Rapper Tiny Jag pulled out of the AfroFuture music festival in Detroit in protest at their policy of charging white people double the price for tickets.
Until Sunday evening, the festival was actively charging white people double the price of minorities, a system they argued would guarantee marginalized groups were given “equitable chance at enjoying events in their own community.”
This system led the rapper Tiny Jag, who is mixed race and whose real name is Jillian Graham, to pull out the event, denouncing the ticketing structure as “non-progressive” and motivated by “spite.”
“I was immediately enraged just because I am biracial. I have family members that would have, under those circumstances, been subjected to something that I would not ever want them to be in … especially not because of anything that I have going on,” Tiny Jag told the Detroit Metro Times.
“A lot of the songs that I perform are from my first project called Polly — that is my grandmother’s name,” she continued. “How do you want me to come to a performance and perform these songs off a mixtape that is titled after this white woman that you would have charged double to get in here? Like, it’s just outrageous from so many different angles.”
Graham also demanded that her name be removed from all the event’s promotional material.
“It’s non-progressive and it’s not solution-focused in my eyes,” she contended. “It seems almost like it has spite, and unfortunately with spite comes hate, and that’s just not obviously going to be a good direction for us to go if we’re looking for positive change.
On Sunday evening, AfroFuture announced that they had removed their racial pricing structure after receiving “threats from white supremacists,” as well as demands from ticketing company Eventbrite that they would remove events that actively discriminate on grounds of race. However, organizers said they would still ask white attendees to make an additional donation.
“For the safety of our community, family, elders who received threats from white supremacists, & youth who were subjected to seeing racist comments on our IG pg, Afrofuture Fest has changed our ticketing model to $20 General Admission & suggested donation for nonPOC on Eventbrite,” the group said.
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