JOHANNESBURG – Singer Solange Knowles on the weekend took to her blog to open up discussion on how black people are received in mostly ‘white spaces’ in relation to an incident at a concert in which four women threw a lime at her.
Solange, who was with her son and husband, were outnumbered by the majority of white concert goers attending the event. She was told to “sit down” by a few older white women, but when she retorted back that she was dancing at a rock concert, the women continued to harass her by demanding that she sit down.
After Solange refused to cooperate and ignored the women, stating on Twitter “Now back to me & my husband’s favorite song “Autobahn” ….& not giving a f–k about you lovely ladies so mad this lil’ black girl having fun,” they threw something slimy at her back.
She later took to Twitter to explain why black girls/women are so angry.
While many on Twitter pointed out that she lives Louisiana, with its notoriously prevalent racism and white entitlement, she kindly responded “but I say I live in a city w THE most incredible, beautiful black. folk”. Others speculated she may have been told to sit down because she’s famous and feared she was pulling attention from the main act.
She hit back at her followers and their justifications, saying there are many beautiful black people in her city, highlighting that black people shouldn’t feel obligated to make white people comfortable in public spaces.
It is still unclear about what motivated the harassment. She ended her blog post saying: “After you think it all over, you know that the biggest payback you could ever had (after, go figure, they then decided they wanted to stand up and dance to songs they liked) was dancing right in front of them with my hair swinging from left to right, my beautiful black son and husband, and our dear friend Rasheed jamming the hell out with the rhythm our ancestors blessed upon us saying…We belong. We belong. We belong. We built this.”
