Posted in reply to the post by taishon:
During the Oct 12th Farmer's market there was a Pomo dance troup performing. One of my former students was one of the lead dancers. When I talked to her about the event she related to me that the community was very rude to the dancers and I promised to relay the message to this board. Keep in mind a couple of things;
1. The dancers are very decent kids and are, generally, not judgemental or quick to anger.
2. The dance that they performed is a sacred dance and has a strong spiritual significance to the Pomo community. They do the dances to spread awareness of their culture and values and art. The dancers work very hard at what they do.
Here is the actions that she related to me:
1. When the dancers formed a circle (considered to be a sacred circle) the audience was asked, politely, to go around the circle..they were asked this multiple times and were ignored by almost everyone. One person, a vendor, later on apologized for ignoring their polite requests.
2. People we touching and grabbing the costumes without permission..again the costumes have strong spiritual significance.
3. People were posing and snapping pictures of themselves with the dancers without permission.
4. When the pomos dancers objected they received a lot rude comments from people.
To maker an analogy imagine if someone were to walk up a choir at Western church, while they were singing and grab their gowns, snap selfies in front of them, walk in front of them etc.
My former student did say that they were treated much better last year.
While it is true that I wasn't present (and probably a good thing since I would have reacted stronger and more blunt then the dancers) I trust my former student's account. She has always been sweet, honest, sensitive, compassionate, and slow to anger.
I think the West County community (and particular) likes like play at being diverse and culturally sensitive while, beneath the surface, we are a mainly affluent, white culture with not much real world diversity or awareness ( we probably have the highest percent of white people of any So Co municipality.
I am sure I will receive the normal rude, insulting 'troll' responses. I hope that, within the typical noise there will be a strong signal of maturity and respectful responses.
Sal