Ani Difranco

I happened upon Twitter last weekend, just as I was waking up and saw that one of my favorite folk singers' name was trending. Curious, I read more and was subsequently horrified.

I just want to know what the fuck is wrong with people. Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to have a feminist retreat or fuck it, a retreat of any kind, on a damn plantation? Hell, I'm just finding out more about the fact that my college moved in the 1950's to land that was formerly a plantation, a "liberal arts school" and that thought turns my stomach.

Monica's thoughts

When Black women expressed their concerns about having this event on ground where our foremothers were raped, tortured, had the children they bore sold from them, the response was predictable from vanillacentric privileged white women rushing to defend DiFranco and this jacked up event.

Mandi Harrington took it a reprehensible step further and engaged in virtual blackfaceto defend the indefensible.

I follow Ani on Facebook and the comment section has been absolutely disgusting the past few days.

Then Ani issued an "apology". I use that term extremely loosely because it was yet another "sorry I got caught" pieces of crap that is flung around daily by politicians. I was recommended to check out Sorry Watch and they wrote about Ani's non-apology.

“I thought to myself, “whoa”, but i did not imagine or understand that the setting of a plantation would trigger such collective outrage or result in so much high velocity bitterness.”

Translation: I responded in the mien of Joey Lawrence of Blossom, a product of the 1990s like me, a creature of winsomeness and light, who would testify that “whoa” is a perfectly reasonable response to the news that one’s purportedly feminist event was going to be held at one of the largest plantations in the South, a site whose web site perkily discusses what a NICE master lived there (he gave his slaves “gifts of clothing, small toys and fruit”! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? also the plantation had its own bowling alley, and WHO AMONG US CAN SAY that the slaves were not allowed to use it?) and thus I cannot fathom why everybody else has to be such a font of negativity.

And for full disclosure, Ani did issue a second, actual apology, which is good. The same link to Sorry Watch also lists the second apology at the end of the critique.

I hate watching people I admire fail. I think that is a true statement for anyone.