The Offices Ain't Your Friends

Runnels' now-deleted Instagram post is more illuminating in to how she sees herself now than anything else
Photo Credit: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

You can't have not noticed the country burning around you if you live in America. Even if you don't live here, it's hard not to stand at a distance and watch the world's self-appointed cultural, military, and political epicenter reap yet again whirlwind after sowing the breeze of racism and unaccountability. The voices that need to be heard are those of the people who continually face the butt end of the rifle crashing at them at best, but they are often drowned out by the media amplifying the voices of the president, WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump, and other violent advocates for the current order. A large portion of people who are sympathetic to the plight of Black people taking the brunt of all police brutality cry out for brands and celebrities to comment, no matter how insipidly they have commented on situations such as these in the past. Someone with more authority to speak on the plight of the marginalized said it better, that under no circumstances are these high-profile entities required to talk, but the ones who do it well are welcomed voices. Those voices are generally few and far between.

Instead, you get celebrity-level statements that say nothing at best, like Tiger Woods, or that can't read the room or try to play both sides of their fanbase to try and "both sides" it with their statements like the New York Islanders. Whether or not you think there are two sides to the issue, the one side indisputably has bad actors, and saying that they have good actors too, sometimes in bold defiance of people begging you to consider that their lives matter, ignores a whole heaping amount of pain on that other side. Maybe don't do that. Another thing you probably shouldn't do is react on social media that you're feeling so much pressure to have a reaction and that it's literally killing you inside. It's one thing to do that if you're an actor or, germane to this post, a wrestler. It's another when you're part of the office. I have sympathy for Brandi Runnels, I really do. Despite her position now, she's faced a fuckton of racism in her life that she still faces despite being an executive in a company for more than a year.

The dirty secret is that when a person from a marginalized identity ascends into a level of immense power or wealth, they tend to identify with class more than they do with race or whatever that marginalized identity is. Peter Thiel would raid a Pride parade for the youngest and fullest-of-life people from whose bodies he can drain blood to keep him young in a second before he would deign himself to march in it himself anymore. Ben Carson gas up Donald Trump's personal bulldozer if he wanted to level a section of majority-Black public housing. Runnels is the same, just like her "just one of the boys" husband Cody who suddenly shot to the right of Hulk Hogan when it came to talkin' about his locker room organizing into a union. Runnels is not immune from sinking into that quicksand herself as she showed on Instagram this past weekend.

In a post she's since deleted, she complained about having people mad at her without speaking out, all while, you guessed it, not speaking out:

Screenshot courtesy of @ThatsSoColby_

Right there, that post is a Greenland-sized OOF. It's not so much that me, a White slob from the East Coast can critique the Black experience ever, as much as it's someone in high management position not talking about the Black experience, but talking about the "woke" executive experience getting backlash from people who expected her to speak out for whatever reason. It's not a reaction from someone in a place of great power to have, especially when the company for whom she's an executive has had a questionable track record pushing Black wrestlers while tooting a horn of diversity and inclusion. It's not to say All Elite Wrestling hasn't pushed non-white wrestlers, but they've also lagged even behind WWE during its first year in terms of wrestlers who are Black specifically.

The question people ask is whether corporate entities do "enough" to promote diversity, but framing it in such a way always gives them a weasel quota they can fill and then preen for a medal like they just cured polio. The question that should be asked of them is "how are they making their product a welcoming space for every fan and one that shows a dedication to inclusion?" Sometimes, Runnels, as Brandi Rhodes, can be the only Black person to appear on a show. Scorpio Sky and Private Party have been sporadic in appearance, the former especially after SCU lost the Tag Team Championships, and they haven't even scratched the surface of what they have with Sonny Kiss. It has left more than a few Black fans out in the cold. Others have felt welcomed by AEW, yes. But much like with WWE, you can point to all the times they laid laurels at the feet of Black wrestlers but do they make an effort to include? The answers you'll get from Black fans, who, I might add, are not a monolith, will be varied, but there will be a good amount of them who would answer negatively.

So when "her people" reach out to her for a reaction to the current real-life climate, they're doing so because they see her as a Black woman and not a member of an elite class. It's more than fair to ask of her, the same way one might ask of Oprah Winfrey or Michelle Obama, how she sees herself. The fact that AEW has lagged enough on hiring Black wrestlers to the point where outspoken wrestler AJ Gray noted it on Twitter:

How u gonna preach diversity yet you won’t hire black wrestlers who are equally talented if not more talente.... AND NOW You won’t stand up for black peoples human rights?

I’m all the way good on goin to Jacksonville.....

— Aj Gray (@RichHomieJuice) May 30, 2020

...and how Runnels reacted on Instagram, and I think you have a good idea of how she sees herself. That Cody was comfortable enough to admit he was a Trump supporter before the backlash caused him to back off, and how he has started adopting majorly pro-capital positions now that he's part of management (capital's consigliere class) should tell you how he sees himself, not as one of the boys for sure.

The front offices of any pro wrestling company are not here to be your friends. They want to take your money. The higher up you go, the truer it is. There are indie promoters who are cool, and while they're still promoting a product, they get it on some level. Once you get above the local promotions and get into national touring places on the level of Game Changer Wrestling or bigger, there should be no illusion what the promoter, the booker, or any member of an office bigger than like two people thinks about you, and it's probably not good. Much like people have realized that Vince McMahon, Paul Levesque, Kevin Dunn, Jerry McDevitt, and Stephanie McMahon are only in it for the money, they have to realize that just because the Runnels family plays nice on television and that Tony Khan owns a football team or the Young Bucks too-sweeted them at a wrestling show that now, they aren't your friends. The degree that some AEW fans defend a corporation funded by a family that donated seven figures to Trump (they later rescinded support, but the damage had already been done) is delusional to say the least.

AEW doesn't peddle woke wrestling anymore than any other company. The fact that they're not in bed with the Saudi Royal Family or that they're not in bed explicitly with Trump at this point doesn't make them good, it makes them less bad. The main difference between the two companies at this point is one puts out three good hours of wrestling content out of the three they present a week on average, and the other maybe puts out three good hours out of the eight hours they pump out. The blood on AEW's hands may not be as red or prevalent, but it's still there. Less abstractly said, I will grant saying AEW is "better" socially than WWE is a true statement, but honestly, latching onto them as a company that isn't funded by immoral wealth backing decisions like having wrestlers perform during a pandemic as a moral good is weird to put it kindly.

The truth is that if you can find your wrestling on national television with big box advertising, you're better off not trying to assign some kind of moral good. It, like everything else you do that isn't work or sleep or rest, is consumption. Under capitalism, moral consumption is impossible given the ways in which capital exploits labor EVERYWHERE. Real activism rarely depends on not consuming something, but it never depends on actual consumption, ever. Real activism depends on organization and action, putting pressure on people like the Runnelses, not claiming that watching their show makes you better than someone who watches the Big Trump Fundraiser. When the dust settles, all of what encompasses wrestling is just another way to dull the pain of life. As with Wendy's blood tomatoes vs. Chik-fil-A's donations to homophobic groups or other summary battles of malfeasance between companies doing their worst to gain an extra buck, wrestling becomes an easier thing to allow as an analgesic when you don't put it on some pedestal.

Wrestlers themselves speaking out oftentimes are more eloquent and worth your time to listen to. However, a lived experience from someone like Big E, who still feels a relative struggle compared to anyone who works in WWE's front office, is going to be far more edifying and illuminating than anything any executive in any wrestling office will say, no matter their demographic. Most material analysis of strife in the world is going to boil down to labor, the proletariat and the peasantry, against capital and their goons in management. When more people, not just wrestling fans, learn this is the key to learning true intersectionality, the sooner everyone will be better off.