Often when I see other white people being racist on indie social media sites it seems like the cause is someone with poor social skills externalizing their thoughts and feelings onto someone who does not want or need those thoughts and feelings and ultimately making things about themselves when they didn't have to be before.
It was drilled into me in the Social Justice Heyday of Tumblr circa 2012-2015 that when you see someone of a minority group say something about a privileged group like "Men don't care about consent" or "white people love saying the N word" that the appropriate thing to do as someone of the privileged group is to think, inside your own head, "Do I do that?" And if the answer is "No" then you can just think, on the inside, to yourself, "Oh, well, I guess they're not talking about me then" and then move along. If the answer is "yes" then you should think, on the inside, to yourself, "well damn, I should stop doing that and change my behavior, quietly, without engaging with the person who is venting their frustrations about people like me."
Returning to the topic of justice sensitivity from earlier, I think a lot of people get disproportionately upset when they see these kinds of statements and think "That's not fair!!! You can't say that every white person is self centered and annoying! This isn't a fair judgement of me. You don't know me! How dare you!"
If you let those thoughts become Outside Thoughts, if you say them to the marginalized person who is saying the original post, then you are self-selecting into the original statement about white people being self-centered and annoying or racist or whatever the original statement was. You are making it about yourself by exhibiting the behavior being described, or by inserting yourself into the conversation when you were not invited.
Even if you see a statement that seems really out there and wrong, like "all men are rapists," do you really think that someone who says such a thing would be someone who would respond well to you jumping in with a "Not all men are rapists—I personally have never raped a single person!" Do you really think that they literally believe this about every single man and being told by a total stranger online about an exception is going to result in them saying "Oh wow really? Never mind then! I guess only the majority of men are rapists :)" it's just not going to go that way. It's not an interaction worth having.
The way to respond in that situation is to think, to yourself, on the inside, "Well that's a little extreme :/" and then just move along and don't say anything. All you're going to do is pick a completely unnecessary fight if you do anything else. If you must externalize that thought, go do it in a private journal or to a therapist or a private conversation with a friend (one who is not of the minority group who made the original post or you will put your friend in an uncomfortable position. Even if you would love validation from your token friend of color that you weren't being racist it's just a shitty thing to do. It's something I've been guilty of it and it sucks to do to someone. Don't do it.)
Other appropriate reactions might be:
- It really sucks that this unfair society is making this person feel so negatively about my demographic that they'd be driven to hate us. I should make my best effort to not be a part of the problem and avoid making it worse.
- While I do feel guilty and bad about myself while reading this, those feelings are my own and pale in comparison to what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of a society structured to oppress you in that way. I should process these feelings on my own and allow them to remind me of the importance of unlearning internalized biased behaviors.
- If seeing this person's posts make me feel so negatively that it drives me to want to torment them online with mean comments and guilt tripping anonymous asks, then I should mute their account while I work on my anger, impulse control, and distress tolerance issues.
There is, of course, a strong possibility that I am giving far too much benefit of the doubt to these racist dipshits online, but this is the autism website where most people have subpar social skills and I think a lot of autistic 16 year olds saying dumb shit online would appreciate someone writing out for them what is going wrong and what is a better alternative way to behave socially for better outcomes. Though it's likely staff will have banned these users so they can't see this post anyway. Maybe this post will prevent other people from making the same error and chasing off some of the best posters on this website.
There is a strong possibility that a lot of these people are genuinely owners of confederate flags and think the third reich wasn't so bad, and they've merely done a good job at presenting themselves as docile furries working in tech until they saw a person of color talk about racism and it burst their filter bubble and they snapped. In that case I'm sure they will be banned as soon as staff get a chance to check the report queue. I think it's fair to give understaffed web forums at least 48 hours to respond to reports especially on evenings and weekends.
Ultimately, if you have thoughts of racially motivated aggression towards other people, then those are inside thoughts to keep to yourself and work on unlearning and not allowing them to manifest as racist actions against people of color. That's called racist harassment and it's bad. It's an active detriment to diversity and homogeneous spaces will always end up festering and becoming horrible places to be.
People of color deserve to be able to enjoy the "peaceful slowed down cohost experience" too. The true injustice and unfairness is that a lot of people of color experience cohost as being hostile in a way white users do not. Don't be a part of that problem. Whatever racist thoughts you've internalized, or whatever sensitivity you have to being grouped in with people who do bad things, it's your responsibility to process and manage those thoughts and feelings away from people who will be negatively affected by them.
Every day at work I experience patrons accusing the library of treating them differently for their race when we are actually treating them exactly the same as every other patron (No patrons may borrow books when they owe the library money—but application for fine forgiveness or a payment plan is available to anyone. This is consistently enforced without exception precisely in order to ensure everyone gets the same treatment and white staff aren't being more lenient with white patrons. I strongly scold white staff who get in the habit of making exceptions to policies given the likelihood that they are acting upon unconscious biases when they do so).
I know internally that we are treating them the same, and I can say "I can assure you that this is the same policy for every patron." I can feel frustrated when they don't believe me. I'm not going to pretend that I never have that feeling of "how dare they say that my library is racist given that it's a predominantly POC staffed space led by POC at the highest levels and we make every effort to prevent biased treatment of patrons!" But that is an Inside Thought. Nothing good will come from expressing it to the patron. Ultimately what is sad is that this patron experiences racism so frequently that they are rational to quickly assume discrimination even when there is none. I will achieve nothing by arguing with them and saying "How dare you accuse my staff of being racist" because that's not going to go anywhere productive. I know that it is true that the police, stores, welfare offices, strangers in public, and restaurants likely do treat this person differently because of their race. They could sit by the circulation desk for a whole day and observe every patron being treated the same and it still probably wouldn't convince them that the library really does treat everyone the same (at least when it comes to circulation policies at my library in particular.) All I can do is keep my feelings about being wrongfully accused to myself, show them the application for fine forgiveness, and reiterate "The library follows the same policies for every patron. If you cannot pay your fine today, here is the application for forgiveness. We could also do a payment plan if you prefer. Given that you only owe $20 I could forgive the fine today if you fill out this form and write down that you can't afford the fine. Or if you do have the money, you can pay the fine and we can check these items out to you right away. You can take your time to decide, but you can't borrow anything until we resolve the fine through payment or forgiveness."
Either they will choose to believe me and take one of the options I'm giving them towards being able to borrow their items, or they will leave. I cannot allow myself to express my frustration to the patron about their lack of trust. It is not their fault. My frustration truly is the fault of a system that has given them no rational reason to trust a white lady in a lanyard with her hair in a bun. My feelings about that should remain my feelings and not be put on the patron to process or soothe for me. Does that make sense? The patron is already upset. It will not deescalate the conflict by treating them as irrational. It will only make the library into a hostile and unwelcoming place for the patron. Sometimes they leave, and sometimes they pay the fine, and sometimes they fill out the application for forgiveness and are shocked to find that within ten minutes their fine has been forgiven and now they can borrow the book just like I said we would do. But never would it lead to a good outcome to tell the patron that they are wrong to group the library in with everyone other institution that had ever mistreated them. I can't even guarantee that they've never been genuinely mistreated by the library before. There certainly is a history of racism in libraries. The extend the metaphor back to individuals, even if I can see a statement about white people and think "well, that one isn't about me" I do know that I myself have never been perfect when it comes to white people doing dumb shit. I've put my foot in my mouth plenty in my life and it's more important to be humble about that than to get indignant and insist I'm "one of the good ones." (Especially not while actively harassing someone!)
I'm talking about racism and white feelings about racism because it's topical—but this really is a generally applicable social skill. It's important to recognize when your feelings are something to own and keep to yourself to deal with later. It's important to know when a thought you had, whether valid or not, would just be better kept to yourself than shared. A lot of conflicts are caused by people just not knowing when to hold their tongue and shut up. White people especially struggle with this, in my observations, whereas a lot of Black people learn quickly due to racism that everything they say will be misconstrued and used against them.
Hope this helps! If you're not just being socially stupid but actually do harbor ill intent towards people of color: cut that out! I mean I don't really know how to convince someone of the value of racial diversity if they're not already on board with that as a value instilled in them since childhood, but I really do hope you will consider that racism is bad and diversity is good? Feels outside the scope of this post. Or maybe if you agree that racism is bad but disagree with it being racist to harass people of color for making broad overgeneralizations: If your actions are creating a hostile environment for people of color, then it is having a racist effect, regardless of your motivations. So please return to the top of the post and reconsider your actions and whether any good comes of them.
Around 10 years ago, when I was having a South Park phase, a new episode of South Park came out and there was some sort of transphobic joke in it (I don't remember the joke.)
On twitter, an LGBTQ person that I respected tweeted about how the joke was tasteless and transphobic. They were correct.
For some god-forsaken reason, I had the white-boy reflex to reply to the tweet with some sort of defensive "um, actually, they didn't mean it that way, i'm sure the real joke is that xyz" to defend the writers and defend the fact that I had watched the episode. I had a red-hot flash of defensiveness because I felt this person's words meant that I was a bad person for watching it and I thought they were painting with a broad brush.
The LGBTQ person responded to my tweet. I don't remember what they said, but they stood their ground, disagreed with my point, and were completely sincere and reasonable while doing so.
Thankfully, I realized in this moment that my reflex to publicly jump in front of an issue and tell a [marginalized] person that them being offended was incorrect was a completely bonkers thing for me to do. I thought of myself as a "good person" but in this moment, I had acted indistinguishably from an online troll. I think having this interaction snapped me out of it, although I would gladly go back in time to prevent myself from bothering this innocent tweeter who was going about their day.
I felt so bad for being a jerk online that I cried about it in my college dorm public restroom (like a champ!) and then vowed to never act like that online again because it was such a needlessly annoying thing to do to a person who was just venting a frustration on their twitter page.
I think about that moment a lot when I see phrases like "men are X" or "white people on here are always like Y" or "this joke is hurtful because of Z" and tell myself to just keep scrolling, and try to make the world a better place instead of contributing to X, Y, and Z in the first place. I can do more good by holding my tongue than suddenly trying to turn everything into Debate Club.
