The Rhino's Controversy

[Cass]

Wow, it's on the front page of the Star today. For mass media to pass over the people who organized the pub crawl, with "could not be reached for comment" and focus on Rhino, is pathetic.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/01 ... party.html

[Belgian]

^ Yeah. Sadly our knee-jerk PC culture is not only positively eager to punish people in a tar-and-feather sort of way, it so quickly (callously, hot-headedly) throws out the word 'racist' in a way that doesn't really respect the word & dilutes its important meaning (it implies we need to tolerate and accept others, not incite a witch-hunt.)

People are made to be more afraid of being tagged with the 'racist' epithet than they are made concerned with actual human welfare. This imbalance promotes a social atmosphere of hypocrisy & the use of purposely vague, unclear language (doublespeak etc.)

I think this half-baked rabble-jabber is, naturally, supported by the mass media which must often serve the most fleeting & unreflective attention span. Sad.

[Derek]

VERY well said Belgian. I had similar thoughts yesterday, but bit my tongue.

There's no question that the party was ignorant and lacking cultural sensitivity, but IMHO, the reaction was WAY overboard.

I wonder if this would have received so much attention before the idle no more protests?

{on edit, the guy that took the cab was actually half-Cree, not just an angry activist http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/story.c ... ent=191032}

[Weebay]

http://www.blogto.com/city/2013/01/rhin ... ans_event/

Blog TO has an interesting take on it.

"Clearly, the lesson learned from this situation is that businesses should deny service to anyone who has the potential to offend others with his or her presence. That may include a patron purporting an unpopular political option, wearing a t-shirt with a swear word on it, or someone who tells a "How many X does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" joke in poor taste. Better safe than sorry, right?"

[andrewrg]

I really don't think the article is hard on the Rhino at all.

It clearly states: "The Rhino Bar and Restaurant on Queen St. W. played no part in organizing the party but faced the ire of many at the bar that night."

Sure, protesters were angry at the bar, but that's clearly not the opinion of the article. The Rhino, apart from one staff member who may or may not have said something that is possibly flippant to a protester, seems entirely not responsible. They didn't interfere with the protesters.

Perhaps there is a case to be made for ejecting everyone in the group, but that's another thing.

[Bytowner]

I've been thinking about this since I read this post yesterday, and had a really hard time deciding how I felt about the whole thing (Rhino issue aside). In the end, I just can't get outraged over people appropriating cultural dress. Maybe I'm drawing too fine a line, but I think native headgear is much different than, say, painting yourself red or black.

I guess maybe they were culturally insensitive, but I certainly wouldn't call these folks ignorant... unless you just mean ignorant of the large stick Torontonians have lodged in their collective ass.

I'm actually not even a free speech absolutist, and I'm the last person in the world to go on a rant about political correctness run amuck. I just don't see anything inherently racist about this.

[Weebay]

Perhaps there is a case to be made for ejecting everyone in the group, but that's another thing.

The Cowboys and the Indians, or just the Indians?

[cattersley]

This is something over nothing. No where in these articles said that these patrons were rude to staff or others, and as for the pictures looked like they were out for a good time... I see nothing wrong with dressing up and having fun even though it wasn't Halloween. I have friends from Britain that frequently do them night in costumes with a wide range of themes, and usually they are quite over the top (the costume). But they aren't out to offend, and neither were these people. The real people in the wrong are the ones that swarmed the place.

[Derek]

Bytowner,

I doubt the party had any racist-intent, and so I wouldn't label them as racist.

That said, Aboriginal people feel insulted by these costumes, and that should be respected. Their culture has been continually misrepresented and the Hollywood "Cowboys & Indians" is the epitome of that.

[Cass]

I really don't think the article is hard on the Rhino at all.

It clearly states: "The Rhino Bar and Restaurant on Queen St. W. played no part in organizing the party but faced the ire of many at the bar that night."

Sure, protesters were angry at the bar, but that's clearly not the opinion of the article. The Rhino, apart from one staff member who may or may not have said something that is possibly flippant to a protester, seems entirely not responsible. They didn't interfere with the protesters.

Perhaps there is a case to be made for ejecting everyone in the group, but that's another thing.

I suppose I'm just bothered that the Rhino is going to wear this for a while. The organizers have gotten off scot-free. Did any of the tweeters or media name the participants? Did any of the other pubs (if it was actually a crawl) get any negative attention? Seems like no on both fronts.

Even though the Rhino is being reported as having nothing to do with this, they're the ones bearing a negative association. Not the people behind it, nor the manic tweeters responsible for blowing it up.

[boney]

What happened at the Rhino was not explicitly racist, but pretty disrespectful when understood in the context of history. That’s why some people got a fussed about it. That said, the backlash the Rhino has had to endure is unacceptable. Garbage like this happens every single day. I unintentionally say and do disrespectful stuff all the time without thinking about broader contexts or who I might be hurting. Most people do, but it’s still not right. The important thing is how people respond. The Rhino absolutely did everything right. They let people have free expression. They let the people who had a problem with that expression voice their concerns. Based on the report that several members of the party took off their head dresses and washed off their face paint, it sounds like a good discussion was had. The Rhino issued statements apologizing and discussing steps they were taking so that similar misunderstandings don’t happen in the future. Since the Rhino didn’t formally host, endorse or even know the event was even going to take place, they have done their due diligence and need do nothing more. More importantly, the Rhino genuinely seems concerned about what unfolded in terms of respect for all persons, not just what might happen in terms of the economic consequences to their establishment. If people condemn the Rhino for its complicity in the nights events and continue to take it out on the establishment, then they are as ignorant as the yahoos who were dressed up that night.

[Bytowner]

Bytowner,

I doubt the party had any racist-intent, and so I wouldn't label them as racist.

That said, Aboriginal people feel insulted by these costumes, and that should be respected. Their culture has been continually misrepresented and the Hollywood "Cowboys & Indians" is the epitome of that.

Well, I guess I just disagree that someone feeling insulted is the standard we should have to meet. I think non-anthropologists can draw a line between race and culture pretty neatly. I don't buy that culture should be sacrosanct and that we can arbitrarily decide which ones we're allowed to have fun with and which ones we aren't.

[boney]

Bytowner,

I doubt the party had any racist-intent, and so I wouldn't label them as racist.

That said, Aboriginal people feel insulted by these costumes, and that should be respected. Their culture has been continually misrepresented and the Hollywood "Cowboys & Indians" is the epitome of that.

Well, I guess I just disagree that someone feeling insulted is the standard we should have to meet. I think non-anthropologists can draw a line between race and culture pretty neatly. I don't buy that culture should be sacrosanct and that we can arbitrarily decide which ones we're allowed to have fun with and which ones we aren't.

There is nothing arbitrary at drawing a line against disrespectfully misappropriating First Nations culture in Canada. There’s a little something called context. After contact with Europeans the First Nations endured being decimated by foreign disease, having their lands taken from them, having their children stolen and placed in residential schools and numerous other examples too numerous to mention that resulted in the decimation of their culture and way of life. Dressing up in cheesy stereotypical costumes, whooping and hollering like bad caricatures and pretending to scalp people with tomahawks helps to perpetuate the continued perception of Indians as savages. That same misguided perception was used repeatedly by Europeans to subjugate First Nations people throughout North America’s history. At the Rhino, that same distasteful caricature was being used by the potential descendants of those that did the subjugation, on the very land that was stolen, all for some dumb little dress-up birthday party at a bar. That’s the context. That’s why people got so grumpy about it.

[Derek]

An Aboriginal's perspective (from the Star):

“No one would play Jews and Nazis,” he said. “The narrative of cowboys and Indians is of cowboys killing Indians. That’s what westerns are about.”

[Bytowner]

EDIT: Nevermind. If folks think a few hundred years of aboriginal-European relations can be compared to the Holocaust there's not much to talk about and this isn't the place anyways. Hope the Rhino doesn't suffer because of any of this.