Solange Knowles: Race-Baiting Diva
So, Beyonce’s sister Solange was at the Kraftwerk concert in New Orleans too, and managed to turn her own rude and inconsiderate behavior into a racial incident. Check out this series of tweets:
Let me tell you about why black girls / women are so angry….
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
I took my son, his friend, and my husband to see Kraftwerk in New Orleans…
Was very excited to dance and enjoy a band I love.— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
We are 4 of about 20 black concert goers out 1500 here.
4 out of maaaybbe 20 out of 1500.— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
We walk in, and one of my favorite songs, Machine, is on. I’m excited to tell my son about how hip hop sampled Kraftwerk. We are dancing.
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
4 older white women yell to me from behind, “Sit down now” . I tell them I’m dancing at a concert. They yell, “u need to sit down now”…
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
We are at an ELECTRONIC and DANCE music concert and you are telling…not asking me…to sit down. In front of my child.
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
They proceed to throw something at my back….
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
Now the old me……
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
But in this moment, I’m just going to share my experience…
So that maybe someone will understand, why many of us don’t feel safe…— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
…in many white spaces…
We don’t “bring the drama”….
Fix yourself.
— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
She posted another tweet characterizing this as a racist attack, but I’m not going to post that here because she dropped the f-bomb. She also reports that the object thrown at her was a lime wedge (she says “a lime,” but clearly meant lime wedge, because the theater served mixed drinks during the show, ergo the only limes in the house were wedges). You can read more of her tweets in the People magazine story about Solange confront white power at the Edmund Pettus Bridge Kraftwerk show.
This is aggravating and even kind of depressing. I was at that same show, at the Orpheum Theater, though seated in in the balcony. I paid about $75 a seat for our two seats. The orchestra level seats were a lot more expensive. Being on the floor, if the person seated in front of you stands up, you won’t be able to see.
Judging from these tweets, it never seemed to occur to Solange Knowles, a privileged multimillionaire who made her money in the group Destiny’s Child, that people who pay $150+ for orchestra-level seats at a concert in a theater have a right to see the damn concert. When she tells her two million Twitter followers that she was simply “dancing at a concert,” she neglects to say that this was a show in a Beaux Arts theater, and there was no way to dance without making it difficult if not impossible for the people behind you to see the show. Nope, she believes she should be able to stand up and dance no matter whose view she obstructs — and if you object, and happen to have white skin, you are a racist who made her feel “unsafe.” She showed no courtesy to the people behind her, but apparently felt that she had a right to behave like a jerk to them, and to call them racist for having the audacity to tell her to do like everybody else was doing, and sit down.
Nobody should have thrown a lime at her, or at anybody else. They should have asked an usher to make her sit down or leave. But look, I was there, and I saw that crowd. The only way that audience could have been less safe is if they had been on walkers or had been kindergartners. I was amazed by how much older the crowd was than I expected. I’m 49, and I’d say most people there were around my age. I saw some younger, and I saw more than a few who were significantly older. This was not an unsafe crowd in any sense of the word.
From my seat in the balcony, I noticed someone on the front row dancing in at least part of the show. I remember thinking that it must be awful to be sitting behind her. Was it Solange Knowles? I dunno. I wouldn’t know her if she bit me on the nose, and I could only see a woman’s shoulder-length head of hair bobbing in silhouette.
Conclusion: Solange Knowles is a race-baiting diva. The reaction she got at the show on Friday night had nothing to do with her blackness, and everything to do with her rudeness. But because she characterized herself as a martyr to white oppression on Twitter, suffering on behalf of all black women everywhere, it got picked up by People, by E!Online and other outlets. Don’t you believe it.
She got this slam in at Louisiana:
And last thing…
I see folks saying “Well u live in Louisiana”….but I say I live in a city w THE most incredible, beautiful black. folk.— solange knowles (@solangeknowles) September 10, 2016
Well, she does, but I bet most of them, like most other people in New Orleans of all races, are a lot more polite and less entitled than Solange Knowles apparently is.
Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.