... the other Black experience
Rockers & style of dress (harrassment/violence)
I stole this thread from a videogame forum. Its a game where a lot of
the characters look like punks and 90s ravers with machineguns. Anyway
this one guy posts this and I thought it was interesting in this day and
age, where it seems like hipsterism has made all kinds of retro dress
acceptable:
"I know that a lot of people on (this game) make their characters to look like
people of the "punk" variety, but in real life people are often not too
fond of the look.
I know from personal experience that people can target you for something
as small as having a mohawk or liberty
spikes.
In 1997 a punk kid called Brian Deneke
was killed by a jock kid called Dustin Camp, below is an image that
shows a pic of Deneke and briefly summarises some of the main points:
Things that the above image misses out is the fact that there are people (friends of the jock even) who gave testimony in court saying
that it
wasn't accidental, he wanted to kill Deneke and was quoted to say "I'm a Ninja in my Caddy!" while charging at
Deneke, and "I bet he liked that one"
shortly after hitting him.
He also tried to pull off a similar stunt earlier that day in a car
park, he tried to run down a group of associated punks.
Despite all the evidence and witness statements Camp was only given 10
years probation, after being found guilty of "voluntary
manslaughter". For those who don't know what that is:
From wikipedia:
"Voluntary manslaughter is the killing of a human being in which the
offender had no prior intent to kill and acted during "the heat of
passion", under circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to
become emotionally or mentally disturbed. In the Uniform Crime Reports
prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation it is referred to as non
negligent manslaughter."
The fact that this kid had twice tried to injure/kill people, solely for
being punks apparently meant nothing.
The guys lawyer told the jury that all the punks who gave testimony in
the court were lying. He said that Camp was "an
all american, a good Christian, a good Texan, and a football player"
as if that would change the fact that he murdered
a kid in cold blood.
Apparently just over 10 years ago in Amarillo, Texas it was deemed
perfectly acceptable to murder someone, so long as you didn't deem them
normal.
It's not like it only happens in the US either, there was a case even
more recent where a Goth girl and her boyfriend got beaten into comas (both of them), unfortunately
one of them died shortly after, purely because the group (about 10)
deemed them "moshers".
THIS HALLOWEEN in Sheffield there was a
wedding between a gothic couple and the bride got punched in
the face for the way she looked afterwards. Luckily she only had a
black eye and was able to go on her honeymoon.
Pretty much the main point of this thread is that while you guys might
like the alternative look, you probably don't realise how a lot of
people react to it in the "real world". Luckily I'm quite a big guy and
can look after myself, so I rarely get too much trouble but sometimes
all that needs to happen is for someone to step up for someone to avoid
an incident like these.
Do you think that Dustin Camp would have still ran over a punk kid just
for how he looked if one of his friends maybe talked to him about this
stuff before?
Food for thought.
Dustin Camp is currently living free, no more probation
or anything, despite he killed a kid just over 12 years ago AND violated
his probation.""
I haven't heard from kids being harrassed too much now that punk gets lumped in with more trendy subcultures like emo, scene, goth,
etc...but I'm never gonna forget those days. I stood on my own with no
problem, but people used to come up to shows with busted up faces,
broken legs & shit due to mainstream harrassment every year.Gonna be a long time before I flat out just forget all that bullshit. No matter how long trendy people wear mohawks, I remember taking chains upside thier heads over what I had on...you don't forget you and your friends fighting in public over clothes, unless it just happened once or twice.
the characters look like punks and 90s ravers with machineguns. Anyway
this one guy posts this and I thought it was interesting in this day and
age, where it seems like hipsterism has made all kinds of retro dress
acceptable:
"I know that a lot of people on (this game) make their characters to look like
people of the "punk" variety, but in real life people are often not too
fond of the look.
I know from personal experience that people can target you for something
as small as having a mohawk or liberty
spikes.
In 1997 a punk kid called Brian Deneke
was killed by a jock kid called Dustin Camp, below is an image that
shows a pic of Deneke and briefly summarises some of the main points:
Things that the above image misses out is the fact that there are people (friends of the jock even) who gave testimony in court saying
that it
wasn't accidental, he wanted to kill Deneke and was quoted to say "I'm a Ninja in my Caddy!" while charging at
Deneke, and "I bet he liked that one"
shortly after hitting him.
He also tried to pull off a similar stunt earlier that day in a car
park, he tried to run down a group of associated punks.
Despite all the evidence and witness statements Camp was only given 10
years probation, after being found guilty of "voluntary
manslaughter". For those who don't know what that is:
From wikipedia:
"Voluntary manslaughter is the killing of a human being in which the
offender had no prior intent to kill and acted during "the heat of
passion", under circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to
become emotionally or mentally disturbed. In the Uniform Crime Reports
prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation it is referred to as non
negligent manslaughter."
The fact that this kid had twice tried to injure/kill people, solely for
being punks apparently meant nothing.
The guys lawyer told the jury that all the punks who gave testimony in
the court were lying. He said that Camp was "an
all american, a good Christian, a good Texan, and a football player"
as if that would change the fact that he murdered
a kid in cold blood.
Apparently just over 10 years ago in Amarillo, Texas it was deemed
perfectly acceptable to murder someone, so long as you didn't deem them
normal.
It's not like it only happens in the US either, there was a case even
more recent where a Goth girl and her boyfriend got beaten into comas (both of them), unfortunately
one of them died shortly after, purely because the group (about 10)
deemed them "moshers".
THIS HALLOWEEN in Sheffield there was a
wedding between a gothic couple and the bride got punched in
the face for the way she looked afterwards. Luckily she only had a
black eye and was able to go on her honeymoon.
Pretty much the main point of this thread is that while you guys might
like the alternative look, you probably don't realise how a lot of
people react to it in the "real world". Luckily I'm quite a big guy and
can look after myself, so I rarely get too much trouble but sometimes
all that needs to happen is for someone to step up for someone to avoid
an incident like these.
Do you think that Dustin Camp would have still ran over a punk kid just
for how he looked if one of his friends maybe talked to him about this
stuff before?
Food for thought.
Dustin Camp is currently living free, no more probation
or anything, despite he killed a kid just over 12 years ago AND violated
his probation.""
I haven't heard from kids being harrassed too much now that punk gets lumped in with more trendy subcultures like emo, scene, goth,
etc...but I'm never gonna forget those days. I stood on my own with no
problem, but people used to come up to shows with busted up faces,
broken legs & shit due to mainstream harrassment every year.Gonna be a long time before I flat out just forget all that bullshit. No matter how long trendy people wear mohawks, I remember taking chains upside thier heads over what I had on...you don't forget you and your friends fighting in public over clothes, unless it just happened once or twice.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kaminelana Cheatem on -
Nice post, kiddo. I remember hearing about that poor kid shortly after the incident happened. It's beyond an injustice. It can be so hard for any of us who dare to walk against conformity as punk rockers or fly other "freak flags", but for those who live in small towns and rinky-dink backwaters, the intensity is magnified 100 fold. I got into the first wave of punk really young and started to express myself through my clothes in 1978 in junior high back in Chicago. Daring to express myself as a punk in those early years was the first of many gauntlets I had to pass through. Back then, I only got a little bullying/teasing -- I think mostly because the kids didn't know what to make of me (punk rock was still a very, very strange, alien concept to a lot of folks) and because I was one of the biggest girls in school and I stood up for myself. The 80s were hell. The bullying in high school was through the roof...and I think you remember what I said about the "hell rides" and what it was like to be in full punk rock dress and hair styles taking the EL and subway from the south side to the north side on a regular basis. I'm sure some of the folks doing the harassing could've been GDs or other gang bangers...but there were a HELL of a lot of "regular" folks who also started shit and got in our faces about it, as well (and don't get me started on the drunken Sox and Cubs fans). Again, my size helped...but especially the fact that I wouldn't give these judgmental morons the response they were looking for. Looking back on it now, those rides really were like lessons in Zen mindfulness and distraction by reading my books, focusing on the view outside the window or just staring the assholes down in silence (sometimes the harassment would be in short 10+ minute bursts...but, sometimes...they would be marathons of 30 minutes or even longer depending on where the fuckers were going). And this was long before the Walkman craze and being able to pop on lightweight headphones and tune out the world.
When I went off to college in 1985, a part of me really hoped the major bullying/confrontational days would be over, but this wasn't the case. I gravitated towards the awesome campus radio station we had and became a dj there. I remember this one fellow dj, Dave, who was a freshman. He was a thin, quiet, spikey-haired Depeche Mode/Cure fanatic who happened to be gay but was very much in the closet at the time. Back then the jocks (read frat boys) had it out for us freaks at the radio station for any number of reasons -- maybe we never played any REO Speedwagon, Journey or Guns n Roses for them...maybe it was because of the liberal politics we talked about on our shows and weird music we dared to play?? A lot of us had to be mindful of not choosing sidewalks that passed under a frat dorm. Those assholes would regularly attempt to throw all kinds of trash out of their garbage cans or dump buckets of dirty water down on our shaved, spiked or mohawked heads. We complained...The college authorities did nothing. Dave got jumped by some frat boys one night after his show. They roughed him up, stripped off his pants, threatened to rape him and wrote "faggot punk" all over this legs and ass with markers. He complained and actually named the guy who led the attack...the college authorities did nothing -- mainly because the guy happened to be from an insanely wealthy family who, of course, happened to be major donors and multi-generational alumni. Dave recovered and tried to get back to his normal routine, and then one, fine day the frat boys made a big mistake. They decided to chase him down and beat him up for reporting the incident. They chased him all the way from his dorm to the radio station, where he was headed to do his show. But, thankfully, a bunch of us were hanging out at the station, not having a clue as to what was about to burst into the door after Dave. Fists flew, kicks connected, nails scratched skin and it was a brawling mess. But, in the end, the frat boys got the surprise of their narrow-minded lives. A bunch of punk rock freaks kicked their asses BIGTIME. I still have a scar above my right eye from that fight. Everything changed after that day. We reported what happened and the authorities finally woke up, got some balls, and addressed what was going on. No more garbage or buckets of water were thrown. And the frat boys never fucked with Dave, or any of us, again. [Flash forward about 10 years to 1997 and the day I was standing on the EL platform waiting for my train to go to work...and one of the main frat boy instigators of those old days actually approached me...desperate to apologize for what he and his buddies used to do. Truly one of the most bizarre and awkward experiences of my life]
That old saying "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" is a cliche, but it rings so true for those of us who've had to (sometimes physically) battle against the outside world to express ourselves and live the lives we want to live. I was proud to call myself a punk rocker at 10 yrs old....20 yrs old...and I'm still proud at 42. For so many punk is just a trend or passing phase. But for many of us it truly is a way of life that we fought hard for -- and continue to do so. My peers and I still proudly wear our Ramones and Crass, etc. shirts because they still have meaning for US. Fuck Hottopic, Mtv and all other trendy commercialism that tries to package and commodify "punk". It's shallow and never holds up in the long haul. I hope a lot of the young ones I've met on this site and out in regular life hang in there, keep fighting, learning and discovering themselves and make it to this age -- and beyond. -
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Permalink Reply by Calvin Chaos on -
The's a hell of a story Betty...I'm always glad to see nice people stand up for themselves. People think only three types of people exist...assholes, sheep and victims. But if some of the nice people never stood up and beat the assholes down, life would be a whole lot worse for the majority of sheep.
@ Rhonda... you know what it's SO MUCH decreases that sometimes I don't even notice it...because being a punk rocker in Chicago used to be lin the 90s like being in a gang minus respect, money, or even the rights gang bangers have in society. We were just "trash" as far as the general public was concerned and for young BLACK punks especially, the city during the Summer might have well been a watered down version of Mad Max In The City.
Guns pulled on you, people getting put in the E.R., people running you over, cops shooting you point blank in the head with rubber bullets at protests (no not "on"..."IN" the head), people getting bosses to fire you from jobs saying you stole shit, people trying to have you arrested for crimes other people did...my life and my close associates lives' looking back would read on paper more like a low budget action movie. The fact that most people who died overdosed or died of cancer, and the fact that most of us never did any jail time is some kind of a miracle.
I have to admit I still get funny looks, but just like Betty said about being tall...my age insulates me some now. It may well be still pretty hard for the young Black "freaks" on the street...but I'm 32 with a ridiculous 80s mustache. People just think "that man doesn't know any better" to an extent, and go about thier business I guess, lol. -
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