War of the World

Every once in a while, there’s a story that needs to be read, and is more important than anything I could write here. This is such a story.

On the morning of October 21, 2017, the budding New York choreographer Jinah Parker was sitting in bed, her husband lying alongside, when she opened her email and found a deeply unsettling, one-paragraph message about her debut dance production.

The show was called SHE, a Choreoplay, an off-off-Broadway interpretative dance in which four women vividly monologize rape and abuse.

While it’s unclear to me how one “monologizes” rape and abuse through intepretative dance, that’s the least of the issues.

“You are being a hypocrite. How can you present a message via dance on sexual violence, but knowingly choose to marry an admitted woman beater?!”

It continued: “Kevin Powell admits that he can relapse into violence. Don’t be deceived and trade your safety for someone who can assault you.”

The sender was a woman named April Sellers.

Battle of the woke joined. There were four things Jinah Parker could have done in response to this email from April Sellers. The first was shrug it off, knowing that any artistic (?) endeavor will have its detractors. The second was respond with reason, whether to disagree or appreciate her concern. The third was find this April Sellers and destroy her life. The fourth was find an April Sellers and destroy her life.

The couple Googled “April Sellers.” There was a law professor in Indiana, an Oklahoma district court judge, a high school softball player. But the top links pointed to the April Sellers Dance Collective in Minneapolis.

That April Sellers is a choreographer of modern dance. She’s 43, an anarchist queer feminist known for avant-garde expressions of body politics. Critics would identify her work with epic emotions, big hair, and nude numbers that made all but the most daring of Minnesota venues flinch.

It certainly could have been this April Sellers, and if you can’t make decisions about whose life to destroy from Google, what can you trust? So earth meet scorched.

The couple called Sellers sexist for thinking she knew another woman’s journey better than herself, and accused her of committing “a form of violence.”

“We are sharing this response widely, across various communities in Minnesota and nationally, because we feel people like you are dangerous.”

It’s like every social justice trope in one. And it was a damn fine scorching, as who wants to be the wet blanket who doesn’t believe the victim? There’s nothing to be gained from challening a cry of “violence.” So when this April Sellers protested that she wasn’t that April Sellers, nobody cared. Mind you, nobody questions whether any April Sellers deserved to have her life ruined.

Less than two hours after receiving the letter, Sellers replied, pleading her innocence and requesting a phone call.

No response came. Sellers followed up with a Facebook post. Later she sent another email begging to know the names of everyone who’d received the letter so she could reach out and clarify. Her name, after all, was her livelihood.

Would you answer the phone if Hitler called to deny the Holocaust? So Sellers turned to society’s janitor to clean up the mess.

Sellers retained lawyer Aaron Mills Scott, who threatened to sue Powell and Parker if they didn’t retract and apologize. The couple likewise lawyered up. A flurry of legal motions ensued as Sellers attempted to compel them to reveal the letter’s recipients. Powell claimed he could not remember who he’d written or called.

Probably the most effective response in all of law is “I don’t remember.” But Scott did his job well.

Last summer, Scott tracked down the real author of the note that had so enraged Powell and Parker—April Maria Sellers of Cleveland, Ohio.

Oh. April Maria Sellers. How did Google miss her? From here, things get bad. Read the original story for its full flavor and effect. It’s worth the time.

This was not merely an astounding tale of fragility, ignorance and assumptive hypocrisy, but an apocryphal story of human viciousness wrapped in the pretense of social justice, the use of irrational emotionalism to justify any attack on one’s detractors. The clash here wasn’t between some racist or misogynist and a marginalized victim, but Spy vs. Spy.

It may be true that at any point in this pathetic story, the Parkers could have relented, came to their senses, stood down. But by wrapping themselves up in the language of social justice, the warmth of never having to admit to yourself or others that you’re completely wrong and filled with unjustified hatred. This is the nature of a factless reality with built in rationalizations for every wrong you commit and perpetually-available blame for your flagrant mistakes.

Why admit your mistake when there’s always someone else to blame when you’re a victim? Why face the harm you do when the marginalized can do no harm?

There will no doubt be some who read this (Jake) who will see cracks in the story where someone could have backed down, chosen the path of reasonableness over viciousness, and that will allow them to gloss over the message here: that the same irrational excuses available to cover the blame for their destructive course remain core tenets of social justice.

As long as there’s an excuse to justify the harm one does to another, especially the wrong “other” because close enough is close enough, harm will happen. Not in every instance, but enough. And as long as we disinguish responsibility by identity, there is no conceptual ledge to prevent the slide into destruction. This is the path of social justice, all those lofty goals and sweet words notwithstanding. And if this story needed any greater irony, remember that it all began with an attacking, personally critical email from a woke woman in response to an interpretive dance. This story has it all, and it’s our progressive future.

H/T Peter Bonilla

War of the World curated from Simple Justice