Cheer) were contrasted with negative words (Grief, Sadness, Awful, Abuse, Selfish, Bothersome, Rotten) as well as images of either two blocky female figures (of the bathroom sign variety), two male figures, or one male and one female together. My task was to pair the images with the words, and according to the test, based on how quickly I sorted them, the test determined that I show "a moderate automatic preference for Gay people over Straight people," which, frankly, I didn't need a test to point out.

This test is hugely popular, in no small part thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote about it in his best-selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Gladwell called the IAT "a powerful predictor of how we act in certain kinds of spontaneous situations," and, in the years since its inception, the IAT has been taken many millions of times and has been incorporated into anti-racist trainings in business, academia, criminal justice, and other fields. But, while plenty of people accept that bias is a part of the human condition (babies as young as three months show preferences for faces of their own race over others), the idea that this implicit bias leads to specific action (say, calling the police on two black men who sitting in Starbucks) is anything but proven.

She contacted Tony Greenwald, one of the creators of the test:

It's just going to be bias training theater.

Being aware of your bias does not mean you can overcome it. It is as deep in our wiring as lust and language.

One tangent that people can take to minimize bias is to slow down, to enter the state of constructive uncertainty (see 10 Work Skills for the Postnormal Era) where you actively resist coming to a conclusion, and actively remain open to gathering more information rather than following your impulse to take action.

Naom Schiber and Rachel Adams wrote about this recently:

Some experts argue that the most effective way to eliminate unconscious bias is to limit the extent to which people engage in automatic, reflexive thinking. One solution is to try to nudge workers toward more thoughtful and deliberative decision-making.

In a study involving the Seattle Police Department, researchers randomly selected a group of officers to meet with their sergeants and have an open-ended, 20-minute conversation about a recent encounter with a citizen. The encounters frequently involved minor issues like loitering — a situation analogous to the Philadelphia Starbucks incident. Over a six-week period, the officers selected to have those conversations were about 12 percent less likely to resolve an incident with an arrest.

“We were getting the police officers to slow down their thinking,” said Emily Owens, an economist at the University of California, Irvine, who was one of the researchers. Although the study didn’t look explicitly at arrest rates by race, Ms. Owens argued that, “when you’re not automating, and you’re thinking slowly, bias is less likely to influence your behavior.” (Ms. Owens stressed that the study was only suggestive and that overall the evidence on the effectiveness of bias training for police is very thin.)

On Transforming Human Resources

I am not a fan of the term 'human resources' because people aren't resources. It's a failed metaphor, but one we are lamentably stuck with.

So I am always willing to listen when some says they want to transform HR. Jonathan Shieber reports on Eightfold.ai, a new startup that might have a new tack, and apropos of the Starbucks debacle, it starts with trying to 'wring all the biases out of recruiting, hiring, professional development, and advancement':

Founded by chief executive Ashutosh Garg, a former search and personalization expert at Google and IBM research, and chief technology officer Varun Kacholia, who led the ranking team at Google and YouTube search and the News Feed team at Facebook, Eightfold.ai boasts an executive team that has a combined 80 patents and more than 6,000 citations for their research.

The two men have come together (in perhaps the most Silicon Valley fashion) to bring the analytical rigor for which their former employers are famous to the question of how best to help employees find fulfillment in the workforce.

“Employment is the backbone of society and it is a hard problem,” to match the right person with the right role, says Garg. “People pitch recruiting as a transaction… [but] to build a holistic platform is to build a company that fundamentally solves this problem,” of making work the most meaningful to the most people, he says.

How are they going to do this? By analyzing a lot of data:

“We have crawled the web for millions of profiles… including data from Wikipedia,” says Garg. “From there we have gotten data round how people have moved in organizations. We use all of this data to see who has performed well in an organization or not. Now what we do… we build models over this data to see who is capable of doing what.”

There are two important functions at play, according to Garg. The first is developing a talent network of a business — “the talent graph of a company,” he calls it. “On top of that we map how people have gone from one function to another in their career.”

Using those tools, Garg says Eightfold.ai’s services can predict the best path for each employee to reach their full potential.

In case you were wondering, Eightfold.ai is named for the eightfold path of Buddhist enlightenment. Maybe that's a stretch, but who knows.

It been well established that people are terrible at hiring — a long list of cognitive biases get in the way — so getting people out of the loop may be the best idea going. Algorithms can have biases, too, of course. And simply sucking up data about who has gotten hired in the past for what jobs could simply replicate the prejudice and inequities of yesterday into the workplace of today. They say they are working on that angle.

Eightfold.ai already counts more than 100 customers using its tools across different industries. Its software has processed more than 20 million applications to date, and increased response rates among its customers by 700 percent compared to the industry average — all while reducing screening costs and time by 90 percent, according to a statement.

A company to watch, clearly.

Quote of the Day

What is clear is that failure to meet the challenges posed by new technologies will likewise affect U.S. national security, in this case by increasing political pressures for American retrenchment, the consequences of which would be a more unstable and less prosperous world. In addition, the country will have neither the resources nor the political bandwidth to play a large global role if society is in turmoil. In such a situation, populism would be sure to grow, as would opposition to both immigration and trade despite their record of contributing to the country’s prosperity.

| Richard Haas, President, Council for Foreign Relations, The Work Ahead

On Narratives

Jeff Bezos has released his annual investors letter, in which he shared some management lessons. Amazon does not run on powerpoint, like many others. Instead, the culture is driven by narrative.

Perfect Handstands

A close friend recently decided to learn to do a perfect free-standing handstand. No leaning against a wall. Not for just a few seconds. Instagram good. She decided to start her journey by taking a handstand workshop at her yoga studio. She then practiced for a while but wasn’t getting the results she wanted. So, she hired a handstand coach. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but evidently this is an actual thing that exists. In the very first lesson, the coach gave her some wonderful advice. “Most people,” he said, “think that if they work hard, they should be able to master a handstand in about two weeks. The reality is that it takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you’re just going to end up quitting.” Unrealistic beliefs on scope – often hidden and undiscussed – kill high standards. To achieve high standards yourself or as part of a team, you need to form and proactively communicate realistic beliefs about how hard something is going to be –something this coach understood well.

Six-Page Narratives

We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of “study hall.” Not surprisingly, the quality of these memos varies widely. Some have the clarity of angels singing. They are brilliant and thoughtful and set up the meeting for high-quality discussion. Sometimes they come in at the other end of the spectrum.

In the handstand example, it’s pretty straightforward to recognize high standards. It wouldn’t be difficult to lay out in detail the requirements of a well-executed handstand, and then you’re either doing it or you’re not. The writing example is very different. The difference between a great memo and an average one is much squishier. It would be extremely hard to write down the detailed requirements that make up a great memo. Nevertheless, I find that much of the time, readers react to great memos very similarly. They know it when they see it. The standard is there, and it is real, even if it’s not easily describable.

Here’s what we’ve figured out. Often, when a memo isn’t great, it’s not the writer’s inability to recognize the high standard, but instead a wrong expectation on scope: they mistakenly believe a high-standards, six-page memo can be written in one or two days or even a few hours, when really it might take a week or more! They’re trying to perfect a handstand in just two weeks, and we’re not coaching them right. The great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can’t be done in a day or two. The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope – that a great memo probably should take a week or more.

Chew on that for a while.

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[naanima]

NIF 2 EP 42

The series is so pretty. Watching it hi-def on my 52 inch television is amazing.

That fricking gazebo. It is definitely the same one in the first series; the one that Mei Changsu and Nihuang met under, the one MCS stayed under for so many of the scenes where he watched over, watched after or waited. Every time I see that gazebo I get feels. I can't believe I just typed that sentence.

Watching ep 37 proper. Don't want to rehash what I said (XIAO TINGSHENG! YOU ARE THE BEST!!!!). The full convo between Lin Xi and Pingzing is devastating in its stark truth. But it is literally the conversation I wish would happen in EVERY OTHER FICTIONAL TEXT. What other show or book actually depict a conversation about consent, guilt between all parties involved?! (I'm looking at you Doctor Who, never forget what you did to Donna)? It is satisfying on a level I can't even truly articulate, an actual real, mature and emotional conversation that needs to happen but rarely do in fictional text (whether Eastern or Western).

Feizhang is amazing. I like how the show finally came out and stated what the viewers have been screaming since he was introduced. He love Qianxue but he knows exactly where he is in her life. I love his type of character; righteous and stoic, never forcing himself onto others, and just so moral. RUN AWAY FROM THE XUN FAMILY!! Enjoy jianhu! Be free!! Climb the Lang Ya ranking!! Gods, please let the ending of this show provide me a slip of hope that he and Qianxue might have something in the future, like a decade in the future or something. He also seemed so happy to be not at court.

I love Yuanqi and Pingjing's outfit upgrade.

Yuanqi - le sigh. Though that first shot of him after the time skip, and the sound effect was amazing. He is also so very smart about getting backing. The genius of his actions is that he provides the truth and let people's nature take their course. You got to applaud that level of manipulation.

Poor Anru. To go from such happiness to such anguish. But holy crap, she saved her handmaid by providing her a 'death' by drowning. She knew Pai'er was a strong swimmer. There is just so much going on in her head. Also, she is fascinating because she knew shit was going down but avoided situations where she would learn more and ignored her instincts. She is smart enough to know when to stop asking questions, and ALL her actions are based on her upbringing (Chinese Confucianism), Yuanqi is her husband and the underlying threat is pretty damn explicit. There is no other road for her, and YET! Saving Pai'er on the downlow. I really like her. And it makes me giggle because a large part of Yuanqi's downfall is going to be at the hand of a 'genteel woman'.

Also, Pai'er. Oh gods, I know she is a plot device/character but I spent most of the time wanting to scream at her. STOP ASKING QUESTIONS AND LISTENING TO CONVOS YOU SHOULDN'T.

OMFG! IS THAT THE ACTRESS THAT PLAYED XIA DONG!!!!!

Lin Chen being biased, and then being embarrassed about it. Lols. But he is so right - Pingjing is part of the court, once he find out certain info he can't let go. And Lin Jiu is so very pointed about Lin Chen's involvement with the court, and how could never deny information to certain people. Also, Lin Chen had AT LEAST NINE (9) KIDS. Ahahahaha!  All those beauties.

LOVE the new general - Yue? So smart, serious and like a dog with a bone. Also, love his 2IC, and of course they would pick up Pai'er. All the threads are coming together. I'm so curious about his role in the future.

Pingjing realising what Yuanqi is doing and not wanting to believe. Poor boy.

PINGJING AND LIN XI - 'TODAY'S FRIEND'. MOURNFUL LOL. I'm laughing and crying at the same time. PINGJING, THIS IS WHY YOU ARE MEME. YOU AND YOUR 'MOST PRECIOUS FRIEND'. But seriously, can we PLEASE HAVE A GUARANTEE THAT THEY WILL GET TOGETHER. GET BEYOND "FRIENDS".

Lin Xi is AMAZING!!!! *____* also knows the deal. Not having her name on HER BOOK because people won't take it seriously if it is known it was written by a woman. I LOVE HAI YAN!!!! Because she offers the flipside of the argument, how can you change perception if you don't try. Ahahahahahahaha. Only can the above points be made when written by a woman who gets it.

I love Pingjing's apology to Lin Xi because it isn't just an apology about the fake engagement, it is an apology that he can't go with her but must return to court. And so much more. YET! HE STILL WANTS TO STAY, AND BASICALLY GOES OUT OF HIS WAY TO NOT RETURN TO THE CAPITAL. POOR CHILD.

The wigs in this show is amazing. I'm trying to figure out how much of it is the actor's hair.

The implicit and explicit gender commentary of China on this show is awesome.

[wineanddinosaur]

A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas

Lia Jones had passed the introductory and certified examinations for the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas (CMSA), garnered her level-three Wine & Spirit Education Trust award, and been certified through the Sommelier Society of America. She was highly credentialed when, in 2014, she decided to go for CMSA’s advanced certification. She had her eye on the coveted Master Sommelier title after that. For support through the process, Jones went looking for a mentor.

“They didn’t have any Black female MSs,” she says, so she contacted one of the Court’s few Black males. “I realized everybody that’s Black is probably reaching out to him. He’s one person in the spotlight getting all these diverse people asking for mentorship,” she recalls. “He didn’t say he wouldn’t mentor me, but he wanted to see effort. What do I aspire to do?”

That was tough for Jones to show because in New York, where she lived, she had been looking in vain for a wine gig. The Court requires both current restaurant employment and two years of restaurant work within the seven years prior to applying for the advanced. She was turned down for 76 jobs. “I kept every email,” she says, “because that is crazy. If you’re certified and can’t get a job, what do you do?”

Moving to Los Angeles, she found the market as tough. Finally, in 2018, she landed a position at NoMad LA. But she needed letters of recommendation for her advanced course application. Though the Court’s executive director, Kathleen Lewis, says those didn’t have to come from MSs, Jones says that they did. She wrote to the few she could find in Southern California. No one replied.

In an organization that prides itself on mentorship, no one helped Lia Jones — not with mentorship, recommendations, or even acknowledgement of her emails. Says Jones, founder and executive director of Diversity in Wine and Spirits, an organization that assists companies in the hospitality industry with diversity and inclusion initiatives: “The barriers for me as a Black female were different from my white male counterparts. I wondered, ‘What is my need to become an MS when there are so many barriers?’”

Though the Court has since dropped the recommendations requirement, Jones’ story is not unique. It is illustrative of the problems with access, inclusion, transparency, and diversity for which the CMSA now finds itself called out. Shrouded in pomp and circumstance, made famous by the “SOMM” film series, the Court is the nation’s premiere wine educator. It confers the MS title; it has taught tens of thousands of aspiring sommeliers. It is a powerful influencer in an industry that, critics say, has ignored Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) talent. Now, BIPOC wine professionals and their allies are demanding that the CMSA board of directors work on diversity and equity within the Court and across the industry. To do so, this elite organization must acknowledge its implicit biases, overhaul its structure, and fix its culture to support an increasingly diverse talent pool — and to stay relevant in a food and drink landscape that is evolving. 

With high-profile resignations and leadership fumbles igniting a debate about the organization’s very need to exist, it’s do-or-die time for CMSA. As sommelier Tahiirah Habibi, founder of HUE Society, a hub for BIPOC wine pros, puts it: “You are either anti-racist or you support racism. You’re fixing it, or you are going to get caught on the not-OK side.” As a newly appointed diversity committee begins its work amid tumult, the Court of Master Sommeliers is scrambling to wake and do right. 

‘They Were Botching This Thing’

On May 25, when protests erupted over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, “within the wine industry, people were adamant that there is no more patience for gradual changes,” says Vincent Morrow, MS, the wine and service director at San Francisco’s ONE65, and one of few persons of color in the Court. “We need stuff to happen now.”

Across social media, organizations quickly pledged to work on anti-racism. The Court was not among them. On June 7, CMSA board chairman Devon Broglie, the global beverage buyer for Whole Foods, finally emailed the 172 Master Sommeliers who were the Court’s members, then quietly posted an anti-racism statement to its website. It contained few specifics as to the diversity actions he and the other leaders would take. The board stayed silent over social media until June 17, when it finally announced to members and the public that it was forming a diversity committee “to determine best practices for diversifying our member pool.” But by then, the damage had been done.

Earlier, Habibi had posted a video in which she related her horror, as a Black woman, at being told during her CMSA introductory exam a decade prior to address the proctor as “Master.” She detailed how the Court had added insult to injury by including the Hue Society in its initial anti-racism statement. The unsolicited mention looked, erroneously, like an endorsement from her organization. Afterward, Broglie revised his statement, removing Hue Society from it and outlining the Board’s initial steps toward diversity and inclusion.

Master Sommeliers resigned over the board’s stalling and missteps: First Richard Betts, co-owner of An Approach to Relaxation wines and Casa Komos Beverage Group, and a 17-year veteran of the Court; then Brian McClintic, owner of Viticole Wine Club and a star of the “SOMM” films; and Nate Ready, co-owner of Oregon’s Hiyu Wine Farm, who had been an MS since he was 28. Others, like Dustin Wilson, co-owner of bicoastal retailer Verve Wine, took to social media “to get in the board’s face,” he says. “They were botching this thing. It reflected on everybody who has the MS title. Just because I’m a Master Sommelier doesn’t mean I’m involved in their communications. I have zero control over that.” 

Wilson’s frustration bespeaks problems with transparency and structure that everyone I interviewed, from board members to resigned MSs and outside observers, said are endemic to the Court. These issues, argues Habibi, can derail diversity efforts. “You don’t want to bring inclusion into a structure that’s still racist and broken. You have to fix your systems first,” she says.

‘There’s Really No Need for Secrecy’

There was no ill intent behind the Court’s slow response, says CMSA board member Christopher Bates, MS, co-owner of Upstate New York’s F.L.X. Hospitality. “The board is a volunteer position. I don’t want it to come off as an excuse, but there are thousands of fires in everybody’s life, trying to find our way through Covid. Things also take time, and I think it’s important that we took time to consider what to do.”

But as Jill Zimorski, MS, senior specialist of education with Strategic Group, representing Moët Hennessy, points out, “the longer you’re silent, the longer people can interpret your silence.” 

Rumors flew. In his resignation letter, McClintic stated that the board’s heel-dragging was in part because decisions were required to be unanimous. Broglie says that’s untrue; under his tenure, the board operates by majority vote. “But it is important that we have a strong consensus when we make big moves,” he told me. “Rather than the performance of social media, we wanted to make sure that we were taking constructive action. But the statement on social media didn’t come fast enough, with hindsight.”

Zimorski isn’t buying it. Even while you’re considering larger changes, how hard can it be to speak out against racism? “This is an organization of humans that does exams for other humans. Our industry is about taking care of people,” she says. “I don’t think it’s very complicated.”

Time and again, MSs have spoken out against the CMSA board’s inscrutability. It played out in 2018 when, following the disclosure that a blind-tasting proctor had fed answers to a small group of examinees. The board revoked the MS title from all 23 who passed. The decision “put this credential over human lives and screwed with people’s ability to earn a living,” says Betts. “We said, ‘We need accountability, facts. You serve the membership.’ All we got was a stonewall.”

Zimorski was among the 23. She re-tested the following year. “This is an organization that administers wine tests,” she says. “There’s really no need for secrecy, except with the wines we’re blind tasting.” 

‘How Are You Going to Hold Us Accountable?’

If the workings of the Court are mysterious for members, they’re more so for the rest of the wine world. “They’ve created this allure,” says Larissa Dubose, director of education for the just-launched talent resource, Black Wine Professionals, and a CMSA-certified sommelier. “This isn’t the time to be enigmatic. Let’s see what you’re doing to promote inclusivity.” 

With MSs Alpana Singh, owner of Evanston, Ill.’s Terra & Vine and Chicago’s AMT Hospitality consulting firm; Jonathan Ross, co-owner of Legend Imports; and Emily Wines, who runs the wine programs at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants, Zimorski circulated a petition on the Court’s internal forum, gathering signatures to force the board to act on diversity. “There was so much initial pushback,” says Zimorski. “People said, ‘This isn’t a political group.’ I said, ‘This isn’t a political matter. This is about identity, who you are, and what you love.’” 

The petitioners prevailed, and the CMSA board took up many of their suggestions. It raised $10,000 through the first of its virtual tastings to benefit a scholarship fund for BIPOC students. It announced the end of the “Master” address. As co-chairs of the diversity committee, it appointed June Rodil, a partner at Houston-based Goodnight Hospitality, and board member Thomas Price, estate division educator for Jackson Family Wines. The co-chairs chose five other MSs, including Morrow, Wines, and Carlton McCoy, president and CEO of Napa’s Heitz Cellars, who had taken to Instagram after Betts’ resignation to declare that quitting was a privilege that he, as a Black man, did not have or desire. He was staying on to transform the Court for the sake of Black candidates after him.

Three weeks in, the committee has hired poet, activist, and noted corporate trainer Azure Antoinette — a TedX speaker whom Forbes magazine calls “the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation” — as the membership’s implicit bias trainer. They are looking to her for lasting effects. Says Rodil, “We asked her, ‘How are you going to hold us accountable and give us the skills to continue to do this as we move forward and not just have a training session be, ‘I learned this. I’m good?’”

‘Being Color Blind Isn’t Being Diverse’

The Court has long thought itself equitable, despite the sea of white male faces in the MS lookbook. “We’ve believed that the organization has been entirely inclusive, that we’ve held to a strict non-discrimination policy, and that the meritocracy of our exams speaks for itself,” says Broglie. “In the past month, we’re learning that’s not enough.”

Inclusion work involves probing questions, says Jones: “Do you have a diversity policy? Who structured it? How did you choose the diversity committee? Who is on your board? Who is implementing other programs? Where are you giving the exams? Are they accessible? Who are your students?”

CMSA is hard-pressed to answer that last one. Says Thomas Price: “When I passed in 2012, I was pretty sure I was the only person of African-American descent to ever do it. I called our PR department and said, ‘You need to check this for me, if I’m going to say it to people.’ They vetted it really well.”

That may be, but why wasn’t this information transparent? In 2019, when I was working on a profile of Court founder Fred Dame, Lewis could tell me that 28 Master Sommeliers were women. She could not say how many women had studied or examined at any level, only that “the Court is gender-neutral when it comes to examinations and enrollment.” But if the Court kept statistics, perhaps it could follow the trajectory of women students, see where they fell off in the process, and examine why a demographic that’s more than half the U.S. population has only 16 percent of the Court’s memberships. 

There’s even less information about race and ethnicity. In her experience with the Court, says Dubose, “I’ve never been asked who I am. Maybe my pronouns, but never ethnic background or race. Being color blind right now isn’t being diverse because that shows there isn’t any color in the organization.”

Broglie says demographics collection is now on the table. Rodil wants the questions to go further: “One big thing is getting a better database of our students and information on the mentorships they seek. Many MSs were interested in being on the diversity committee, so we asked them for a commitment to mentorship, and they all said yes for BIPOC students.”

Mentorship is crucial to navigating the MS exam. “I never would’ve passed if I hadn’t been surrounded by people who gave me the code,” says Nate Ready, who was working at MS Bobby Stuckey’s restaurant Frasca at the time. “You didn’t just study wine. Someone on the inside had to give you insight on what kind of knowledge was important. That can be used to control who gets in.”

Over the years, the Court has circled wagons around the MS credential, sacrificing pedagogy for an increasingly impossible test, says Betts. “Do you have 10 years and $10,000 dollars for a 3 percent chance to pass? No one would make that bet,” he says.

The diversity committee, says Wines, will “take a hard look at teaching materials, examinations, and the ways we interact with candidates to make sure there’s no implicit bias or anything we are doing unintentionally or intentionally that stops them from pursuing our programs.”

Wilson says that will involve a shift in the Court’s self-image. “Leadership’s first order of business is always communicating to the membership,” he says. “That’s simply Master Somms up to date on dues. The board doesn’t think about others that have a vested interest, people who’ve taken first, second, or third level. By the time they’re advanced, they’ve been giving us money and studying for years. You can’t tell someone who wears that advanced pin on the floor of their restaurant that they’re not part of the organization.”

‘It Should Not Just Be Old White Guys’

In 2018, in the wake of the cheating scandal, says Wilson, “it became clear that the board doesn’t think in the same way that younger, more progressive members think.” Fired up, he considered running, until he realized he wasn’t eligible. He had spent eight years in the Court proctoring at other levels, but he hadn’t observed at an MS exam, a prerequisite for a board seat. Echoing the words of Lia Jones, he says, “The barrier to entry is very high.”

Broglie acknowledges the problem. “It takes 16 years on average to pass the MS exam. Then it takes five or six years to become eligible to run for the board. Someone is in their 40s before they can even run. So how do we capture fresh perspectives?” The sticking point for him is balancing new voices with a proven commitment. “Are you willing to take the time to work through the system to prove that you have the dedication?” he asks. 

Wilson says the high bar leads to board elections with just a handful of candidates. “You get this revolving door of similar people,” he says. “You get less connected with what’s happening on the ground, what young somms are thinking and care about.”

Wines is more blunt: “It should not just be old white guys.”

‘We Need to Be Less Myopic’

The diversity committee serves an advisory role. To get things done, it must go to the board. But its members are trying to shake the board out of an in-group mentality. “The diversity committee is identifying for us that there is a perceived aloofness,” says Broglie. 

The Court’s social media platforms are just two years old, and they’ve been used to broadcast, not interact. That’s not how new generations communicate, say critics, and the Court has a responsibility to dialogue with the industry. To be more inclusive, says Rodil, “we need to be less myopic.”

Essential to the task is the question of access. “We’ve had a policy that the door is open to everyone. We’ve come to be sensitive that not everybody has access to that door in the first place,” says Wines. “How can we reach out to other communities, proactively increasing diversity in our industry?”

Covid-19 has done some of that accessibility work by pushing the Court into online learning. The diversity committee is also talking about developing wine programs at historically black colleges and universities. Then there’s economic access. CMSA courses are costly, and blind tasting takes practice. 

“The dirty secret is you need to taste thousands of dollars of wine to pass,” says Singh, who is the CMSA’s only MS of South Asian descent. “The bullshit that I had to go through, it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Unlike her white male counterparts, she says, “I was not getting invited to tastings, panels, conferences. The only thing you can muster up is they’re white and a man. We’re in similar buying positions, but they’re friends with the distributor? There was an assumption that you’re not going to turn the opportunity into dollars for them. How many good men and women have we lost because they didn’t feel welcome?”

Morrow wants CMSA to use its clout as a bully pulpit for inclusion. “We have to change the industry, not just the Court. That’s how you make a lasting impact.”

Habibi agrees. “The Court happens to be at the top of the wine world, and if they get their shit together, others flow,” she says.

‘There’s a Tectonic Shift, Then There’s an Earthquake’

Right now, with the hospitality industry stalled, “Covid-19 has provided the Court with this padding,” says Ross. “This is the first year we won’t have an MS exam, and it’s an opportunity to regain trust.”

But the pandemic is a double-edged sword. Though she commends the Court for its diversity efforts, Jones says, “I don’t think people are going to pay that amount of money for certification for a job that’s becoming obsolete under Covid-19.” 

The wine world has long been transforming. “The Court was born out of a different era when it was all European wines and white guys at auctions or high-end restaurants,” says Wines. “We did not take into account back then the middle tier we see today, the range around the world, and the fact that a lot of somms are not white, male, or straight. There’s diversity in the community and kinds of restaurants.”

What’s happening, Singh says, is “a tectonic shift from the old generation to the new. There’s a tectonic shift, and then there’s an earthquake. Sometimes it’s a little quibble, but other times, there’s a shaking up.”

For the Court, the current moment is a 10 on the Richter scale. “Gen Z does not mess around,” Singh says. “They want equality, diversity, fairness. And the wine buyer of tomorrow is probably a BIPOC sommelier.” The CMSA should be thinking ahead, Singh contends, putting itself in the position of a Black MS candidate and thinking about the factors she needs to be successful. That means helping candidates with access and opportunity, and making sure they see themselves represented in the Court’s membership.

“Otherwise,” Singh says, “we’re just outdated.”

The article A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/reckoning-race-court-of-master-sommeliers-americas/

[isaiahrippinus]

A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas

Lia Jones had passed the introductory and certified examinations for the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas (CMSA), garnered her level-three Wine & Spirit Education Trust award, and been certified through the Sommelier Society of America. She was highly credentialed when, in 2014, she decided to go for CMSA’s advanced certification. She had her eye on the coveted Master Sommelier title after that. For support through the process, Jones went looking for a mentor.

“They didn’t have any Black female MSs,” she says, so she contacted one of the Court’s few Black males. “I realized everybody that’s Black is probably reaching out to him. He’s one person in the spotlight getting all these diverse people asking for mentorship,” she recalls. “He didn’t say he wouldn’t mentor me, but he wanted to see effort. What do I aspire to do?”

That was tough for Jones to show because in New York, where she lived, she had been looking in vain for a wine gig. The Court requires both current restaurant employment and two years of restaurant work within the seven years prior to applying for the advanced. She was turned down for 76 jobs. “I kept every email,” she says, “because that is crazy. If you’re certified and can’t get a job, what do you do?”

Moving to Los Angeles, she found the market as tough. Finally, in 2018, she landed a position at NoMad LA. But she needed letters of recommendation for her advanced course application. Though the Court’s executive director, Kathleen Lewis, says those didn’t have to come from MSs, Jones says that they did. She wrote to the few she could find in Southern California. No one replied.

In an organization that prides itself on mentorship, no one helped Lia Jones — not with mentorship, recommendations, or even acknowledgement of her emails. Says Jones, founder and executive director of Diversity in Wine and Spirits, an organization that assists companies in the hospitality industry with diversity and inclusion initiatives: “The barriers for me as a Black female were different from my white male counterparts. I wondered, ‘What is my need to become an MS when there are so many barriers?’”

Though the Court has since dropped the recommendations requirement, Jones’ story is not unique. It is illustrative of the problems with access, inclusion, transparency, and diversity for which the CMSA now finds itself called out. Shrouded in pomp and circumstance, made famous by the “SOMM” film series, the Court is the nation’s premiere wine educator. It confers the MS title; it has taught tens of thousands of aspiring sommeliers. It is a powerful influencer in an industry that, critics say, has ignored Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) talent. Now, BIPOC wine professionals and their allies are demanding that the CMSA board of directors work on diversity and equity within the Court and across the industry. To do so, this elite organization must acknowledge its implicit biases, overhaul its structure, and fix its culture to support an increasingly diverse talent pool — and to stay relevant in a food and drink landscape that is evolving. 

With high-profile resignations and leadership fumbles igniting a debate about the organization’s very need to exist, it’s do-or-die time for CMSA. As sommelier Tahiirah Habibi, founder of HUE Society, a hub for BIPOC wine pros, puts it: “You are either anti-racist or you support racism. You’re fixing it, or you are going to get caught on the not-OK side.” As a newly appointed diversity committee begins its work amid tumult, the Court of Master Sommeliers is scrambling to wake and do right. 

‘They Were Botching This Thing’

On May 25, when protests erupted over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, “within the wine industry, people were adamant that there is no more patience for gradual changes,” says Vincent Morrow, MS, the wine and service director at San Francisco’s ONE65, and one of few persons of color in the Court. “We need stuff to happen now.”

Across social media, organizations quickly pledged to work on anti-racism. The Court was not among them. On June 7, CMSA board chairman Devon Broglie, the global beverage buyer for Whole Foods, finally emailed the 172 Master Sommeliers who were the Court’s members, then quietly posted an anti-racism statement to its website. It contained few specifics as to the diversity actions he and the other leaders would take. The board stayed silent over social media until June 17, when it finally announced to members and the public that it was forming a diversity committee “to determine best practices for diversifying our member pool.” But by then, the damage had been done.

Earlier, Habibi had posted a video in which she related her horror, as a Black woman, at being told during her CMSA introductory exam a decade prior to address the proctor as “Master.” She detailed how the Court had added insult to injury by including the Hue Society in its initial anti-racism statement. The unsolicited mention looked, erroneously, like an endorsement from her organization. Afterward, Broglie revised his statement, removing Hue Society from it and outlining the Board’s initial steps toward diversity and inclusion.

Master Sommeliers resigned over the board’s stalling and missteps: First Richard Betts, co-owner of An Approach to Relaxation wines and Casa Komos Beverage Group, and a 17-year veteran of the Court; then Brian McClintic, owner of Viticole Wine Club and a star of the “SOMM” films; and Nate Ready, co-owner of Oregon’s Hiyu Wine Farm, who had been an MS since he was 28. Others, like Dustin Wilson, co-owner of bicoastal retailer Verve Wine, took to social media “to get in the board’s face,” he says. “They were botching this thing. It reflected on everybody who has the MS title. Just because I’m a Master Sommelier doesn’t mean I’m involved in their communications. I have zero control over that.” 

Wilson’s frustration bespeaks problems with transparency and structure that everyone I interviewed, from board members to resigned MSs and outside observers, said are endemic to the Court. These issues, argues Habibi, can derail diversity efforts. “You don’t want to bring inclusion into a structure that’s still racist and broken. You have to fix your systems first,” she says.

‘There’s Really No Need for Secrecy’

There was no ill intent behind the Court’s slow response, says CMSA board member Christopher Bates, MS, co-owner of Upstate New York’s F.L.X. Hospitality. “The board is a volunteer position. I don’t want it to come off as an excuse, but there are thousands of fires in everybody’s life, trying to find our way through Covid. Things also take time, and I think it’s important that we took time to consider what to do.”

But as Jill Zimorski, MS, senior specialist of education with Strategic Group, representing Moët Hennessy, points out, “the longer you’re silent, the longer people can interpret your silence.” 

Rumors flew. In his resignation letter, McClintic stated that the board’s heel-dragging was in part because decisions were required to be unanimous. Broglie says that’s untrue; under his tenure, the board operates by majority vote. “But it is important that we have a strong consensus when we make big moves,” he told me. “Rather than the performance of social media, we wanted to make sure that we were taking constructive action. But the statement on social media didn’t come fast enough, with hindsight.”

Zimorski isn’t buying it. Even while you’re considering larger changes, how hard can it be to speak out against racism? “This is an organization of humans that does exams for other humans. Our industry is about taking care of people,” she says. “I don’t think it’s very complicated.”

Time and again, MSs have spoken out against the CMSA board’s inscrutability. It played out in 2018 when, following the disclosure that a blind-tasting proctor had fed answers to a small group of examinees. The board revoked the MS title from all 23 who passed. The decision “put this credential over human lives and screwed with people’s ability to earn a living,” says Betts. “We said, ‘We need accountability, facts. You serve the membership.’ All we got was a stonewall.”

Zimorski was among the 23. She re-tested the following year. “This is an organization that administers wine tests,” she says. “There’s really no need for secrecy, except with the wines we’re blind tasting.” 

‘How Are You Going to Hold Us Accountable?’

If the workings of the Court are mysterious for members, they’re more so for the rest of the wine world. “They’ve created this allure,” says Larissa Dubose, director of education for the just-launched talent resource, Black Wine Professionals, and a CMSA-certified sommelier. “This isn’t the time to be enigmatic. Let’s see what you’re doing to promote inclusivity.” 

With MSs Alpana Singh, owner of Evanston, Ill.’s Terra & Vine and Chicago’s AMT Hospitality consulting firm; Jonathan Ross, co-owner of Legend Imports; and Emily Wines, who runs the wine programs at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants, Zimorski circulated a petition on the Court’s internal forum, gathering signatures to force the board to act on diversity. “There was so much initial pushback,” says Zimorski. “People said, ‘This isn’t a political group.’ I said, ‘This isn’t a political matter. This is about identity, who you are, and what you love.’” 

The petitioners prevailed, and the CMSA board took up many of their suggestions. It raised $10,000 through the first of its virtual tastings to benefit a scholarship fund for BIPOC students. It announced the end of the “Master” address. As co-chairs of the diversity committee, it appointed June Rodil, a partner at Houston-based Goodnight Hospitality, and board member Thomas Price, estate division educator for Jackson Family Wines. The co-chairs chose five other MSs, including Morrow, Wines, and Carlton McCoy, president and CEO of Napa’s Heitz Cellars, who had taken to Instagram after Betts’ resignation to declare that quitting was a privilege that he, as a Black man, did not have or desire. He was staying on to transform the Court for the sake of Black candidates after him.

Three weeks in, the committee has hired poet, activist, and noted corporate trainer Azure Antoinette — a TedX speaker whom Forbes magazine calls “the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation” — as the membership’s implicit bias trainer. They are looking to her for lasting effects. Says Rodil, “We asked her, ‘How are you going to hold us accountable and give us the skills to continue to do this as we move forward and not just have a training session be, ‘I learned this. I’m good?’”

‘Being Color Blind Isn’t Being Diverse’

The Court has long thought itself equitable, despite the sea of white male faces in the MS lookbook. “We’ve believed that the organization has been entirely inclusive, that we’ve held to a strict non-discrimination policy, and that the meritocracy of our exams speaks for itself,” says Broglie. “In the past month, we’re learning that’s not enough.”

Inclusion work involves probing questions, says Jones: “Do you have a diversity policy? Who structured it? How did you choose the diversity committee? Who is on your board? Who is implementing other programs? Where are you giving the exams? Are they accessible? Who are your students?”

CMSA is hard-pressed to answer that last one. Says Thomas Price: “When I passed in 2012, I was pretty sure I was the only person of African-American descent to ever do it. I called our PR department and said, ‘You need to check this for me, if I’m going to say it to people.’ They vetted it really well.”

That may be, but why wasn’t this information transparent? In 2019, when I was working on a profile of Court founder Fred Dame, Lewis could tell me that 28 Master Sommeliers were women. She could not say how many women had studied or examined at any level, only that “the Court is gender-neutral when it comes to examinations and enrollment.” But if the Court kept statistics, perhaps it could follow the trajectory of women students, see where they fell off in the process, and examine why a demographic that’s more than half the U.S. population has only 16 percent of the Court’s memberships. 

There’s even less information about race and ethnicity. In her experience with the Court, says Dubose, “I’ve never been asked who I am. Maybe my pronouns, but never ethnic background or race. Being color blind right now isn’t being diverse because that shows there isn’t any color in the organization.”

Broglie says demographics collection is now on the table. Rodil wants the questions to go further: “One big thing is getting a better database of our students and information on the mentorships they seek. Many MSs were interested in being on the diversity committee, so we asked them for a commitment to mentorship, and they all said yes for BIPOC students.”

Mentorship is crucial to navigating the MS exam. “I never would’ve passed if I hadn’t been surrounded by people who gave me the code,” says Nate Ready, who was working at MS Bobby Stuckey’s restaurant Frasca at the time. “You didn’t just study wine. Someone on the inside had to give you insight on what kind of knowledge was important. That can be used to control who gets in.”

Over the years, the Court has circled wagons around the MS credential, sacrificing pedagogy for an increasingly impossible test, says Betts. “Do you have 10 years and $10,000 dollars for a 3 percent chance to pass? No one would make that bet,” he says.

The diversity committee, says Wines, will “take a hard look at teaching materials, examinations, and the ways we interact with candidates to make sure there’s no implicit bias or anything we are doing unintentionally or intentionally that stops them from pursuing our programs.”

Wilson says that will involve a shift in the Court’s self-image. “Leadership’s first order of business is always communicating to the membership,” he says. “That’s simply Master Somms up to date on dues. The board doesn’t think about others that have a vested interest, people who’ve taken first, second, or third level. By the time they’re advanced, they’ve been giving us money and studying for years. You can’t tell someone who wears that advanced pin on the floor of their restaurant that they’re not part of the organization.”

‘It Should Not Just Be Old White Guys’

In 2018, in the wake of the cheating scandal, says Wilson, “it became clear that the board doesn’t think in the same way that younger, more progressive members think.” Fired up, he considered running, until he realized he wasn’t eligible. He had spent eight years in the Court proctoring at other levels, but he hadn’t observed at an MS exam, a prerequisite for a board seat. Echoing the words of Lia Jones, he says, “The barrier to entry is very high.”

Broglie acknowledges the problem. “It takes 16 years on average to pass the MS exam. Then it takes five or six years to become eligible to run for the board. Someone is in their 40s before they can even run. So how do we capture fresh perspectives?” The sticking point for him is balancing new voices with a proven commitment. “Are you willing to take the time to work through the system to prove that you have the dedication?” he asks. 

Wilson says the high bar leads to board elections with just a handful of candidates. “You get this revolving door of similar people,” he says. “You get less connected with what’s happening on the ground, what young somms are thinking and care about.”

Wines is more blunt: “It should not just be old white guys.”

‘We Need to Be Less Myopic’

The diversity committee serves an advisory role. To get things done, it must go to the board. But its members are trying to shake the board out of an in-group mentality. “The diversity committee is identifying for us that there is a perceived aloofness,” says Broglie. 

The Court’s social media platforms are just two years old, and they’ve been used to broadcast, not interact. That’s not how new generations communicate, say critics, and the Court has a responsibility to dialogue with the industry. To be more inclusive, says Rodil, “we need to be less myopic.”

Essential to the task is the question of access. “We’ve had a policy that the door is open to everyone. We’ve come to be sensitive that not everybody has access to that door in the first place,” says Wines. “How can we reach out to other communities, proactively increasing diversity in our industry?”

Covid-19 has done some of that accessibility work by pushing the Court into online learning. The diversity committee is also talking about developing wine programs at historically black colleges and universities. Then there’s economic access. CMSA courses are costly, and blind tasting takes practice. 

“The dirty secret is you need to taste thousands of dollars of wine to pass,” says Singh, who is the CMSA’s only MS of South Asian descent. “The bullshit that I had to go through, it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Unlike her white male counterparts, she says, “I was not getting invited to tastings, panels, conferences. The only thing you can muster up is they’re white and a man. We’re in similar buying positions, but they’re friends with the distributor? There was an assumption that you’re not going to turn the opportunity into dollars for them. How many good men and women have we lost because they didn’t feel welcome?”

Morrow wants CMSA to use its clout as a bully pulpit for inclusion. “We have to change the industry, not just the Court. That’s how you make a lasting impact.”

Habibi agrees. “The Court happens to be at the top of the wine world, and if they get their shit together, others flow,” she says.

‘There’s a Tectonic Shift, Then There’s an Earthquake’

Right now, with the hospitality industry stalled, “Covid-19 has provided the Court with this padding,” says Ross. “This is the first year we won’t have an MS exam, and it’s an opportunity to regain trust.”

But the pandemic is a double-edged sword. Though she commends the Court for its diversity efforts, Jones says, “I don’t think people are going to pay that amount of money for certification for a job that’s becoming obsolete under Covid-19.” 

The wine world has long been transforming. “The Court was born out of a different era when it was all European wines and white guys at auctions or high-end restaurants,” says Wines. “We did not take into account back then the middle tier we see today, the range around the world, and the fact that a lot of somms are not white, male, or straight. There’s diversity in the community and kinds of restaurants.”

What’s happening, Singh says, is “a tectonic shift from the old generation to the new. There’s a tectonic shift, and then there’s an earthquake. Sometimes it’s a little quibble, but other times, there’s a shaking up.”

For the Court, the current moment is a 10 on the Richter scale. “Gen Z does not mess around,” Singh says. “They want equality, diversity, fairness. And the wine buyer of tomorrow is probably a BIPOC sommelier.” The CMSA should be thinking ahead, Singh contends, putting itself in the position of a Black MS candidate and thinking about the factors she needs to be successful. That means helping candidates with access and opportunity, and making sure they see themselves represented in the Court’s membership.

“Otherwise,” Singh says, “we’re just outdated.”

The article A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/reckoning-race-court-of-master-sommeliers-americas/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/622993853222469632

[johnboothus]

A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas

Lia Jones had passed the introductory and certified examinations for the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas (CMSA), garnered her level-three Wine & Spirit Education Trust award, and been certified through the Sommelier Society of America. She was highly credentialed when, in 2014, she decided to go for CMSA’s advanced certification. She had her eye on the coveted Master Sommelier title after that. For support through the process, Jones went looking for a mentor.

“They didn’t have any Black female MSs,” she says, so she contacted one of the Court’s few Black males. “I realized everybody that’s Black is probably reaching out to him. He’s one person in the spotlight getting all these diverse people asking for mentorship,” she recalls. “He didn’t say he wouldn’t mentor me, but he wanted to see effort. What do I aspire to do?”

That was tough for Jones to show because in New York, where she lived, she had been looking in vain for a wine gig. The Court requires both current restaurant employment and two years of restaurant work within the seven years prior to applying for the advanced. She was turned down for 76 jobs. “I kept every email,” she says, “because that is crazy. If you’re certified and can’t get a job, what do you do?”

Moving to Los Angeles, she found the market as tough. Finally, in 2018, she landed a position at NoMad LA. But she needed letters of recommendation for her advanced course application. Though the Court’s executive director, Kathleen Lewis, says those didn’t have to come from MSs, Jones says that they did. She wrote to the few she could find in Southern California. No one replied.

In an organization that prides itself on mentorship, no one helped Lia Jones — not with mentorship, recommendations, or even acknowledgement of her emails. Says Jones, founder and executive director of Diversity in Wine and Spirits, an organization that assists companies in the hospitality industry with diversity and inclusion initiatives: “The barriers for me as a Black female were different from my white male counterparts. I wondered, ‘What is my need to become an MS when there are so many barriers?’”

Though the Court has since dropped the recommendations requirement, Jones’ story is not unique. It is illustrative of the problems with access, inclusion, transparency, and diversity for which the CMSA now finds itself called out. Shrouded in pomp and circumstance, made famous by the “SOMM” film series, the Court is the nation’s premiere wine educator. It confers the MS title; it has taught tens of thousands of aspiring sommeliers. It is a powerful influencer in an industry that, critics say, has ignored Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) talent. Now, BIPOC wine professionals and their allies are demanding that the CMSA board of directors work on diversity and equity within the Court and across the industry. To do so, this elite organization must acknowledge its implicit biases, overhaul its structure, and fix its culture to support an increasingly diverse talent pool — and to stay relevant in a food and drink landscape that is evolving. 

With high-profile resignations and leadership fumbles igniting a debate about the organization’s very need to exist, it’s do-or-die time for CMSA. As sommelier Tahiirah Habibi, founder of HUE Society, a hub for BIPOC wine pros, puts it: “You are either anti-racist or you support racism. You’re fixing it, or you are going to get caught on the not-OK side.” As a newly appointed diversity committee begins its work amid tumult, the Court of Master Sommeliers is scrambling to wake and do right. 

‘They Were Botching This Thing’

On May 25, when protests erupted over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, “within the wine industry, people were adamant that there is no more patience for gradual changes,” says Vincent Morrow, MS, the wine and service director at San Francisco’s ONE65, and one of few persons of color in the Court. “We need stuff to happen now.”

Across social media, organizations quickly pledged to work on anti-racism. The Court was not among them. On June 7, CMSA board chairman Devon Broglie, the global beverage buyer for Whole Foods, finally emailed the 172 Master Sommeliers who were the Court’s members, then quietly posted an anti-racism statement to its website. It contained few specifics as to the diversity actions he and the other leaders would take. The board stayed silent over social media until June 17, when it finally announced to members and the public that it was forming a diversity committee “to determine best practices for diversifying our member pool.” But by then, the damage had been done.

Earlier, Habibi had posted a video in which she related her horror, as a Black woman, at being told during her CMSA introductory exam a decade prior to address the proctor as “Master.” She detailed how the Court had added insult to injury by including the Hue Society in its initial anti-racism statement. The unsolicited mention looked, erroneously, like an endorsement from her organization. Afterward, Broglie revised his statement, removing Hue Society from it and outlining the Board’s initial steps toward diversity and inclusion.

Master Sommeliers resigned over the board’s stalling and missteps: First Richard Betts, co-owner of An Approach to Relaxation wines and Casa Komos Beverage Group, and a 17-year veteran of the Court; then Brian McClintic, owner of Viticole Wine Club and a star of the “SOMM” films; and Nate Ready, co-owner of Oregon’s Hiyu Wine Farm, who had been an MS since he was 28. Others, like Dustin Wilson, co-owner of bicoastal retailer Verve Wine, took to social media “to get in the board’s face,” he says. “They were botching this thing. It reflected on everybody who has the MS title. Just because I’m a Master Sommelier doesn’t mean I’m involved in their communications. I have zero control over that.” 

Wilson’s frustration bespeaks problems with transparency and structure that everyone I interviewed, from board members to resigned MSs and outside observers, said are endemic to the Court. These issues, argues Habibi, can derail diversity efforts. “You don’t want to bring inclusion into a structure that’s still racist and broken. You have to fix your systems first,” she says.

‘There’s Really No Need for Secrecy’

There was no ill intent behind the Court’s slow response, says CMSA board member Christopher Bates, MS, co-owner of Upstate New York’s F.L.X. Hospitality. “The board is a volunteer position. I don’t want it to come off as an excuse, but there are thousands of fires in everybody’s life, trying to find our way through Covid. Things also take time, and I think it’s important that we took time to consider what to do.”

But as Jill Zimorski, MS, senior specialist of education with Strategic Group, representing Moët Hennessy, points out, “the longer you’re silent, the longer people can interpret your silence.” 

Rumors flew. In his resignation letter, McClintic stated that the board’s heel-dragging was in part because decisions were required to be unanimous. Broglie says that’s untrue; under his tenure, the board operates by majority vote. “But it is important that we have a strong consensus when we make big moves,” he told me. “Rather than the performance of social media, we wanted to make sure that we were taking constructive action. But the statement on social media didn’t come fast enough, with hindsight.”

Zimorski isn’t buying it. Even while you’re considering larger changes, how hard can it be to speak out against racism? “This is an organization of humans that does exams for other humans. Our industry is about taking care of people,” she says. “I don’t think it’s very complicated.”

Time and again, MSs have spoken out against the CMSA board’s inscrutability. It played out in 2018 when, following the disclosure that a blind-tasting proctor had fed answers to a small group of examinees. The board revoked the MS title from all 23 who passed. The decision “put this credential over human lives and screwed with people’s ability to earn a living,” says Betts. “We said, ‘We need accountability, facts. You serve the membership.’ All we got was a stonewall.”

Zimorski was among the 23. She re-tested the following year. “This is an organization that administers wine tests,” she says. “There’s really no need for secrecy, except with the wines we’re blind tasting.” 

‘How Are You Going to Hold Us Accountable?’

If the workings of the Court are mysterious for members, they’re more so for the rest of the wine world. “They’ve created this allure,” says Larissa Dubose, director of education for the just-launched talent resource, Black Wine Professionals, and a CMSA-certified sommelier. “This isn’t the time to be enigmatic. Let’s see what you’re doing to promote inclusivity.” 

With MSs Alpana Singh, owner of Evanston, Ill.’s Terra & Vine and Chicago’s AMT Hospitality consulting firm; Jonathan Ross, co-owner of Legend Imports; and Emily Wines, who runs the wine programs at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants, Zimorski circulated a petition on the Court’s internal forum, gathering signatures to force the board to act on diversity. “There was so much initial pushback,” says Zimorski. “People said, ‘This isn’t a political group.’ I said, ‘This isn’t a political matter. This is about identity, who you are, and what you love.’” 

The petitioners prevailed, and the CMSA board took up many of their suggestions. It raised $10,000 through the first of its virtual tastings to benefit a scholarship fund for BIPOC students. It announced the end of the “Master” address. As co-chairs of the diversity committee, it appointed June Rodil, a partner at Houston-based Goodnight Hospitality, and board member Thomas Price, estate division educator for Jackson Family Wines. The co-chairs chose five other MSs, including Morrow, Wines, and Carlton McCoy, president and CEO of Napa’s Heitz Cellars, who had taken to Instagram after Betts’ resignation to declare that quitting was a privilege that he, as a Black man, did not have or desire. He was staying on to transform the Court for the sake of Black candidates after him.

Three weeks in, the committee has hired poet, activist, and noted corporate trainer Azure Antoinette — a TedX speaker whom Forbes magazine calls “the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation” — as the membership’s implicit bias trainer. They are looking to her for lasting effects. Says Rodil, “We asked her, ‘How are you going to hold us accountable and give us the skills to continue to do this as we move forward and not just have a training session be, ‘I learned this. I’m good?’”

‘Being Color Blind Isn’t Being Diverse’

The Court has long thought itself equitable, despite the sea of white male faces in the MS lookbook. “We’ve believed that the organization has been entirely inclusive, that we’ve held to a strict non-discrimination policy, and that the meritocracy of our exams speaks for itself,” says Broglie. “In the past month, we’re learning that’s not enough.”

Inclusion work involves probing questions, says Jones: “Do you have a diversity policy? Who structured it? How did you choose the diversity committee? Who is on your board? Who is implementing other programs? Where are you giving the exams? Are they accessible? Who are your students?”

CMSA is hard-pressed to answer that last one. Says Thomas Price: “When I passed in 2012, I was pretty sure I was the only person of African-American descent to ever do it. I called our PR department and said, ‘You need to check this for me, if I’m going to say it to people.’ They vetted it really well.”

That may be, but why wasn’t this information transparent? In 2019, when I was working on a profile of Court founder Fred Dame, Lewis could tell me that 28 Master Sommeliers were women. She could not say how many women had studied or examined at any level, only that “the Court is gender-neutral when it comes to examinations and enrollment.” But if the Court kept statistics, perhaps it could follow the trajectory of women students, see where they fell off in the process, and examine why a demographic that’s more than half the U.S. population has only 16 percent of the Court’s memberships. 

There’s even less information about race and ethnicity. In her experience with the Court, says Dubose, “I’ve never been asked who I am. Maybe my pronouns, but never ethnic background or race. Being color blind right now isn’t being diverse because that shows there isn’t any color in the organization.”

Broglie says demographics collection is now on the table. Rodil wants the questions to go further: “One big thing is getting a better database of our students and information on the mentorships they seek. Many MSs were interested in being on the diversity committee, so we asked them for a commitment to mentorship, and they all said yes for BIPOC students.”

Mentorship is crucial to navigating the MS exam. “I never would’ve passed if I hadn’t been surrounded by people who gave me the code,” says Nate Ready, who was working at MS Bobby Stuckey’s restaurant Frasca at the time. “You didn’t just study wine. Someone on the inside had to give you insight on what kind of knowledge was important. That can be used to control who gets in.”

Over the years, the Court has circled wagons around the MS credential, sacrificing pedagogy for an increasingly impossible test, says Betts. “Do you have 10 years and $10,000 dollars for a 3 percent chance to pass? No one would make that bet,” he says.

The diversity committee, says Wines, will “take a hard look at teaching materials, examinations, and the ways we interact with candidates to make sure there’s no implicit bias or anything we are doing unintentionally or intentionally that stops them from pursuing our programs.”

Wilson says that will involve a shift in the Court’s self-image. “Leadership’s first order of business is always communicating to the membership,” he says. “That’s simply Master Somms up to date on dues. The board doesn’t think about others that have a vested interest, people who’ve taken first, second, or third level. By the time they’re advanced, they’ve been giving us money and studying for years. You can’t tell someone who wears that advanced pin on the floor of their restaurant that they’re not part of the organization.”

‘It Should Not Just Be Old White Guys’

In 2018, in the wake of the cheating scandal, says Wilson, “it became clear that the board doesn’t think in the same way that younger, more progressive members think.” Fired up, he considered running, until he realized he wasn’t eligible. He had spent eight years in the Court proctoring at other levels, but he hadn’t observed at an MS exam, a prerequisite for a board seat. Echoing the words of Lia Jones, he says, “The barrier to entry is very high.”

Broglie acknowledges the problem. “It takes 16 years on average to pass the MS exam. Then it takes five or six years to become eligible to run for the board. Someone is in their 40s before they can even run. So how do we capture fresh perspectives?” The sticking point for him is balancing new voices with a proven commitment. “Are you willing to take the time to work through the system to prove that you have the dedication?” he asks. 

Wilson says the high bar leads to board elections with just a handful of candidates. “You get this revolving door of similar people,” he says. “You get less connected with what’s happening on the ground, what young somms are thinking and care about.”

Wines is more blunt: “It should not just be old white guys.”

‘We Need to Be Less Myopic’

The diversity committee serves an advisory role. To get things done, it must go to the board. But its members are trying to shake the board out of an in-group mentality. “The diversity committee is identifying for us that there is a perceived aloofness,” says Broglie. 

The Court’s social media platforms are just two years old, and they’ve been used to broadcast, not interact. That’s not how new generations communicate, say critics, and the Court has a responsibility to dialogue with the industry. To be more inclusive, says Rodil, “we need to be less myopic.”

Essential to the task is the question of access. “We’ve had a policy that the door is open to everyone. We’ve come to be sensitive that not everybody has access to that door in the first place,” says Wines. “How can we reach out to other communities, proactively increasing diversity in our industry?”

Covid-19 has done some of that accessibility work by pushing the Court into online learning. The diversity committee is also talking about developing wine programs at historically black colleges and universities. Then there’s economic access. CMSA courses are costly, and blind tasting takes practice. 

“The dirty secret is you need to taste thousands of dollars of wine to pass,” says Singh, who is the CMSA’s only MS of South Asian descent. “The bullshit that I had to go through, it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Unlike her white male counterparts, she says, “I was not getting invited to tastings, panels, conferences. The only thing you can muster up is they’re white and a man. We’re in similar buying positions, but they’re friends with the distributor? There was an assumption that you’re not going to turn the opportunity into dollars for them. How many good men and women have we lost because they didn’t feel welcome?”

Morrow wants CMSA to use its clout as a bully pulpit for inclusion. “We have to change the industry, not just the Court. That’s how you make a lasting impact.”

Habibi agrees. “The Court happens to be at the top of the wine world, and if they get their shit together, others flow,” she says.

‘There’s a Tectonic Shift, Then There’s an Earthquake’

Right now, with the hospitality industry stalled, “Covid-19 has provided the Court with this padding,” says Ross. “This is the first year we won’t have an MS exam, and it’s an opportunity to regain trust.”

But the pandemic is a double-edged sword. Though she commends the Court for its diversity efforts, Jones says, “I don’t think people are going to pay that amount of money for certification for a job that’s becoming obsolete under Covid-19.” 

The wine world has long been transforming. “The Court was born out of a different era when it was all European wines and white guys at auctions or high-end restaurants,” says Wines. “We did not take into account back then the middle tier we see today, the range around the world, and the fact that a lot of somms are not white, male, or straight. There’s diversity in the community and kinds of restaurants.”

What’s happening, Singh says, is “a tectonic shift from the old generation to the new. There’s a tectonic shift, and then there’s an earthquake. Sometimes it’s a little quibble, but other times, there’s a shaking up.”

For the Court, the current moment is a 10 on the Richter scale. “Gen Z does not mess around,” Singh says. “They want equality, diversity, fairness. And the wine buyer of tomorrow is probably a BIPOC sommelier.” The CMSA should be thinking ahead, Singh contends, putting itself in the position of a Black MS candidate and thinking about the factors she needs to be successful. That means helping candidates with access and opportunity, and making sure they see themselves represented in the Court’s membership.

“Otherwise,” Singh says, “we’re just outdated.”

The article A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas appeared first on VinePair.

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