4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!)
4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!)
Draft! Work in progress! Feedback welcome!
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/15011909
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?
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Stop asking Black people for evidence of the anti-Blackness. Believe them: it's real. If you want to see specific examples, do the work yourself to find them rather than asking Black people to do it for you.
IMO examples are exactly what should be provided on this page. The page would be much better if it were just 3-4 headings that looked like
Heading
Example quote 1
Improvement suggestion
Example quote 2
Improvement suggestion
Description and context
Also, why limit it to "blackness". What in the world is "blackness"? Sounds like black royalty "Your Blackness, how may I be of help today?".
Anyway, I'm not sure what prompted this, which is exactly why I ask for examples. I quit reddit (never was on twitter) during the exodus and honestly, the biggest change I'd like is for USAmericans to get their own instance where they can talk about their problems. Black US Americans deal with very different things than Africans and Europeans with African descent.
do the work
This is a phrase I only ever hear from people suffering heavily from White Saviorism.
The very first sentence in in quote at the beginning of the article describes what prompted this
"In recent days, folks such as @ErickaSimone@mastodon.social, @KimCrayton1@dair-community.social, @timnitGebru@dair-community.social ... and many, MANY more have been speaking out about how toxic fedi culture is for Black folks and how the tools we have access to just aren't enough."
If you want examples, there are links in the first paragraph of the article (after the quote), and section #1 describes how to find more. The first paragraph also defines anti-Blackness:
beliefs, attitudes, actions, practices, and behaviors of individuals, institutions, software, and systems that devalue, minimize, and marginalize the full participation of Black people
I spent a few minutes researching this, and I still have no idea what the problem is. Or any motivation to keep researching.
Honestly, I might be part of the problem. I'm a white guy, and there are basically no black people in my life. I don't see any in the streets, at work, at home or here. Especially here, I have no idea who anyone is.
Basically, I have no reason to get involved. However, I don't want to be part of the problem. So if you spoonfeed me information I can use to make life better for "the blackness" (I'm very confused about the terminology), I will happily read it and try to remember it.
So don't just tell me the solution, none of the TLDR makes any sense to me. Spend a few words on the problem.
As far as I can tell, there's basically two kinds of people:
1 - People who just don't care about other people in the Fediverse. They will not read any of this, there's nothing you can write here that will change anything for them.
2 - People who are trying to be nice, but don't always succeed. They will listen to advice, but nothing will change by telling them to be nice, be less racist, or to listen to people even if they are black. That's what they are already trying to do.
Thanks for making the effort to research it ... there are some great examples in this thread and some of the cross-posts (although some were so egregious that the mods took them down). Also, did you follow the links at the beginning of the article? They're talking about Mastodon (I'll include some examples from Lemmy in the revised version) but give an idea o the overall dyamics. In any case, I'll put in a big more about the problem in the revised draft.