I don't think there are literally Nazis on this site, it's got too strong a Jewish community for that. But the same ethos hasn't been adequately directed towards racism, and the result has been, bluntly, disastrous. I was here when the site was tiny (my account was activated July 2022), and that's when this shit should have been rooted out. We had fucking essays about the direction we wanted the site to go. In particular I remember being uncomfortable with the site being reified as inherently safe by design, and the general response to the post I wrote about it, while positive, had an undercurrent of "it's alright, everything's fine, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
We really fucking didn't, and I am not happy about being vindicated. If Cohost's white users (including myself, i am not exempt from "fuck 'em" when relevant) had turned on the first instance of racism and gone "we don't do that here, fuck off", as is our moral fucking duty to do, maybe the site's users of colour wouldn't be in as shitty a situation as they are now.
Racism is a white people problem. It's a thing we made, a thing we uphold, and a thing we're morally obligated to join the work to dismantle. So quit whining, dry the white tears, and let's do the work people of colour need from us.
