POC just appearing as POC on the Internet will get racism. If we open anonymous Asks, racism. If we don't open Asks at all, racism in comments or replies. Lock those, racism in the quotes or screenshots or links.
Go private? Congrats. The racists managed to make it so you couldn't publically exist as a POC on the Internet. Now you can't even find other POC for mutual support. Oh wait. That was part of the racism too? Damn.
Anything public we do, there will be shit coming our way because racists will do racist shit.
"If you weren't asking to be a target you should have..." STOP.
Might as well tell women they should have stayed home if they didn't want to be catcalled walking home from work. Tell immunocompromised people never to leave the house or they are asking to get Covid from the unmasked. Tell trans people they shouldn't have put pronouns plus the trans flag in their bio if they didn't want transphobes to rant at them. Tell gay couples not to hold hands in public in case they become visible to homophobes.
And then God forbid you try to express sadness, or disgust, or anger that other people behave badly towards you in public because they are racist. Then supposed allies will suggest you are causing "drama", or that you must want be complaining just because you enjoy being a victim.
They're sick of hearing about racism and they would prefer it if you STFU. At the same time they will suggest you can't really be receiving that much racism, because they don't recieve any themselves (lol), or better still, they "don't see colour/race" themselves (lololololol).
You then show how you are receiving racism, and then you're back to loving being the victim or causing "drama" again.
White people are sick of hearing about it? Congrats on having the privilege that for you it's irrelevant enough to be annoying "drama". For other people, people of colour, it's what we get for existing in public.
If white people hate hearing about it, feel free to take on the causes of racism. Oh, hang on. Not so easy to do that? Easier to blame POC instead? Wish that we didn't suggest that there might be a problem with wider society, culture, the platform, etc, so you never had to think about it?
Congrats, you are now on the side of the racists in wishing POC disappeared from public for your comfort and convenience.
These dynamics are commonplace and are about white people who haven't learned to sit with their own discomfort. They try to make the Other contain the disturbance instead, and then they try to exile the Other to solve their disturbance.
But that won't work because the problem isn't in discrete individuals. It's in the system. No matter how many POC you run off, even if you run us ALL off, one-by-one, even if you wind up with an all-white platform, racism will still exist.
It's just that then there's no one to point it out. It just means racism is no longer remarked on. It just means the racists won.
That's the solution that every "talking about racism is drama", "complaining about racism means you chase clout", "you must love bring a victim" person secretly wants. The comfort of an all-white platform, or one in which POC never threaten the comfort of whiteness by pointing out we are in pain because of racism.
The alternative is that you will hear about racism as long as we experience it, and as long as we are around to talk about our experiences on this platform.
