I posted this in 2008on myspace blogs. Myspaceblogs donot exist anymore, and I feel that this statement needs to stay out there, so I am reposting it here. Be blessed. ~ Mother Star

Since Columbine, “Goth” has been widely – and wrongly – associated with white supremacist factions. This often seems to make fear of Goths more intense and more common in the African-American community. Once, as I was walking home later than usual for some reason, there were a lot of people hanging out on Prairie Street. It’s a good thing I talked to the first people who yelled at me, so they knew that I was nice. They changed their direction and walked with me all the way to the end of whatever-it-was that was going on. When people approached us with hostile looks, this group pointed at me and yelled, “She cool, she cool,” to let people know that I was not going to hurt anybody so that no one should hurt me. They should not have needed to do that. Goth has nothing to do with skin-color; there are Goth minorities too. I lived most of my life in black neighborhoods. I am familiar with racist stereotypes from what some (very stupid) whites said to me about my neighbors. A lot of the same stereotypes made about ethnic minorities are made about Subcultures (like Goth), too. My purpose here is to show some similarities in our experiences.

This tragedy in this video happened right around the same time as my walk down Prairie Street discussed in this post. I posted this blog on myspace in 2008.
The late Sophie Lancaster and her partner Rob decided to respond to harassment with with kindness like I did on Prairie Street, but people still attacked them, killing Sophie and severely wounding Rob. 

We both groups are generally cast, by the media, as potentially dangerous social misfits with persecution complexes who cannot get along in society. As a result, young ethnic minorities – especially males – are often presumed responsible if a crime happens anywhere near them. This can lead to arrest or conviction of minorities without hard evidence! Recently in Decatur, a fast-food establishment on Eldorado St. refused to serve kids with a so-called “Goth” look because, “One of those [Goth-looking] kids vandalized our bathroom”. The kids being thrown out said they had nothing to do with it. When asked why they did not bar the guilty parties only, the manager and staff said, “We don’t know who they were. We didn’t see them,” and threw the kids out with threats of calling the police. Things get vandalized quite often in that neighborhood. To bar anyone in certain attire because someone dressed like them committed a crime would be wrong. It is far worse to do it based on the mere assumption that the vandals looked that way.

In places with few minorities, some people will look for an excuse to discriminate. If a black person commits a crime, other black people get refused service at businesses and perhaps are attacked or threatened. This happens to Goths too. After Columbine, many Goths were fired from jobs where they previously had good standing, and there were many reports (on Goth-related chat-rooms and forums etc.) of people being refused service at businesses for the way they looked. Some people even got arrested for looking different in public, were raked over the coals and then released. Some parents got so disturbed by newscasts and such things that they refused to pay for their Gothic child’s college education or even threw them out of the house – regardless of their grades or whether they’d been in legal trouble. That has always happened occasionally, but after Columbine there was a marked increase in it.

Minority women often get called horrible names and are accused of extreme promiscuity. This happens also to Goths. At a factory I worked in, a male coworker made a pass at me. I said no. He repeated it and I said no. He looked at me like I had two heads and said, “Aren’t you fast?” I told him I was too short to be fast. He explained he was talking about sex, as in wasn’t I “easy” or slutty. I was offended and said, “NO!” He did not believe me. He said I had blue hair and wore lots of black, so wasn’t I “fast”? I insisted I was not. He said, “Aren’t people like that all fast?” It was a rhetorical question. I said no again. Still he did not believe me. I tried to explain that just as people made stereotypes about him (he was black), people also told lies about me and none of it was true. He got upset with me. I was pretty upset with him too, actually.

As far as I know, African Americans are not frequently accused of being perverted and/or gay or sarcastically asked what they are supposed to be (sometimes in reference to gender, sometimes not) like we do. I expect there are probably equally hurtful things African Americans go through that Goths do not – unless they are also African American besides being Gothic, since there are indeed people who belong to both groups. Really we have quite a bit in common when it comes to suffering the ills of a less than tolerant society.

Please believe me when I say mohawks are not indicative of a white-supremacist. I had one at one time, and my then-best-friend was a black man. I have met many other people who had mohawks, not one of them were skin-heads; I do not associate with white-supremacists, at all. If a person with shaved parts on their head is also wearing swastikas, then there is a problem. Otherwise, I suggest you say, “Hi”. Chances are they will be nice. They may not understand “Hip-Hop” words (if you do use them) so they might be confused, but that does not mean hatred.

I hope this has been helpful and that next time the media tries to boost ratings or catch interest at our expense, you’ll be offended for us or at least will not believe them. By the way, why would anyone hate anyone for being their favorite color? It makes no sense.

Ya’ll have a good one.

~Esther Davis

Decatur, IL