Q1 What do you hear in Civ’s monologue before Degradation?
Q2 Do you see a relationship between hardcore/punk and the Black Lives Matter movement? Do you see a future where people in the punk and HC scene more fully embrace the BLM movement?
Q3 Please add anything else you’d like on this topic.

I will try to keep this as short and simple as possible without flying off the handle. Civ isn’t racist. He’s human and he said something that wasn’t the most eloquent way of saying what he said. I’m sure if you talked to him about BLM and racism, he’d give you his true feelings and that wouldn’t be controversial at all and would probably line up with most everyone within the scene. But that’s all an assumption because I don’t know him personally.

The real issue of this whole thing is our inability to have a mature and grown-up conversation about race and being able to handle, maturely, people who get offended at certain things. I thought the hardcore community would be above that bullshit but I guess not. You’re always gonna have knuckle heads with everything and I thought we were pretty good with policing ourselves, I guess not. So let’s make I STAND GB comment which is so fucking corny. Let’s just stamp out any ability to talk about anything.

Some people I highly respect and have known year and years were either offended or at least cringed when Civ said what he said and I didn’t jump down their throats and say “Fuck you! GB FOR LIFE!!!” No, I listened and grasped why they felt that way. I got it. I guess that’s too much to ask for, the ability to listen. But let’s rely on sexist memes and use terms like PC police or SJW and shut down any chance of having a real discussion.

Going through some of the threads over the last few days was really eye opening and depressing. I saw the childish responses but then I saw the vile overtly racist bullshit and it’s not the first time I’ve seen it online within the hardcore community. Any time that something comes up with race or BLM, I’ve seen scene people say some of the most racist bullshit and I know some of those people would be singing along to the same songs I sing along to but apparently the meaning of the songs just go in one ear and out the other. I don’t think that we will EVER be free of that bullshit until we take this shit seriously.

Until we can look at things like BLM and see the validity of their cause and make it our own or at very least understand and empathize with it but we let our childishness take control. The one thing that sent me off the deep end last night was a number of knuckleheads saying that one person’s overtly racist comments and reaction about BLM and black people in general were the same as people going off on what Civ said. No, no, no! It’s not the same fucking thing. It’s not. One is a reaction, petty as you may see it, it’s a reaction and the other is an ugly institutionalized way of thinking that is dangerous and should be removed from our scene. When you equate the two, you either rise one to a level it isn’t and you reduce the other.

In closing- and I’m sorry if this is long winded and all over the place- but I still like GB, I won’t be posting I stand with GB anywhere because that’s stupid. Civ isn’t a racist, and I stand with BLM, and fuck the racism and hatred within our scene.

Check out Charles’ full interview about being a drug free dad.

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