this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Reasons why racism on Lemmy is less of an issue:
These are all good points (and not having anything like Mastodon's followers-only posts removes another way to hide in obscurity). Moderators certainly got involved in some of the cross-posts of the earlier thread, at least a dozen comments were removed on beehaw and a couple people got banned from the awful.systems thread.
On the other hand, downvoting can also be used as a weapon to try to bury discussions of racism (this thread btw is at -17, the previous one is at -70).
Also somebody here mentions that "There’s currently only 1 user that I’ve noticed that keeps bringing race up." (hiii!!!!). A culture where people don't talk about race means that whiteness is normalized and unexamined. And quite a few of the comments in this thread (saying I'm the racist, analogizing me to a "Karen", calling me a fool) and the previous ones ("is this a joke?", "haha", "Lol, how is race relevant? Obv rage bait shitpost", the one analogizing me to Hitler) are all consistent with an environment where reactions to somebody bringing up race are hostile. Almost nobody is challenging these comments, in fact they've got plenty of upvotes.
I think the topic of racism and discrimination needs to happen on the Fediverse if its an issue. However, I'm worrying that your approach is more counterprodctive. I think its fine to ask for proof for the supposed racist culture on Lemmy, because I think every argument needs to have some argumentative ground. I'm against discrimination (which certainly happens on the Fediverse), but I dont think identity politics have come up with productive tools to tackle the issues they point out.
The revised version of 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) will have (or maybe link off to) a list of examples on Lemmy -- that's why I started this thread. But, you don't have to wait! There are multiple examples in this thread and the thread I linked to in the OP.
And yes, there are tools. I'll have more links in the revised version, but one good place to start is Ijeoma Oluo's Welcome To The Anti-Racism Movement — Here’s What You’ve Missed
It was an interesting read. I'm willing to do certain parts of that like listening more to marginalized voices. What bugs me though is that basically the text says that we need to disrupt the system, because its racist; but on the other hand, it basically assumes that the system was and always has been racist. And this is again identity politics: based on Focaults post structuralism; societal, liberal progress is a myth, etc. etc. There is no actual believe in societal progress (which I do believe in primarily through technological progress).