Toronto actress Wendy Olunike Adeliyi says she just wanted to see a film at the Kingsway Movie Theatre last week when a dispute erupted over her backpack. Management refused to sell Adeliyi a ticket to a screening of the film Loving – a film about racial discrimination – when she wouldn’t hand over her bag to staff. Rui Pereira, the Kingsway’s owner, would later call the police.
“It was so dehumanizing the way he was acting towards me,” Adeliyi tells NOW Magazine. “He started to put a camera on me to take my picture and he said, ‘I’m calling the police, you’re going to be arrested.’”
Pereira, who uses the Kingsway Movie Theatre’s Facebook page as a sounding board for his belligerence, posted a picture of Adeliyi on its page. Under the image, people have written messages of support for Pereira’s “side of the story.” Many wonder, if the rules state backpacks aren’t allowed in theatre, why couldn’t she just hand it over?
But arguing about the nuances of her interaction with the theatre’s owner puts the desire to sympathize with discriminators, in this case a man who also has a documented history of displaying abusive behavior towards guests, over her testimony as a Black woman in Toronto. But instead, we need to take claims of discrimination seriously.
Adeliyi, an actress who has appeared in Killjoys, popular CBC series Workin’ Moms and not to mention our Love Your Body issue, is also a part-time student. She’s a full-time Black woman.
She doesn’t have the luxury of reflecting on every interaction she has the second she leaves her home until the minute she returns to carefully distinguish for moments that weren’t defined by her racial identity. And likely, no such moment exists.
Living as a racialized woman means navigating the world burdened by the weight of an ascribed identity mired in stereotypes of being unruly, hostile or even “threatening” – the very words Pereira used to describe Adeliyi to police. We are often expected to, like Adeliyi’s bag, leave these experiences at the door of every room we enter and treat every proceeding interaction as if they aren’t informed by our race and gender. Not all interactions are. But we are keenly aware that they might be.
“Being a Black woman, it happens all the time and it’s very subtle,” Adeliyi tells me. “And most people don’t know the subtlety of the racism or they don’t notice it. We [people of colour] notice.”
Adeliyi says she experiences racial discrimination frequently, and she ignored the impulse to remain silent.
“This happens all the time and this time I thought no it’s time for this to stop. I have to acknowledge that this is happening,” she says. “Sometimes we don’t want to get involved in all of it because we don’t want to be labeled argumentative or angry. So we tend to let things pass. But this time I said ‘I’m angry.’ I’m just standing up for myself.”
When people argue that Adeliyi should have just followed the theatre’s rules, the larger issue is missed. When a trip to the theatre can turn into a demoralizing experience of discrimination, we need to support victims and not the rules.
shantalo@nowtoronto.com | @Shantal_Ot
