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You want to know if your corner of Cohost is responsible for upholding a white supremacist culture? Here is a guide to help you understand. The bullet point list is derived from a work called "From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups." I haven't read it, but if you'd like to, PDF Here

Non-white people: I carry this around for situations where I'm the one dissenting voice experiencing racism. As we all know, racism usually doesn't look like ppl hurling slurs and more often looks like tone-policing, getting call aggressive for reacting in rational ways, etc. I use this guide to remind me when I'm being gaslit. I also use it to make sure I don't fall into the same pitfalls described in the guide.

White people: This will help you recognize the culture in those around you and yourself. I suggest keeping it around if you are looking to get more active in fighting against this culture.

For all intensive purposes, "organization" = Cohost and "people in power" = the racial majority (white people) on this site (people in power do not equal the 5 devs at cohost. If anything they've said in the past is relevant, they are still considered part of the overall racial majority of the site). Because the document doesn't map 1-to-1 with a social media, some of these points are irrelevant or don't make sense in terms of "people in power." We'll ignore those. Also sorry there's some weird formatting on some of these.

I'm going to highlight some of these points of White Supremacy Culture I've seen transpire on this website for the last few days. If any of you have had trouble connecting how certain actions on this site have been racist, this will hopefully give you a clearer understanding.

mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making
them as opposed to being seen for what they are: mistakes

Example: someone I have blocked did something bad so if they complain about racism it isn't valid

equating individual acts of unfairness against white people with systemic
racism which daily targets people of color

Another way to spin the last one,: the person u mentioned did X so you should give equal weight to what they did and the racism they are experiencing

a lot of energy in the organization is spent trying to make sure that people's
feelings aren't getting hurt or working around defensive people

emphasis on being polite

invalidating people who show emotion

Ie, if you are capping for racists, I shouldn't be allowed to say fuck you

if it's not in a memo, it doesn't exist

This is what the pushback to the new missing stair community guidelines look like. Not everything can be in writing and in order to have good moderation, discretion is needed. Sorry!

those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued,
even in organizations where ability to relate to others is key to the mission

This is what it looks like every time someone bombards this site with 20 chapters of text instead of saying sorry for being racist. This is what it looks like when white ppl circulate giant meta posts giving the benefit of doubt to other white ppl for their racism.

those with power assume they have the best interests of the organization at
heart and assume those wanting change are ill-informed (stupid), emotional,
inexperienced

Lot's of victim blaming these last few days

when someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to
blame the person for raising the issue rather than to look at the issue which is
actually causing the problem

the belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological
comfort

scapegoating those who cause discomfort

The backbone of all the racist harassment on this site

oh, my star sign? i don't have one. when i was born the sky turned pitch-black, all heavenly bodies momentarily hidden from existence as a portent of my horrible birth, replaced by untold myriads of stygian-blue eyes gazing ever-downwards as if to damn the land for permitting me to exist

oh, my star sign? i dunno what month i was born in

oh, my star sign? i think i have a doctor's note for that

oh, my star sign? i wasn't born

oh, my star sign? the sun, i think

oh, my star sign? it's U+272F

i could stand to post more wips in general but i dont really want to post them on my ... wait that's what tags are for what the fuck am i talking about lol

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.

Over the weekend, I talked to a white friend about racism on cohost. They said "it automatically sucks to be non-white on cohost" I replied "being non-white sucks everywhere except amongst other ppl who aren't."

It is really hard to separate my feelings when it comes to liking cohost as a platform while also feeling angry every few weeks when another reckoning with racism inevitably happens. This site has been easier for me to handle, but I think it has less to do with the site itself and more to do with my conscious decision to stop being the villainous brown person online.

For the last few years, I have made it a mission to stop jumping on discourse involving racism. To just let things go. Before this time period, I was very used to becoming the villain, both online and in real life. I am lucky that most the spaces I have existed in during my adult life have been either left or liberal. But that makes it more complicated and painful when a reckoning of racism eventually happens. Becoming the villain wears you down. You watch as people who do racist shit get lauded and coddled when all they really had to do is say "sorry, I'll try to do better next time." You lose friendships. Sometimes (not as often but sometimes) other poc will abandon you in favor of keeping the peace and enduring the racism. After experiencing it enough times, you decide to either tap out of a space completely or to never bring up racism woes again.

It's completely understandable why so many of the accounts at the center of the last Cohost racism reckoning decided to leave. This is a rational reaction to endless harassment, feeling like you're losing ground, and watching everyone similar to you drop like flies. Becoming the enemy for trying to improve things sucks.

White supremacy teaches you to keep the peace, don't cause a stir. That's why I'm telling you all, you need to be loud and unapologetic when racist harassment happens. If you mess up, you need to learn to say "sorry, I'm working on it, I'll try better." You need to learn to sit with the discomfort that racism exists, that you might be part of the problem. You owe it to us that have to sit with the discomfort of racism every time we turn on our computers or go outside.

If there is anything better about cohost it's not the left leaning ideology or the large number of queer users. This is the one site where the minority POC userbase is unified in saying racism is a problem and we're not gonna take this shit.