A Black Montreal theatre performer has filed a lawsuit towards an anti-racism activist who he says falsely related him with racism towards Black individuals.
Franck Sylvestre agues within the swimsuit filed on the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday that Alain Babineau made unreasonable claims about a puppet in a theatre piece Sylvestre created for youngsters, damaging his profession.
Babineau “unreasonably related the plaintiff and his puppet with racism, with the submission of Black individuals to white individuals and even white supremacism and the dehumanization of Black individuals,” the lawsuit reads. The criticism was an assault on Sylvestre’s fame, it provides, and an try “to reveal him to the hatred and contempt of the general public typically and the Black neighborhood particularly.”
At a information convention final February, Babineau, the racial profiling and public security director at civil rights group The Pink Coalition, known as for performances of the theatre piece to be cancelled, arguing that the puppet was an instance of anti-Black racism and harking back to blackface minstrel reveals — performances meant to mock Black individuals.
In a sequence of posts later that day on the X platform, then generally known as Twitter, Babineau instructed the play was a “drop of systemic racism” and made feedback that the lawsuit alleges instructed Sylvestre was a “sellout” within the service of white individuals.
Sylvestre’s lawyer, Guillaume Rousseau mentioned the puppet relies on his consumer’s personal look and that there’s nothing racist concerning the present.
He mentioned it’s not defamatory to explain precise racist feedback as racist, however associating “somebody who’s clearly not racist, with a present that’s clearly not racist” with racism is defamatory.
“It’s a problem of freedom of inventive expression,” Rousseau mentioned in an interview Wednesday. “If each illustration of a Black person who doesn’t please Mr. Babineau and others turns into blackface, turns into the topic of requires censorship, that limits my consumer’s freedom of inventive expression and, doubtlessly, that of different artists.”
Rousseau mentioned performances of the present, “L’incroyable secret de barbe noire” — French for The Unimaginable Secret of Blackbeard — had been cancelled due to the racism allegations, and whereas one efficiency in a Montreal suburb final 12 months was allowed to go forward, it was faraway from the municipality’s official programming for Black Historical past Month.
“That affected him loads,” Rousseau mentioned. “He’s pleased with being a Black artist, he’s proud to speak about Martinique, about his origins and the puppet in query is a little bit of a hero, so for him it’s very optimistic, it’s for dwelling collectively, and to see it interpreted in an unreasonable method, as if it was racist, that affected him particularly.”
The lawsuit, which seeks $26,600 in damages, additionally alleges that Sylvestre’s profession as a youngsters’s performer has been threatened as a result of he’s now unfairly seen as “controversial” and presenters received’t guide him.
In an announcement Wednesday, The Pink Coalition maintained that the puppet’s look is racist and will offend individuals.
“Anti-Black imageries have traditionally stereotyped Black individuals as grotesque, dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and overly cheerful,” the group wrote within the assertion attributed to its board of administrators. “The Pink Coalition’s authorized group is ready to vigorously defend towards the lawsuit, which they deem frivolous.”
Babineau declined to touch upon the swimsuit earlier on Wednesday.
In response to a September stop and desist letter from Sylvestre’s lawyer — which made comparable allegations to the lawsuit — Babineau mentioned he stood by his feedback and wrote that if Sylvestre took authorized motion towards him, he would contest it.
“I’ll proceed to battle with willpower for all causes that I believe are simply, together with the battle towards anti-Black racism in Canada,” he wrote on the time.
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