This past weekend, I attended CONvergence at the Minneapolis Downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel. This will be my sixth year attending the con, and I always have a fun time hanging out with friends, wandering around in cosplay, and taking lots of pictures. Whenever I attend CONvergence, I try to choose a couple of panels that pique my interest. This is what inspired me to write this post.

My friend’s husband and I sat down for a panel discussion about antagonists we sympathize with in pop culture. The white panelists dived into discussing Killmonger from Black Panther which led to a discussion about race. It’s not that white people can’t talk about race, but it looks bad especially when there are no POCs (people of color) on the panel. A couple of audience members chimed in and their points were thought-provoking. The fact is being white eliminates us from understanding racial bias since it’s something we don’t experience. This racial bias contributes to Killmonger’s story. Diversity among panelists would have avoided this issue entirely.

Besides the discussion of race, there was another instance in the panel that left me feeling irritated. A female panelist was discussing a book series she liked, but had given a content warning for the sexual assault in the book. The discussion went as follows:

Female Panelist: This is a book series I really enjoy and the female villain is put through tremendous trauma, so I’d like to give a content warning regarding sexual assault to any female audience members.

Male Moderator: I didn’t think the book was that bad.

What rubbed me the wrong way was it felt dismissive of her experience. Sexual assault is a topic I am sensitive to, so I appreciate content warnings ahead of time. I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt to this panelist because he did seem to backtrack after she made a response back to him.

Overall I had a great experience at CONvergence, but this panel left a bad taste in my mouth. If you happen to be on a panel where the panelists are one-dimensional, I would involve more audience participation to retain an adequate discussion. Let me know in the comments section if you have ever had an experience like this with attending a panel at a convention, I’d like to hear about it.