DJ Jazzy Jeff, Rationality, and the Myth of Corporate Decision-Making

It appears fairly unanimous among the bland white oracles of Kansas City that the P&L District must be in the clear on this whole DJ Jazzy Jeff situation. Indeed, the Baron of Bland, Mike Hendricks, has decided from his Johnson County perspective, that there's not a racial narrative to be seen here. Move along, folks.

There are four main points he makes, and I'll address them in the order he makes them.

1. Nobody is stupid enough to hire a hip hop performer and not expect a hip hop performance, so DJ Jazzy Jeff's claim that the nature of his music is what caused the shut-down is baseless. This is certainly the spin that most defenders of "the way things are" have accepted. The unstated assumption, however, is that the corporation is rational, while the black performer is not. Nobody questions that DJ Jazzy Jeff would be perfectly happy to blow out a sound system and ruin his own reputation among booking agents, because, well, he's just a stupid black rapper. "They" do that kind of thing, don't they? But a corporation would never have one division (security, perhaps) disagree with a decision of another division (booking, perhaps). Anyone who has ever worked in a corporation knows that speaking of Cordish as though it is one rational decision-maker is insane. It is entirely plausible that the person who booked DJ Jazzy Jeff did so enthusiastically, while the security patrol on duty that night was horrified at the look and sound of the performance. It's also implausible to me (though I am no sound engineer) that Cordish would blow my tax dollars on a sound system that doesn't have some sort of system to prevent such overloads.

2. The black dude is being childish because he couldn't have everything his way. From his privileged suburban perspective, Mike Hendricks is perfectly willing to assume that Cordish is a model of effective decision-making, but he cannot conceive that the black people involved are telling the truth. Instead, it seems way easier to conclude that they were being immature and that DJ Jazzy Jeff was acting out his "huge ego". Notice that the guy who has managed to build a career catering to mostly white venue-owners is the irrational one with his ego out of joint, not some rent-a-cop working Saturday nights. You need to put your faith in someone, and it's clear that Hendricks, like much of the rest of the opinion-makers, prefers a paler, more corporate brand of truth.

3. "This being Kansas City, some are trying to turn this into a racial thing. . . . So until there's more proof to say there was anything more to this than a dispute over the sound system, everyone needs to calm down." Yes, friends, that is a direct quote. "Some" people want to turn stuff into a racial thing. This may be the most infuriating line of Hendricks' nonsense, but it underlies the thought-process of all of us who want to tuck this incident safely into a non-racial category. If there's not absolute proof that there was racism involved, we give the white, corporate people the benefit of the doubt and instead accuse those crazy black people of being bomb-throwing, over-reacting race-baiters.

Sorry, but a hip-hop concert at the P&L District is "a racial thing", whether anything happened or not. The very fact of DJ Jazzy Jeff playing on Cordish turf has more racial angles than a geometry book, and for Hendricks to try to strip this incident of its racial overtones is the height of blindness brought on by white privilege. Shame on him and on any person who wants to act like it is black people trying to make this into a racial thing. It is a racial thing, through and through. Even if the shut-down was motivated by absolutely pure motives, this was a "racial thing" from the git-go.

4. Blacks don't matter as much as greens. Fortunately, this is not a direct quotation, but Hendricks flat-out argues that potential money is more important than potential racism. Read it again for yourself, just in case you missed it:

It's not funny, though. Kansas City needs the Power & Light District to succeed.

So until there's more proof to say there was anything more to this than a dispute over the sound system, everyone needs to calm down.

Mike Hendricks is telling people to "calm down" about a potential tax-payer funded incident of racism because we need Cordish to make more money. He fails to state clearly what level of potential profitability we need to see at the P&L District before we should again care about racism in our community, but I'm sure he'll let us know when they reach it. Until then, calm down about racism, okay?