San Japan Chair Dave Henkin Steps Down After Controversial Statements
There may not be any conventions currently happening, but that certainly doesn’t mean that there isn’t any convention news. San Antonio, TX based anime convention San Japan announced yesterday that convention chair Dave Henkin has stepped down and been removed from their leadership.
While Henkin stepping down is overall a good sign, some have argued that it’s still just the first step when it comes to widespread progress in the anime con circuit, and that we have to do more.
I'm glad Dave is stepping down at @SanJapan, but it deserves mentioning that behing the scenes, con runners are busy supporting one anothers bad decisions as PR exercises rather than meaningful reflection and correction.
Same people who defended Kopf stand by Henkin now. pic.twitter.com/aNOeAeJKPE
— Kicking Pigskin Boot Licking Fashies (@ljmontello) June 7, 2020
Pingback: American anime convention Chair resigns after racial blunder
Re: “he defended the convention’s decision to not invite people of color as guests, while simultaneously seemingly defended inviting known sexual predators.”
This is exactly backward. Neither San Japan nor Dave has ever made any type of decision to not invite people of color of guests. San Japan has had POC guests including industry, and including Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans every year since the first 3-day event in 2008 (Maja, Black musical guest). Mega Ran (Raheem Jarbo) appeared as a featured musical guest in both 2009 and 2015. For Maja and Mega Ran in particular, it was never considered relevant that they were Black, only that they were excellent nerdcore performers.
Nor was he defending known sexual predators. The words were referring to two particular persons requested in bulk every year, but who are at the top of a list of people who will never (or never again) be guests at San Japan (it is, in fact, my list, established in 2009).
The wording was incredibly unfortunate, and shouldn’t have accepted the premise of the underlying question, but was actually reflecting a strongly held desire that the attendee base participate by being more diverse in their responses to the annual September guest request thread.
He was definitely defending the reasoning why cons invite sexual predators, even if he wasn’t advocating for it. And even if he misspoke, and that’s not he meant it doesn’t negate the rest of his statement.
He was pretty clearly saying inviting people of color wasn’t financially worth it, and that the reason he didn’t was because fans weren’t demanding it. You can try to spin it however you want, but those are the words he used.