Was Kingsway Theatre saga racism or jerk-ism?

Last weekend’s debacle provides opportunity to look at the issue from a black woman’s perspective

Racism is not quite the same as jerk-ism, although a Venn diagram of the two sets would result in a huge overlap.

An incident at Kingsway Theatre last weekend left Torontonians squabbling when the black actress, Wendy Olunike Adeliyi, posted on Facebook her experience of being denied entry to watch a film (ironically about race) because she was carrying a backpack. Was it racism or was it not? Readers, not just of colour, described similar bad experiences with the theatre in emails to the Star and on social media. On Yelp, the theatre owner Rui Pereira appeared to respond to negative reviewers with f-bombs.

So how did racism become an element here? For Adeliyi, it happened when Pereira called the police on her and described her as black and threatening.

In his defence, Pereira said Adeliyi was “rude and belligerent to the staff,” which is why he called the police. He says he mentioned race in response to questions by the police.

Did the police ask, “Is she black?” or “What is her race?” or “Describe this woman, including her skin colour?” The police won’t say.

If Adeliyi was white, would Pereira have said, “She is a white woman with black clothes?”

I have a problem with her skin colour being brought into the equation at all. Adeliyi doesn’t. What bothers her is that “he equated that description of me with being threatening. “My skin is not threatening.” Pereira says she banged her backpack on the counter.

Adeliyi says with her camera and laptop in it, she couldn’t have banged her backpack.

“He was taking pictures and video of me. If I was threatening, it would show up in that video.”

When a petty argument around what to bring inside a theatre throws together the police and a black person, one described as “threatening” at that, it suddenly becomes combustible and changes the stakes entirely.

“Of course I was worried,” Adeliyi tells me. “I was so scared at the time . . . I know situations can be amplified for no reason.”

“Thank God, he (the police officer) was decent.”

As in the case with sexual assault, in any allegation of racism, we want evidence — preferably a video — that it occurred at all. As if people walk around recording their every interaction.

There’s no evidence of Adeliyi’s threatening behaviour either, other than Pereira’s word, yet we don’t demand more.

An astonishing amount of ignorance surrounds the dissection of Pereira’s words as if the only way to validate the accusation of racism is if it’s overt. To be considered racist, one would have to mention race, mention it in a way that damned all people of that race and verbally confirm that their actions were motivated by anger about that race. How little we understand it. In the larger picture of racism, these details don’t account for much. For black people, racism is a daily occurrence sometimes subtle, sometimes overt and always systemic.

On Monday evening, an erudite panel discussed the challenges of Canadian blackness at the University of Toronto’s Hart House.

Rashelle Litchmore is a learning strategist completing her PhD on the experience of black high school students in Toronto. She talked of the challenges for students who have been continuously told by teachers they are stupid or they are not going to make it.

“Having to push through not just getting the academic work done but getting through the mental, psychological, the sociological anguish” is a particular challenge, she said.

Canada’s parliamentary poet George Elliott Clarke recalled being told during his doctorate in English at Queen’s University in the early ’90s that they were not studying black writers because “none of them are good enough.”

The damage from lowered expectations begins much earlier in life. Onye Nnorom, a family doctor and publichealth specialist, remembered the tearful devastation of the Ds on her Grade 2 report card, an inexplicable drop from the previous Bs, and of the teacher not even asking for a meeting with the parent.

Adeliyi, who says she is a student of Critical Reasoning and Caribbean Studies at U of T, has had similar experiences.

“You know, as a black person, it’s (racism) always happening.

The real issue here is not whether Kingsway Theatre owner Rui Pereira is racist, it is that actress Wendy Olunike Adeliyi, above, was carelessly profiled in a way that put her in danger

“It’s the first time I’ve made it public that it’s unacceptable.”

I’m not here to label Rui Pereira a racist or a non-racist. The truth is we are all racist. That acknowledgement is often used to end conversations about racism or to excuse it. In reality, it only scratches the surface.

If you agree that we are all racist, and look at the consequences of that racism, then you understand that dark-skinned people and blacks in particular, who bear a disproportionate brunt of prejudice, have no reason to ascribe racial innocence to those who are unpleasant, least of all to those who benefit from a power structure that was wielded so cruelly against blacks.

The real issue here is not whether Pereira is racist, it is that Adeliyi was carelessly profiled in a way that put her in danger.

Nobody deserves that. Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar.