The Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Adrian Schrinner, had words for Azealia Banks after she canceled her performance and said his city was “racist.”
As reported by AllHipHop.com, Banks went on a crazy rant about her Tuesday, Dec. 13 show at The Tivoli, a venue in Brisbane. She said on her social media, she didn’t want to go out at the concert because someone threw something at her on stage and the venue did not prohibit anything that could be considered a projectile being brought into the place.
She called her time in the city “the most racist f##king demoralizing experience,” and said she was “too Black and beautiful to have a bunch of white people in [her] face playing with me over their weak ass currency.”
“I’m so sorry you guys – actually I’m not sorry – but listen last time I was in Brisbane and y’all threw s### on the stage and damn near almost f###### hit me in the face with a f###### bottle of soda or whatever that s### was,” she said in a video.
“That was the most racist, most demoralizing experience of my f###### life and right now I’m on a really good track. Brisbane, y’all are just going to have to take the L and smoke it,” she said.
Schrinner also took to social media and posted his thoughts on her comments, according to the Star Observer.
“A few stupid ratbags in a mosh pit aren’t representative of our proud multicultural city, where around 1 in 3 residents were born overseas,” Schrinner captioned on Instagram.
“I encourage anyone who has been let down by Azealia’s selfish snub to instead support some of Brisbane’s incredible local acts.”
Many Aussies voiced their opinion on what was called a “selfish snub” by the African American artist.
One wrote on Bank’s Instagram under her video, “Tell us all again why [you] came back if [you] hate Australia so much for something that happened years ago? And please explain how throwing a bottle is racist?”
“People were throwing stuff cause your music’s sh*t and they wanted you off stage,” another wrote.
“No racism down under,” one more person commented. “Just people who don’t like sh*t music.”
The last person is wrong.
Just recently, according to an article called “The Darkness Down Under,” the country has been in the news about its treatment of indigenous people, who despite making up only “3.2 percent of Australia’s total population, yet they account for almost 30 percent of the country’s prison population.” Sounds pretty familiar, huh?
The article, published in the Daily Beast, states, “[The] history of Australia’s colonization—Aboriginal lands were taken without treaty, consent, or compensation—and the protracted struggle for equality and justice, it’s not surprising that First Nations people view police with deep fear and suspicion.”
Adding, “For more than 150 years, it was police and their trackers (both black and white) who were responsible for many of the massacres of Aboriginal people. It was governments and their police who often turned a blind eye to the vigilantes who ‘cleared’ the country of its rightful owners. It was police who took children from their families and facilitated their ‘re-education’ in state and religious institutions.”
Banks might be bratty, but statistics show she might not be wrong about the prejudice in the continent country.