Under the Influence: New York Hardcore

I very much want to know the attitudes of all those white men toward women and non-whites.

But, you're right. Hard core and punk were boys clubs, historically speaking. It took whole separate scenes (riot grrrl, among others) to push those boundaries out to include more diversity. There are now reasonably large feminist hard core and punk scenes, as well as lots of off-shoots. I just caught Sleater-Kinney live a few days ago; they're, I guess they might be called, second generation feminist punks, and they had a huge sold out crowd.

Punk and hard core were also occasionally ambiguous about LGBTQ folks, even though several quite important bands had gay members (Husker Du, The Dicks, Big Boys, etc.) or were vocally supportive of gay rights. Bad Brains, featured in this video, and among the best loved hard core bands in history, had a well-known falling out with MDC over some hateful comments H.R. (singer of Bad Brains) made about Randy "Biscuit" Turner from Big Boys. "Queercore" is now a thing that has a name, and being gay isn't a thing to keep secret in the modern punk and hard core world. I don't know if H.R. is still a homophobic asshole. Some people grow out of that stuff.

I think we can reasonably say that working and middle class white dudes aren't renowned for being inclusive, but some try harder than others. And, of course, one could also argue that part of the reason there are few women or people of color is because this particular art form was born of a very specific experience...and that experience is that of a bunch of young, angry, working and middle class white dudes. Early hip hop scene films feature predominantly young, angry, poor, black dudes, probably for similar reasons.

That said, there are racist/sexist/homophobic hard core bands. There are hard core bands that actively promote white supremacy, various bigoted "Christian" values, etc. The bands featured in this video aren't really among them, however. Even the "skinhead" bands in the film, like Agnostic Front and the Cro-Mags, are of the "non-racist" breed...maybe even anti-racist. I'm not deeply familiar with any of them, so I wouldn't want to make too many sweeping pronouncements about how they feel about racism/sexism/homophobia (except the Bad Brains thing, because that story includes one of my favorite bands/artists as the target of their homophobia, so I'm familiar with that story).

http://fredbenenson.com/2014/01/19/digital-forensics-rancid-...

I want as many people to have access to the music as possible, but being underground is kind of a requirement for hardcore music. You don't want it to be an affectation or exclusionary, but hardcore has always been about not fitting in and being on the outside of quotidian society.