Notices by carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)

@Damselfly you can tell a white guy wrote this lol

@vega a lot of the reputation that are0h and TBS have is due to an antiblack disinfo campaign waged against that blocklist by bad faith racists that hate accountability.

I will be the first to say no one is perfect and are0h is included in that. However, people don't seem to understand that Ro does not curate the blocklist themself, merely aggregates instance bans/limits from a few server blocklists.

There was a temporary issue with a couple of servers being included due to a technical error that was quickly rectified (as well as questionable behavior from a source instance that was swiftly removed from the list), but from the response this got you would have thought that TBS was a bunch of cultlike bullies who ganged up on small instances and swilled wine while smoking cigars and planning to take down another server for no reason.

TBS is largely controversial because white people writ large are not comfortable with Black folks having boundaries. There are a LOT of servers with racist admins and mod teams out there who claim they ended up on TBS for no reason, despite clear evidence of white supremacist/antiblack words and/or deeds.

The thing is, white people are always willing to believe the worst about any given Black person while always giving the benefit of the doubt to anyone accused of racism. Most white people also suffer from poor structural analysis when it comes to antiblackness, missing clear ways that antiblackness is a system that brings institutional racism to bear. Lacking this important context, white folks are very easy to lie to when it comes to the behavior of any Black person.

And. And and and. All of that is true as well as this: BQL used to be a source instance but we pulled out last year due to Ro's poor response to a friend of his getting critiqued and called out for spreading eugenics talking points/using the R slur.

Note that this was much later than the original drama.

@Damselfly angry that now I have to find a new VPN provider. I used to recommend Mullvad to all my friends. NOMORE

@Mabande there's a reason we have them limited as a domain lol :binfire:

@katievm https://www.marxists.org/ has been very helpful. They have collected works/speeches from several of the Panthers

RE: https://blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgone/116812615943829284

Ah yes, the "sneak delete so no one can see what you said" move. No apology, no admission of fault, just delete it when you get pushback and move on like nothing happened. Sadly predictable, but luckily I wasn't born yesterday so if you care to see the post I quoted you can look here: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/SnQXm

@Damselfly like clockwork 😎

@b it's a lot of y'all I miss too!

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@Epic_Null/116811250184216519

For your information I was on tumblr for years and am well aware of how queer discourse functioned on that platform. Your assumption that I was unaware of that and further unaware of the downsides of a hashtag like FediBlock immediately underneath a post of mine where I engaged with the history of the hashtag and discussed various nuances involved shows the level of disrespect towards the needs of Black users of the fediverse that you have.

You have no appreciation for what we have gone through and no compassion for the struggle that I personally mentioned in my post. I know you're not going to heed my words but I need to say them to you anyway.

People like you are the reason I don't come on here anymore. Not the Nazis who post the n word over and over, not the nasty fucksticks who misgendered me and mocked my transfemininity, not even the people who doxxed me. It's the people who see a Black person critiquing something and have an overwhelming compulsion to go into their replies and do that same thing, over and over, forever. You either didn't read or didn't understand or didn't give a shit about the point I was making, and I can't decide which is the worst option.

You people are like a plague on this platform, and no matter how many hundreds we ban more just keep springing up. Your arrogance and entitlement and ignorance and cruelty disgust me. Your casual disregard for my personhood sickens me. And the fact that people like you are plentiful and unremarkable in a place like this wearies me.

@coeurl it's far from perfect but there's a lot of Black folks there so it's a big improvement for sure

@Epic_Null

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

@Epic_Null

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood

@Epic_Null

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

We will start with three relevant quotes from that famous piece by Martin Luther King Jr, Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

The first quote:

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

The second quote:

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The third quote:

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

We will come back to those quotes momentarily. First, I need to say that the reason I am barely on here any longer is the same reason most Black folks either don't try the fediverse or try it and leave. That reason is because most white folks on the fediverse don't want us here, or more precisely only want us here if we play by their rules and don't disturb their peace (which is the same thing).

I don't often look at reports anymore, but I came across one recently (no I'm not linking it, in the three years BQL has been in operation reports like these are a dime a dozen. it doesn't matter who said it because people say the same shit all the time) where someone was talking about how they don't see racism on here and wish that Black folks would simply TELL them explicitly how we experience racism instead of just stating that it happens all the time. This person said they would be happy to amplify or support Black folks speaking up "as long as it's not that fediblock cult stuff where they say everyone that disagrees with them is racist".

Now, this person got responded to by a bunch of folks pointing out in various ways all of the problems with what they said, whom they promptly ignored. They then went happily about their day having learned nothing and moved on. This is the typical course of events.

A little bit of fediverse history: the fediblock hashtag was created by @CaribenxMarciaX because of the high incidence of femmes experiencing harassment, as
they explain here: https://logicmag.io/policy/blackness-in-the-fediverse-a-conversation-with-marcia-x/ Also as explained by Marcia in that piece, in the intervening years the fediblock hashtag has come to be used for a variety of things, some of which are very aligned with the original vision and some of which are not as aligned. One of the things it is used for is calling out white supremacist behavior on the fediverse.

What does this have to do with those quotes? The fediblock hashtag does many things, and one of them is that it forces the white community of the fediverse to confront the issue of their antiblackness despite their unwillingness to discuss it or admit to its existence. It introduces a creative tension that encourages constructive change to be made.

And most white people on the fediverse are following the same exact playbook as the white moderate MLK invokes: they claim to be down with the cause while endlessly opposing any work to actually combat white supremacy and antiblackness. They hate the creative tension generated by open callouts because it disturbs their negative peace and order.

And so they throw around terms like "fedi HOA" (which I wrote about here: https://blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgone/112255733422107959) and handwave our concerns about antiblackness as "drama" or "toxicity" or "cult behavior". They only associate with nonblack people (not a coincidence) and once they hear from a friend of a friend that the fediblock hashtag is full of shit, they instantly believe it and freely spread lies about it.

Eventually, one grows weary of encountering the same variety of antiblack jackass every two business days and then having to deal with their hundreds of shithead friends (also antiblack) who defend them. I've been fighting this fight since 2023, and I know plenty who were fighting the same fight on here like six years before BQL even existed. It wears you down. I've gotten harassed, stalked, misgendered, backstabbed, and doxxed for my trouble. So these days I'm mostly elsewhere.

✌🏽

#FediBlockMeta

@albinanigans @domo

FUCK VANTABLACK

i love the open dialogue. i 💜you allll.

i hope everyone is safe, warm, has food, shelter, all the basic things that make getting through the day a little easier, but mostly because we need them to survive.

if you’re in need of any basic needs, post them below and I’ll repost them. it’s a no judgement zone over here.

@dexiheart he genuinely seems like he's actually a somewhat good person IRL but.....that face man

RE: https://blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgone/116305580973719232

No no wait I've got it. It's giving traveling violin salesman

Like I just can't take him seriously no matter how many people he kills, I'm sorry

I can't