I’ve worked a lot of service and entertainment jobs. For me, the most interesting similarity between the two is the insight into power relationships that they offer. With service encounters, the ways that social hierarchies influence people’s behavior can get pretty complicated in my experience. Within entertainment, particularly for a bar DJ, you get a pure, unadulterated visible privilege meter.
The bar being public space, the DJ serves as something of a gatekeeper, with no bureaucracy and nearly instant gratification. The way a person approaches and interacts with the DJ says a lot about their attitudes toward and relationship with public space. Hence: the most visibly privileged have the highest expectations of ownership. Though this doesn’t work as well with employees, it’s an almost perfect correlation for your average patron.
My observations of (and frustrations with) many white men under these conditions gave rise to the following list of rules of how not to behave like an overprivileged, presumptuous ass.
1. You do not speak for everyone, nor are you more important than they are. "Can you play anything but [insert genre/artist/song currently playing]?" is not a very helpful or constructive question. In all likelihood, the previous song was of a different genre/artist than the current song and most certainly not the SAME song. It’s probably safe to assume then that the next song, following this pattern, will differ from the current one in genre and/or artist as well. Since I, as a rule, do not repeat songs during any given night, the only logical conclusion I can draw from this request is that you would like me to stop playing this song immediately and/or refrain from playing any more songs of the same genre/artist.
Now, I know this may seem like a novel concept to you, but other people (and by other I mean not men, not white and/or not presumptuous people) generally just request what it is that THEY would like to hear. They may try to sway me by providing specific information (It’s my birthday) or insisting that everyone will love their song/artist/genre, but more often qualify their own desires as not superseding the desires of the group. Your request, on the other hand, either prioritizes your own desires as more important or takes them as representative of the whole. Incorrect on both counts, sorry and thanks for playing.
2. Racist observations do not further prove your importance or suitability as a representative of the group. They are annoying, offensive and irrelevant. When a white man asks me to play anything but Rap, for instance, he may be tempted to follow up this request with an observation of his surroundings. Now, the question alone is an exercise of privilege, but one I’m willing to work with and even indulge. Not because it’s okay, just because it’s my job. The followup observation is almost without question going to take me from cooperative to popping Excedrin for racial tension headaches.
It usually goes something like, “How many young black people do you see in this bar right now?” Meaning, what? That only black people listen to Black music? Wrong. The largest consumer group of Hip-Hop/Rap music for decades has been 16 to 25-year-old white males. Well, at least the way that the music industry is defining consumption and measuring demand.
Now, I know this fact may be troubling to you. You prefer to look back fondly on some forgotten time when popular music was altogether Whiter, right? Wrong again. The history of popular music in the US is full of black artists, white artists who appropriate Black music while neglecting to give credit to black artists and the artists who have been influenced by the aforementioned groups. Rock and Country owe their origins to young (and old) black people as much as Hip-Hop/Rap.
And you know what? I’m not even playing Rap. It’s called R&B, google it.
3. Despite what your over-inflated sense of self worth might be telling you, I do not require your approval. Though many patrons feel compelled to complement my work, thank me for playing their song or even tip me, you are the only one who lords your approval over my head. You insult my performance when I don’t do what you want, when you want. You insult other women as a means of complimenting me. I don’t have the vaguest notion of where you got the idea that flexing your power and authority as almighty white man would impress me, or that denigrating my fellow women would flatter me.
I watched you try to dance with every unattached woman on or near the dance floor, and one-by-one they laughed at your clumsy approach and drunken “moves” or got frustrated by your pushy tactics. You are a shining example of rape culture at work and when you admitted to telling another woman that she displeased you because she danced “like a typical white girl” in an attempt to -what, woo me?- all you did was announce, unmistakably clear: “I’m a misogynist and a racist. I believe that I have ownership over black and female bodies/identities. I appropriate an imagined parody of Blackness to bolster my masculinity and leverage it to judge your expression of femininity.”
Eww.
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