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4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!)

Feedback welcome! Here’s the TL;DR list

  1. Listen more to more Black people
  2. Post less – and think before you post
  3. Call in, call out, and/or report anti-Blackness when you see it
  4. Support Black people and Black-led instances and projects

Other suggestions?

Mubelotix ,
@Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

What? I’m never going to take skin color into account on the Internet, that’s unacceptable

kalanggam ,

Just a side note - I would caution about directing non-Black folks to spaces like # BlackMastodon and @ blackfedi, just because those spaces might not be intentioned for non-Black people to look at, directing us there might be encouraging our participation in spaces where it’s not necessarily invited or wanted, etc. Great spaces to direct Black folks to if they’re looking to build a community for themselves on fedi, but I would just say it’s best for non-Black people to not look/participate unless the space is specifically inviting that.

The other thing about the “just listen more to more Black people” discourse is that while it may fix representational issues of whom you’re choosing to listen to, it won’t help if there’s no intention to work on racial biases or challenge one’s own racist behaviors - so I would even implore that type of introspective work. Connected to that would be, even if a white person starts doing these things and working on this practice, that work of interrogating your own biases/behaviors never stops. I feel that white people (especially on fedi) often need reminding that just because you’re doing X, Y, Z, etc. doesn’t mean that you’re done working on your own racism or that your reasons for doing X, Y, Z, etc. are all genuine.

You might also want to mention how having some marginalized identity even as a white person doesn’t excuse you from doing this work - there’s a lot of harm done on fedi by people who use their own oppressed identities as a way to avert accountability for being racist. In your piece, you already mentioned that supporting Black people and fighting anti-Blackness means supporting all Black people - you could make that understanding of how anti-Blackness is interconnected/intertwined with other oppressions more apparent by appealing to white people who might consider themselves staunch advocates for other communities but refuse to confront racism.

This is kind of a mess of different comments but those are just my raw thoughts after reading what you wrote.

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

Good feedback, thanks much. I did check with Black people about directing folks to and the @ blackfedi group – but I should probably be more explicit about not posting their, and your general point about not barging into spaces where you’re not invited is importat and something I should highlight. I’ll add something to the “and tht’s not all” section about working on your biases and behaviors more generally. And also good point about stressing the intersectional aspects more. Greatly appreciated!

itslilith ,
@itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’m not sure posting less is good for the fediverse in the long run, but thinking more is certainly needed! Good list

TheRtRevKaiser ,
@TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org avatar

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.

TheRtRevKaiser ,
@TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org avatar

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.

sabreW4K3 ,
@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al avatar

I was surprised to see the tone of response I saw in here. I always thought of beehaw as an inclusive instance.

TheRtRevKaiser ,
@TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org avatar

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.

alyaza ,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

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 of federation) tend to respond to threads like these in ways that our on-instance users don’t. to combat this 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

Beacon , (edited )

Absolute nonsense. Many of 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.

alyaza ,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

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.

Beacon ,

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.

alyaza ,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

to be clear, your argument here is:

  1. you can’t know the race, sex, gender identity, or other immutable characteristic of every person who posts on Lemmy or another service, so
  2. 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.

Beacon ,
  1. My argument is you can't tell the demographic identity of ANY person who posts on lemmy. Even when they supposedly self-identify.
  2. 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".
alyaza ,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

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, which is the only reason i waded in here to begin with–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.

TheRtRevKaiser ,
@TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org avatar

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.

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

Thanks very much for wading in!

Kwakigra ,

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.

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

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!

UngodlyAudrey ,
@UngodlyAudrey@beehaw.org avatar

Yikes. Well, at least we have something easy to point to when we’re asked why we’re defederated from lemmy.world.

floofloof ,

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.

SweetCitrusBuzz ,
@SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org avatar

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.

Shadow , (edited )
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

Oh look, it’s another old white guy trying to solve a problem he’s not affected by and probably hasn’t personally experienced.

Edit: Sorry that was so negative, but these are all pretty basic things you’re stating. Anyone likely to read this list and action items like this, is likely already staunchly pro black.

Would be good to see some more items that would make people do a double take and say “oh, I do that, I didn’t realize that could be construed as anti black”. Use your experience as a non black person to try and identify ways that a white person might be impacting black people unintentionally.

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

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)”

SweetCitrusBuzz , (edited )
@SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org avatar

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.

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

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)

SweetCitrusBuzz ,
@SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org avatar

Sure! Happy to help. Yeah, it can be difficult to discern.

SweetCitrusBuzz , (edited )
@SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org avatar

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 removing certain followers or blocking/reporting etc.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Other suggestions?

Sure.

  1. Delete all the items on OP’s list.
  2. Don’t harass people for being black or white or anything else.
  3. Don’t actively go looking to start conflicts the way OP is.
verstra ,

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.

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

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?

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar

The internet is mostly Americans. Why do we need to give them more?

Nomad ,

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

thenexusofprivacy OP ,

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.

Beacon ,

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?

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

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.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

It may sound crazy, but there is a precedent:

@Column('boolean', {
	default: false,
	comment: 'Whether the User is a cat.',
})
public isCat: boolean;
adespoton ,

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.

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