Feedback welcome! Here’s the TL;DR list
- Listen more to more Black people
- Post less – and think before you post
- Call in, call out, and/or report anti-Blackness when you see it
- Support Black people and Black-led instances and projects
Other suggestions?
We’ve removed some of the comments in this thread for expressing the exact racist sentiments which would warrant this type of post and for arguing in bad faith. This is a perfectly salient conversation to be having in this community so we will be leaving this thread up, but as a reminder, please engage in good faith and be nice. If you don’t want to have conversations about anti-racism in Technology then I suggest you unsubscribe from this community and others on Beehaw.
On a personal note: I would be absolutely thrilled to see more, better discussions of the intersections of areas like race, gender, and sexuality with technology, and fewer arguments about which Linux distro is better.
Absolute nonsense. The comments you removed weren’t saying anything wrong. They were discussing why the OPs draft is unworkable and would have the opposite of the effect they intend.
Other commenters provided feedback that was given in good faith. Those replies were left up. I hope you can see why we might consider jumping straight to comparing the poster to Hitler when you disagree with their well intentioned post about how to better be anti-racist on Fediverse communities to be a bit problematic.
there are difficulties but bluntly: these are only “unworkable” if you’re dismissive (as your comment here is) and/or make absolutely no effort to make them work. you are largely vindicating the need for such a list.
Again, total nonsense. I’ll repeat exactly what i said in one of the comments you deleted, and YOU can tell me why it’s wrong. On lemmy there’s no way to know what race/gender/sexuality a person is. So, you tell me, how is any of this stuff applicable here? If OP was just talking about mastodon, then their title is completely wrong, because their title is specifically saying how to change the fediverse, not how to change mastodon.
to be clear, your argument here is:
- you can’t know the race, sex, gender identity, or other immutable characteristic of every person who posts on Lemmy or another service, so
- you therefore can’t listen to those voices when they identify themselves or clearly mark themselves as such; you can’t pre-emptively think about the nature of what you post and whether it’s harmful to such groups; you can’t report or check harmful behavior from others against those groups; and you can’t support initiatives led by these groups? – these are just entirely non-applicable in this space?
i feel like if you can’t see how obviously ridiculous and farcical this argument is, you’re again the person who vindicates the need for a list like this–however objectionable you find it.
Show me where they say they “…can’t listen to those voices…”. Right, they didn’t say that.
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My argument is you can’t tell the demographic identity of ANY person who posts on lemmy. Even when they supposedly self-identify.
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Again, what you’re saying here is radically different than what OP is saying in the 4 points they posted. There was nothing limiting it to “on discussions about being black”.
Again, what you’re saying here is radically different than what OP is saying in the 4 points they posted. There was nothing limiting it to “on discussions about being black”.
i am demographically one of the people OP is trying to be considerate of (a black nonbinary person)–so i think i have a better idea of what they’re going for here than you. to say nothing of the fact that you’re an off-instance poster who, just to be clear for any observers, analogized the idea of paying attention to any demographic information for any reason to fascist genocides. (“Better yet we can skip that and simply put demographic badges next to people’s username, like a yellow star for Jewish people, a pink triangle for homosexuals, and… hm, that sounds familiar, where has that happened before?”)
anyways this is not interesting to me and i think we’ve established that you are one of the reasons lists like this need to exist–one of the community mods has already given you a ban for your conduct in this thread and the admins are in agreement that this should be extended sitewide.
Thanks very much for wading in, @alyaza@beehaw.org - and thanks again to all the mods for taking action here. Any thread about racism in the fediverse becomes evidence of racism in the fediverse, sigh.
More positively, though, I got some very helpful feedback here from @Kwakigra@beehaw.org, @SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org and @kalanggam@beehaw.org … which is appreciated, and testimony to the fact that clearly a lot of people on Beehaw do get it!
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I was surprised to see the tone of response I saw in here. I always thought of beehaw as an inclusive instance.
I always thought of beehaw as an inclusive instance.
most of the issue is and has always been off-instance users, who for a variety of reasons (some intentional, some because of UI/user experience/just plain unawareness due to the nuances federation) tend to respond to threads like these in ways that our on-instance users don’t. we may or may not switch to a whitelist in the future instead of a blacklist, which is what we have now; if that occurs, it will probably be when we move to Sublinks
switch to a whitelist in the future instead of a blacklist
Phrasing?
there is no phrasing to be redone; it’s the official wording, i am decidedly not a person offended by the whitelist/blacklist terminology, and i think if you can only racialize this verbiage when you hear it that’s weirdness on your part. i’m sure there are some people who have problems with it, but i genuinely don’t know that i’ve ever–as a black person–thought for a second about this outside of white people getting offended on my behalf. certainly not when online spaces struggle with so much actual racism, ignorance, and dismissiveness of those prior two things (as has been on display in this thread).
Seeing how society is consciously trying to move beyond white inherently being good and black inherently being bad, I think it’s perfectly right for someone to ask you to check your verbage. Just switch to allowlist/denylist like the rest of tech has done.
see: “i think if you can only racialize this verbiage when you hear it that’s weirdness on your part.” and again i think this very much people wanting to die on an unimportant hill that they can feel sanctimonious/virtue-signally about and scold people about instead of tackling actual manifestations of racism in the tech field.
i cannot stress this enough: if people want to address something that materially affects black people and other minorities in tech, that should probably start with the omnipresent discriminatory hiring practices and normalized racism–not terminology that requires racialization to be problematic. (and it should probably start with not checking actual black people’s opinions on this subject like they’re the reason any of this is a problem!)
actual black people’s opinions
But I’m black too though and I don’t remember voting for you as our representative. Which is to say, yes, there’s certainly other things we can do to tackle racism, but tackling ground level stuff like inherently painting black as bad and/or negative is part of that. You’re free to disagree, but so would Candace Owens, so being black means nothing when you’re on the wrong side of the issue.
I’ve seen increasing usage of “allowlist/denylist” .
I agree completely. We do work hard to keep things inclusive and nice™ on Beehaw, but Technology is our largest and most active community by a fair margin, and sometimes folks don’t respect the vibe on the instance when they comment - either because they don’t realize what instance the post is on, or because they don’t understand or maybe don’t care to understand the ethos of the instance.
We’ve done some cleanup in the thread, but removals can take time to federate (if they federate at all, which is not guaranteed in my experience. Hopefully the discussion from here out will be more inclusive, but we’ll be keeping a closer eye on the thread in any case.
Thanks very much for wading in!
Suggestion: treat black people like what they are. People. Like any other human.
How do you even suggest we detect black people around here? O.o
No, “color blindness” perpetuates structural racism. Here’s one study looking at that. Seeing Race Again Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines has a lot more, although it’s focused on law and academia.
That doesn’t apply to online forums. There is LITERALLY no way to determine someone’s race from what they write. Unless you’re suggesting we open every discussion by asking what a person’s race is before we start talking to them? Better yet we can skip that and simply put demographic badges next to people’s username, like a yellow star for Jewish people, a pink triangle for homosexuals, and… hm, that sounds familiar, where has that happened before?
Maybe add some kind of flag to ActivityPub that’s set to your skin colour? Each comment could have a colored border corresponding to your skin tone.
It may sound crazy, but there is a precedent:
@Column('boolean', { default: false, comment: 'Whether the User is a cat.', }) public isCat: boolean;
Color blindness perpetuates structural racism. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a goldfish.
There’s the cultural issues, but those aren’t limited to African Americans vs White Americans on the Internet.
Your rules should apply to everyone, including those two groups. The trickier part is dealing with privilege.
Oh look, it’s another old white guy trying to solve a problem he’s not affected by and probably hasn’t personally experienced.
These things are basic, but most white people aren’t doing them – even people who think of themselves as staunchly pro Black. And there are multiple examples in the article of how white people might be impacting Black people unintentionally, for example thisiswomanswerk talks about how hand-wringing messages of symptay many times are themselves microaggresive, and suggestions like “Stop asking Black people for evidence of the anti-Blackness” and “Stop telling Black people that they’ll experience less racism if they change instances (aka servers)”
Other suggestions?
Sure.
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Delete all the items on OP’s list.
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Don’t harass people for being black or white or anything else.
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Don’t actively go looking to start conflicts the way OP is.
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The internet is mostly Americans. Why do we need to give them more?
Other suggestions:
Social problems cannot be solved by technical solutions e.g. “turning the racism off” by filtering or blocking others as a user (run from any instance that takes this approach instead of defederating or blocking at an instance level).
If your instance is shit and gets blocked, don’t complain that it got blocked, either complain to the admins of the shit instance or move instances.
Boost the things they say about their experiences or the experiences of others and boost things they care about because likely it’ll benefit people at the very least by raising awareness.
Thanks, all good points, I’ll try to work them in! The boosting is somewhat tricky, the general guideline is “boost posts tht people want boosted, don’t boost posts that they don’t want boosted”, but it’s not always clear which is which (unless they. have “Please boost” in there somewhere)
Sure! Happy to help. Yeah, it can be difficult to discern.
Another good point is as white people we have a responsibility to figure out if racists can see a boost. In that case we need to figure out a way to stop that harm immediately either by stopping certain followers or blocking/reporting etc.
This is all hard to do because it is hard to determine people’s race on lemmy. Some usernames give it away but most don’t. And I don’t go snooping trough their post history to find that out.
Yeah, the section on “Listen more to Black people” didn’t really cover the challenges on Lemmy. I added this:
If you’re on a platform like Lemmy which doesn’t yet have similar hubs, it’s more challenging. One option is to use other social networks, news aggregators, and search engines to find articles, papers, and videos by Black people – and post them yourself to help others listen.
How’s that?
Per item 2, I don’t think that the overall reduction of posting is good, especially on a platform as starved for content like Lemmy. Why should the overall amount of content drop off if there is room for posts created by people of color to be shown here?
Some of the replies here are a bit disheartening, reflexively dismissing this list, the need for it, and the validity of the experiences behind it.
It’s unsurprising, sadly. Folks are stuck in their bubbles often and don’t see the harm they cause.
They wrap it up in fancy words or reasoning sadly, but the reasons are always the same basically: They don’t want to do the work.
OP, from this reception you may feel at least a little misunderstood. This is because you are being deliberately misunderstood because whiteness protects itself. Notice that no one commenting thus far has responded to you in good faith, but have only been dismissive or even reject the premise that this even could be a problem outright.
Whiteness is interested in terminating any curiosity that challenges white supremacy. Exclusive white habitus is the expectation of those who identify with whiteness, and deviation is actively resisted. If white people didn’t do this there literally wouldn’t be white people and racism would be over. It persists because the people who maintain it are cultured to protect it by any means, especially by rejecting all challenges to it outside of an historical context.
The reason I say all this is because I’ve attempted the same conversation you are attempting now and this has been what’s happened every single time. You can’t have a good faith conversation with anyone answering in bad faith. I think this effort is worthwhile and support it, but I advise not to waste too much time with anyone here who is more interesting in refuting you than the problem of racism.
Thanks much, I very much appreciate the supportive words! And, great analysis, thanks for that as well. Although, if you think things are bad here you should see the lemmy.world thread, where it’s down to -47. And just imagine how much worse it would be if I were Black!
Yikes. Well, at least we have something easy to point to when we’re asked why we’re defederated from lemmy.world.
They are getting a negative response because they are treating black people with a charity mindset. Its disgusting to that op thinks they are so superior that they need to put on kid gloves and bubblewrap the internet for black people. Do you think they want a white person to listen to them just because of their race?
I’m not sure posting less is good for the fediverse in the long run, but thinking more is certainly needed! Good list
I read that point as posting less when it comes to issues of race and racism specifically, but it’s possible I’m reading that into it. If so, it could be a little clearer.
Yeah that makes total sense, I agree
- Ad. 1. I don’t care what’s your skin color as it doesn’t matter when we discuss things.
- Ad. 2. Literally makes zero sense. If something is post-worthy, why would anyone not post it just because of being white?
- Ad. 3. I do report racism no matter who’s the victim.
- Ad. 4. I don’t care who’s behind project if it’s good and worth supporting.
Other suggestion: Stop trying to force others to comply with your “solutions” to problems that only exist inside your mind and what’s important don’t even apply to media that doesn’t let you see or know the other person. I know nothing about 99,9% of people on Lemmy hence let me judge them and their projects by what they write and not by who they are “in real life”. It’s almost like you are trying to make people ashamed for that they were born white.
Hi Tomato - a lot of what you’re saying here has already been addressed elsewhere in the thread. The OP isn’t just addressing Lemmy, but other Fediverse services like Mastodon as well. He also notes in the article several people who been addressing ways in which Fediverse culture has been toxic to black users. These aren’t imagined problems, they exist in a lot of places off of and on Lemmy, and providing suggestions to make these sites better for black users is a good thing, not something to get defensive about. This post isn’t accusing you personally of anything, but if you feel challenged by it then it might be a good opportunity for you to interrogate those feelings.
Also, others have addressed your comments about not seeing other’s race online, etc, but I think it’s worth taking a step back and pausing. If people of color say they experience racism online, even though you don’t notice what race other people are, do you think it’s possible that there may be systemic problems or unconscious biases that might cause those folks to experience racism even when it is unintended? Those are the kinds of problems that aren’t solved by saying “I don’t say racist things to people and I don’t see color”. They’re problems that are built into our society just by the fact that we were all born and raised in an imperfect culture.
Nobody is accusing anyone of anything here, and nobody is trying to make anyone feel ashamed of who they are. But we can all benefit from stopping, thinking about the ways that we interact with others, and taking the time to try and be sure that we aren’t acting in ways that harm others even if that isn’t our intent or we weren’t aware of the harm in the first place.
Also, tomato, “people are trying to make you ashamed of being white” is a pretty common white supremacist dogwhistle. I’m sure that’s not how you intended it, but I think you’d be better served avoiding it in the future.
I just want to say that @TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org did a great job explaining some of the issues with your reply, but there’s a few things that I want to focus on in your reply.
- It’s easy to make the claim that you don’t care about skin color, but it simply doesn’t pan out. Here’s a fairly long but comprehensive review on implicit bias training, which talks a bit about the prevalence and need for the training in the first place. In short, the literature proves that everyone has implicit biases - it’s simply how our brains work. While some issues suffer from stronger biases than others, and the bias varies from person to person, it’s always there.
- The idea of “not seeing” race may be an appealing one to state, but it’s an over-correction. Try telling someone in a wheelchair that you “don’t see disability” and see how they react. They’re not going to be happy. You absolutely see their identity. What you mean to say is that their identity doesn’t factor into your decision, which as I just stated in the last point is objectively incorrect. At best we can work to minimize how one’s identity shapes our decisions.
- Racism can only have certain victims. Racism is the interaction between prejudice and power. The reason it’s defined like this is the same reason we talk about the paradox of tolerance. Punching a Nazi is technically violence, but there’s a difference between hateful violence and defensive violence. While you can classify people being prejudiced against white folks as racism, there’s a similar distinction between prejudice and racism that applies here. To be clear, I do want you to be reporting any kind of prejudice that occurs on Beehaw, but we need to define and describe the differences because the inclusion of power and minority status are important here.
- Just because you don’t think something is a problem doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. Someone who has a different identity than you, or who spends time in spaces you don’t is sharing something. Telling them they are wrong or that they are imagining things is not a nice thing to do - if you don’t think it’s an issue, then don’t reply. If you do think it’s an issue, frame it differently - rather than accusing them of trying to shame white people, how about simply framing things through your own eyes. Don’t say that they are trying to shame people, instead say this is making you feel ashamed or angry.
Thanks much for the detailed response! And thanks @TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org for the detailed response as well.
The linked article focuses on Mastodon. I’d be interested to hear more about how this relates to Lemmy in your experience.
Your post comes off so racist. I can’t understand why you would think to treat black people so different. If you want the fediverse to be welcoming to black people be friendly and don’t tolerate racism. You don’t have to play rap music and apologize for slavery to make them feel welcome.
You don’t have to play rap music and apologize for slavery to make them feel welcome.
i’ll preserve this quote for people who disagree that the OP’s post is needed, or who think there isn’t racism on the Fediverse. it’s insane how many of you are demonstrating the point.
- Provide evidence of toxicity toward black people in the Fediverse
