Friday, June 5, 2020

San Japan - The Dark Side of the Anime Conventions

Proz Twitter

So, let's talk about the side of the conventions and we are going to start with San Japan, recently as this week a Tweet by the convention's founder Dave Henkin, which the tweet itself is self explanatory and what he thinks about POC in the entertainment industry and his behavior is super common within the anime and comic book convention scene, something I learned in the 4 years I been assisting to them but not many people talk about it openly, think about a dirty little secret - comic cons and anime cons, tend to be somewhat of safe heavens but also they tend to be extremely racists, fat shaming places just to name a few -

Let's start checking his Tweet, he compared POC entertainers to sexual predators and assholes divas, what does that say about the policies of San Japan towards guests? POC are not welcome but it gets worse checking on the guest list from 2008 to the present POC representation is minimal, there is a lot of light skinned guests there, and guests that are white passing, but honestly i couldn't find any black individuals at all with the exception of the Hispanic guests who were light skinned in their vast majority and a the Japanese guests that are invited.

This is problematic, because the Tweet of Dave (Proz) is 100% accurate, as the founder of the convention he has secured to place guests that would be pleasing to his eye and it will give credibility to his tweet that San Japan is not welcome to anyone that is dark skinned. Hence he said sexual predators and assholes divas, referring to black men and women. It's disgusting, but an eye opener that behavior like this is finally getting attention.

Now we need to speak about the excuse, you wonder why I do not edit names? Because he left it open to the public, is not even an excuse, is a series of words that show him on how a pathetic excuse of a human he is, how dare he say  "To a tweet that was recently circulating: I am an idiot. I was trying to express frustration with the difficulty of marketing POC guests to large sections of the fandom that request the same milquetoast celebrities that are already at every other show.
I realize I speak from a position of privilege as a white man and vow to be a better ally in the future. I'm sorry."

You Dave use your privilege as a national white American, or a Karen-excuse to justify why you are such an asshole, but is even worse the people who defend you and agreeing you were "anxious" you are a racist, for not admitting your own fault and tried to blame to the con attendees, and I can assure you, is not difficult to market African-American cosplayers and entertainers but you don't have the balls to admit that you don't want them on your convention.

I am going to assume you tried to say Dream Convention, as the "convention who specialize in POC" but you couldn't even remember the name or at least Google it proper and refer to them with their name, which your actions are taking echo within the convention scene because it does mimic a lot of Metro Con around 2013 but that will be the topic on another entry.

I honestly hope if there is any Youtuber and Voice Actors who read this, any artist who booked with them who boycott San Japan, if the board of directors don't remove a racist person that as the helm of the convention because it's problematic making his behavior and pathethic excuse the new normal, because within how the social weather is going we need to implement measures to punish any racist individual and don't accept any excuse without repercussions.