Maybe there is something to the liberal argument about how widespread discrimination continues to be here in twenty-first-century America. Hard as it is to imagine, a comedy festival in New York is discriminating against one group of citizens based on race, gender, and sexual preference by charging its members a separate — and higher — fee to submit their intellectual property.
CBS New York reports:
The upcoming Cinder Block Comedy Festival is currently only accepting submissions from women, non-white applicants and members of the LGBTQ community — a move they say is an effort to curate a diverse lineup of performers.
“Having a token LGBTQ person of color woman, in a sea of white bearded men is not diversity,” the group proclaims in a video on the comedy festival’s website. “As an audience you deserve more than one point of view.”
The early-bird submission, running from Feb. 15 to March 15, also allows applicants to pay a cheaper fee of $19.25.
All other submissions, including ones from what festival organizers call “token bearded white dudes,” run from March 15 through April 15, with applicants paying a $25 submission fee. [Emphasis added]
At the festival’s website, its director, Coree Spencer, explains that its name and inspiration hark back to an accident she had shortly after moving to New York in which she was struck in the foot by a flying cinder block and was unable to walk for weeks. She writes:
To me, it symbolizes a time when you are down, but if you keep kicking ass and stay positive, you’ll never be out. Which is also the nature of comedy.
And also the nature of imagined persecution. From the CBS article:
Spencer said the difference in price was to mimic the gender pay gap between men and women, the Daily Caller reported. The difference in price is 77 percent.
But the gender pay gap has been shown repeatedly to be mythical. Spencer’s discrimination against straight, white men, on the other hand, is very real and — I suspect — very illegal. I hope somebody can and does sue her pants off.
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