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   lj·rk (ljrk@todon.eu)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 03:09:06 JST lj·rk

   • mekka okereke :verified:
   • carl marks
   • Semitones

   @semitones @tillshadeisgone @mekkaokereke That's something specific to Mastodon but not AP in general, I'd say. Specifically, many queer instances use a Misskey fork that have Quote-Posts for that reason (amongst others).

   What I'm saying is: I totally agree that the "standard" Mastodon on a somewhat "apolitical" instance is bad for the BIPoC community... as it is for *any* discriminated-against group indeed. But the beauty of the Fedi is that we can build our community and do *not* need to depend on 3rd party white cis savior-type dudes to help us.

   (Side note: A lot of resistance against QP came from the trans community because we've seen QP weaponized for targeted harassment. Mastodon often prioritizes this kind of safety over features. A proposed solution was to add a permission-system for QP. But I think this went no-where for Mastodon itself.)

   • Embed this notice
     mekka okereke :verified: (mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 03:09:05 JST mekka okereke :verified:

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     Your confusion is understandable! And thank you for sticking with it to try to understand, and for being brave enough to ask these questions. 👍🏿

     The part that is not connecting, for you, and for many people, is that other marginalized identities are not like being Black. Racism is worse, and more pervasive. People often use their other marginalized identities as a shield, from behind which they can be even more racist than non marginalized people. 🤯

     1/N

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     mekka okereke :verified: (mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 03:12:46 JST mekka okereke :verified:

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     I need folks to pay attention to what I said, because this is a point that is easy to confuse or get wrong:

     * White women are *not* more racist than white men
     * Trans people are *not* more racist than cis people

     That's not what's going on.

     But when a white woman is racist, or a trans person is racist, most people with privilege do not know how to even address that, without being accused of misogyny or transphobia.

     So there is no defense. 😮

     1/N

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     mekka okereke :verified: (mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 03:15:06 JST mekka okereke :verified:

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     And there is a reflexive desire in people that haven't fully unpacked their racism, to jump to the defense of white women, and give them the benefit of the doubt in every situation.

     This is the inverse of the racism, that jumps to attack black men, and never give them the benefit of the doubt. They're both sides of the same racism coin.

     3/N

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     mekka okereke :verified: (mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 03:19:18 JST mekka okereke :verified:

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     It's really easy to see when you unfairly accused a Black man of something. It's very hard to see when you make excuses for racist white women🙂🙃

     As I've said on here many times, defending Black women or calling out racism from white women, triggers more aggressive pushback than anything I say.

     More pushback than from cops and GOP politicians who follow me from their puppet accounts. More than from literal *self-described white nationalists*. Not joking.

     4/N

     Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     mekka okereke :verified: (mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 03:24:30 JST mekka okereke :verified:

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     So here's what Black people have been trying to say for years, that triggers so much push back from a lot of Mastodon:

     A lot of the white trans women that built community in the early Fediverse, were super racist. A lot of the white trans women still on the Fediverse today, are super racist. They are *not* more racist than the white cis men on the Fediverse. But people who are racist and trans on the Fediverse, too often get a free pass for their nonsense.

   • Embed this notice
     Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD (ericfielding@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 04:03:45 JST Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @mekkaokereke @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone I am in all the privileged groups, but I am trying to understand what other people experience. One thing that I notice is that there are fewer Black Americans in my feed than their proportion of the population. The Fediverse is less dominated by people in the USA than the old Twitter was, with more people from Europe, and Europe has a smaller Black population, so that might be part of it.

     Adrianna Tan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     inquiline (inquiline@assemblag.es)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 05:02:53 JST inquiline

     in reply to

     • Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD

     @EricFielding This is partly because white Europeans and white Americans hassled Black US users who popped in here in the 2022 Twitter migration. (To make matters worse, some white europeans accused Americans of "making race a problem" here, i.e. took the line that people pointing out racism were the problem, not people being racist. For some reason there was less evident racism with fewer Black users 🤔)

     I'm simplifying a bit in the interest of character limit, but I saw a lot of this firsthand

     baconandcoconut repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     mekka okereke :verified: (mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:13:13 JST mekka okereke :verified:

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     The part that you're not getting, is that there is no part of BlueSky where it is completely acceptable to be super racist against Black people.

     But many of the "trans friendly" spaces on Mastodon, anti-blackness is very tolerated.

     It's not about the *presence* of Black safe places.

     It's about the *absence* of garbage racist instances.

     I don't think you're processing that the problem *is* Mastodon users' tolerance of these racist trans instances.

     1/N

   • Embed this notice
     lj·rk (ljrk@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:13:15 JST lj·rk

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @mekkaokereke @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     After all BlueSky (in my view) follows a similar approach but instead of using a community moderation system of the server, you have tagging algorithms and crowd-sourced custom modules. But in the end, you are allowed to look at humanity's worst, if you want to.

     I'm sorry if I come of as dismissive, that's not my intention. I try to understand by relating to your experience, my intention is not question it for questioning's sake.

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     lj·rk (ljrk@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:13:16 JST lj·rk

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @mekkaokereke @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     The second question for me is: How this relates to the Fedi in particular? IME the Fedi is uniquely positioned to address this imbalance through its federation system. E.g., while we agree on what racism is and how it constitutes (I just try to understand your view point better and hence talk to you than my bubble), I think it's unlikely to get this view as a consensus on most platforms soon. Neither, do we get trans acceptance that's really more than empty words of "diversity". As such, the Fedi is doing the opposite pf creating a safe space by marginalized people for themselves through their own servers. Mind you, not the whole Fedi becomes safe (I mean, even truth.social exists), but that's not the goal. And once marginalized people can be active in the Fedi through their own servers, they can also shift the window of the discourse and have an impact of the Fedi on the whole. This is what happened with Fedi, while it was queer from the get-go, this queerness was well-hidden and the policies weren't friendly to open queer people. And nowadays thing's have changed a lot. Why isn't that a realistic path for Black people?

     2/3

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     lj·rk (ljrk@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:13:17 JST lj·rk

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @mekkaokereke @semitones @tillshadeisgone Thank you for taking the time to explain! For me it's hard to wrap my head around, and while I'm all for believing the victims in their description – I think trying to understand the situation by thinking it through enables me a better "ally", defend PoC better, etc.

     If you still have the energy, there's a bit more of questions I have: I think understand what you describe with your point about racism being worse than other discriminations. My closest experience is (white) cis women, who, while not per se marginalized, are discriminated against, use the "power" vetted into them by progressive parts of society to counter this, to hate against trans people. And it's incredibly hard to argue against them because you then feed the trans-women-are-just-mysogynist-men-in-dress stereotype. Similar situations with the LGB-Alliance, Lesbians/Gays/Bis speaking "against the T". I find this phenomenon where marginalized people get at each others throats sad but also very common in all directions. What is unique here w.r.t. Black people?

     1/x

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     mekka okereke :verified: (mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:16:48 JST mekka okereke :verified:

     in reply to

     • carl marks
     • Semitones

     @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

     There is more effort put into stopping Black people from blocking these instances, than there is put into getting these instances to stop being racist. 🙂🙃

     So the racists are trash, but their enablers are even bigger trash, and Black people choose to be somewhere else.

     I'm going to stop engaging now, not because you've been bad. You haven't! You've been fine! But I can't explain it any more clearly than I already have.

     2/2

   • Embed this notice
     inquiline (inquiline@assemblag.es)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Dec-2024 23:39:11 JST inquiline

     in reply to

     • Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD

     @EricFielding Anyway a lot of Black folks very understandably did not stick around, and Mastodon cemented a reputation for being racist

     This is a good primer of some of the issues:
     https://nexusofprivacy.net/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/