Black Female Dancers are Mistreated by White Males in the Dance Community

I want to talk about misogyny in social partner dancing. I know you guys see me from time to time post videos of me dancing Brazilian Zouk. Sometimes I might post videos of doing the, you know, Latin hustle. I've done, what's the Haitian dance? Kumpa, kumpa. So, you know, I dabble and dabble, but right now I'm doing Brazilian Zouk. and um i've been in Brazilian Zouk for the past year okay and um it's a beautiful dance however um it's not the dance space i'm gonna speak for New York City i'm not gonna speak for all other geographical areas i can only speak for where i live New York City the dance space in the Brazilian Zouk community in New York is heavily uh it's pro-asian lots of asians um mixed in with brazilians who have you know migrated with their families over here and become um citizens but originally they were born and raised in brazil and let's see there's a very small percentage of blacks and hispanics in these communities and i find that odd because new york city is the biggest ******* multi multicultural diverse ******* city in the entire world every race ethnicity is in this ******* city so i always would go to the Brazilian Zouk socials the social is the party and i would sit there and i'm like what the **** is up where are the black people where are the hispanics it's nothing but asians you know a few white folks is in there the white folks is in there yes um and and brazilians where the **** are the black people and there be a few black men sprinkled in there right and it's weird because when i would go to the socials most of the time the black men would immediately come up to me and say come on sis let's dance and you know it's like a secret code that they have you know these brothers it's like an indirect subliminal way of saying i'm gonna dance with you because once we get done dancing nine times out of ten ain't nobody else gonna ask you to dance you're gonna be standing on the wall for the rest of the night because these asians and brazilians they funny acting and it was like that at most of the parties the brothers would always ask me to dance immediately i've never had an issue with the black men coming up to ask me to dance all the other ethnicities yeah not happening so uh with brazilians zouk you have your white brazilians and you have your black brazilians and for the most part in new york um the instructors are white brazilian okay and um i will just give one one instructor i'll just use an example how he continuously used micro aggressions against me different experiences different things he would do and you know he was a real asshole for it and because I was so hell-bent on learning the dance I didn't really stop to tell on him and I should have the first time he did something I should have I should have spoke up and said something but I I didn't want to cause friction in the community and I didn't want it to disrupt my learning experience I didn't want to get blacklisted but he kept doing it so much it's to the point now i don't give a **** if i'm blacklisted i'm just tired of being invalidated okay i'm gonna give you an example i'll give you a couple examples of his bullshit behavior and how he treated me in comparison i'm gonna say this he has a preference at the parties he loves to dance with the asian girls this is he's like 40 years old and um one of the leading instructors in in the Brazilian Zouk community right teaches most of the workshops and all that he's also a dj but at the party they encourage us as newcomers come to the party come to come to the social you gotta learn you gotta dance and then when you get to the ******* social nobody wants to dance with the black women the black girls are the last to get picked to get on the dance floor so you're standing there basically watching a bunch of asians and brazilians ******* dance the night away and rub it in your face okay anyway one of his classes you know i took his workshops for about four months straight um one of his workshops one time there was about four asian girls and um you know we were rotating and taking turns with him doing we were doing a turn a specific spin and um rotating he was rotating and taking turns with all of us and mind you his supervisor the staff is monitoring him so whenever the staff is around yeah he's on his best behavior he's not going to try the racism stuff and all this and that and and the covert subliminal bullshit but he slipped up at this time so when it got to my turn you know like he it was a dance move where he spun you spun you halfway it was like a half turn or something when it came to be my turn um and i got to him and he did he tried to spin me halfway i fucked the turn up and i i i mean he's very tall so what happened was i was looking off to the side i got off balance and i fucked the turn up so he says to me in front of all four of the asian girls i forget who else it was some guys there too small class relatively but for the most part there were a bunch of asian girls in there that ******* day he says to me he yells look at me because I fucked up the turn and I was looking off to the side and at the time he didn't know that I was autistic and that one of the signs one of the traits of autism we don't make eye contact it is extremely difficult for autistic people it's uncomfortable for us it's a social you know I didn't tell anybody I didn't tell anybody i hate looking people in the eyes it is it's when he snapped he snapped look at me in front of these asian girls i said cool i'm i'm gonna take one for the team i gotta learn this dance i gotta press forward and i should have checked him when he did that ---- another time because i got a whole list of ******* microaggressions that this ************ has did him and others you know there's other assholes in the community but he's a big one um after taking one of his workshops there was a party a dance social right after his workshop and um you know he invited the class to go and most of them could not go it was me and another white guy so it was just the three of us right so we take the subway we're headed to the social right we get off the subway we're going towards the social it's a couple blocks away now i'm not that you know they're having this conversation a man-to-man conversation and i you know i'm trying to be mindful and like back away so they can have privacy to talk i don't want to seem like i'm listening in on their conversation and being rude so i set a boundary i'm walking behind him you know put some distance between me and them but not too much right we get to a busy ******* intersection y'all the light is turning red it's yellow and it's getting ready to turn red he and the white dude they run off to cross the street to beat the red light i choose not to i wait ask me if they waited for me uh till the light changed again no they kept walking by the time the light changed green and i crossed the street they were long gone it's 10 o'clock at night i'm his student he was not concerned about my safety he just said **** it let the black bitch we're almost there you know the the club is is like a block or so away let let the black bitch catch up and i said would he have treated his asian students this way or his white dance partner uh you know she she's a white woman he would have never done you know or his brazilian female friends he would have never treated them that way he probably would have escorted all them across the street but he let the black girl walk by herself 10 o'clock at night after his classes i pay ******* money and support this ************ and this is how he treats me you know a couple months later i finally confide in him and tell him my feelings about how i'm tired of being alienated because of the color of my skin at these dance socials i text him this a very detailed you know i put it in writing um he ignored me blew it off blew it off y'all no response didn't encourage me to keep coming back i'm sorry chanel maybe we could work together to come up with some solutions but we don't want you to turn away keep coming back he ******* ignored me five months later in May I see him at a dance convention in Toronto in person like three different times he still does not say anything doesn't invite me to come back to the socials I said this ************ is either a racist or a misogynist I don't know what the issue is but I'm over it then I've talked to other black women in Brazilian Zouk and they all have had similar experiences I got to do a part to to this y'all let me uh get back to y'all