In 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) and its cross-posts, quite a few people said things like “maybe racism is a problem on Mastodon, but I don’t see it on Lemmy.” Of course, plenty of comments in the various threads were in fact examples of racism on Lemmy, so one takeaway is that at lot of people don’t see racism even when they’re looking at it. And helpful commenters pointed out some of the other patterns of racism on Lemmy. … but that wasn’t really the thrust of that discussion.
So I wanted to ask more generally, what are some of the examples you’ve seen of racism on Lemmy? Quotes and links are great, but also feel free just to describe examples or call out more general patterns!
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There’s a collection here,
Most people cannot see lemmygrad
Thats on them
Why is that?
It’s defederated from .world, the largest Lemmy instance.
Sounds like a .worlder problem
who mentioned a problem?
Lemmygrad being blocked is not a problem for anybody.
.world censors left-wing instances
Lemmy.world nor any other instance on the fedi can remove content on another instance without the consent of federation, even then those actions can be undone by the site admin.
.world defederating from you doesn’t mean censorship. People disagreeing with your opinion and opting not to see it is not censorship.
It’s the literal definition of censorship.
Actually censorship is a centralized process of editing information channels to ensure certain topics aren’t published through those channels.
Censorship is a step in a publication pipeline. At least traditionally.
Simply shutting down sources would be “suppression” and choosing not to look at certain things is “willful ignorance”.
Sorry if that seems too pedantic, but you invoked the concept of literalness.
False
Lemmygrad is infamous for hosting hate speech.
Being too left wing is not why Grad was deplatformed by everyone outside of the Marxist-Leninist circles.
So infamous that you can’t link a single example
Sorry I haven’t visited a hate site recently, you can wade through it if you’re really curious.
🤡
[ ]
You got something against empty sets there buddy?
Yeah, kind of. Moderation is tricky and moderating moderators is even worse. I got banned from !worldnews@lemmy.ml for being a “white moderate”. Was it censorship of non-leftists? No. I am a communist, not a moderate.
There is one rogue mod there banning people right, left and centre and that is a problem, but not one of plain censorship. I would rather say it is frankly the problem of having a bad mod who does not understand their role. I imagine the same happens on .world and other places, albeit under different guises.
I did not see any racist comments for quite some time. But xenophobic comments were common on threads about Ukraine’s invasion.
The anti-French sentiment is also present here like in the whole English speaking web.
The French aren’t known for their hygiene so I am not surprised their river is filthy
From a post about an olympic triathlete who got sick: https://lemmy.ml/post/18887659
In Belgium: Tartare or Mayo. Andalouse for the gal, thanks In the UK: Salt and Vinegar In both cases: I will have to change seat if you plop yourself in front of me with your poor fries inundated by ketchup. Only the French do that, and it is a Casus Belli in my book.
From a post about dipping fries: https://lemmy.ml/post/18963222
But xenophobic comments were common on threads about Ukraine’s invasion.
As in “fuck the Russians”? Because I feel that hating Russia is somewhat less based on prejudice than your other examples, and somewhat more on recent real world examples.
There were xenophobic comments towards Russians, Ukrainians and Americans in these posts.
Also, I don’t think people should insult the people of a country when they criticize its government.
True, but at one point as has gone so far you are complicit if you do nothing.
Has it gone so far yet? I don’t know, but it’s worth discussing imo.
The anti-French sentiment is also present here like in the whole English speaking web.
Frankly, I’m always going to be anti-French until ALL of their leech-like tentacles are severed and ejected from every Afrikan nation they’ve been hoovering the resources out of. I have no love for neocolonists, not the French, not the Israeli, and sure as shit not the Amerikan.
I do not understand how writing stuff like “French are dirty” helps with decolonization. I suppose by anti French you mean something else.
It sounds as if you’re using the atrocities of the French bourgeoisie as a way to excuse nationalist bigotry against a people. The French state is imperialist and colonist, the French citizens are mostly victims of capitalism, not the settlers.
Obviously it’s a different situation with French people overseas, but we’re not in that context.
If the citizens weren’t tacitly benefiting, in any way from the resource extraction of the bourgeoisie, maybe you’d have a point there; but since they do, you don’t
And yes, before you ask it, I feel the exact same way about Amerikans; and no, I have been far below poverty line all my life, so you’re not gonna find purchase there either. Just fuck off if you’re gonna go to bat for a settler before you waste any more of both of our time.
There used to be Wolfballs, a right-wing Lemmy instance. I didn’t browse much but there was definitely ample racism there.
If I remember correctly, the admin (a US Lolbertarian) finally closed it down, among other reasons, when they realized the resident nazis there were not just joking to troll da libs and actually believed the things they were saying about ‘jewish shapeshifters’. They wanted a free speech haven, and so they got the people we collectively told to shut up.
I am sure there are instances I have forgotten, there is definitely a certain amount of bigotry, it’s not hard to find classism, sexism, and ableism as usual for the internet and I am sure I have come across racism too but I don’t remember any specifics.
Thanks!
I got tired of being unable to list examples when I said “I’ve seen X so much!” and then others said “Really? Where?”
So I started saving examples of the thing I wanted to later prove existed.
.world users every time they see a palestinian
Assuming you are from the USA what are your options really?
One option is to follow the lead of pro-Palestinian orgs working to end the genocide. You have more power than any other global citizen believe it or not.
Try checking out the comment section on pretty much any post mentoning Islam.
Are you able and willing to link to a specific comment that you consider to be racist?
The whole point of the fediverse is that it’s distributed. There’s gonna be bigots. But they can be blocked, their instances can ban them, and then they can make their own instances which other instances can then defederate. That’s working as designed. In a perfect world, the bigoted instances will be a disconnected graph from the network of other instances.
You don’t think having a disconnected graph consisting of only bigots would lead to amplification and advancement of the bigotry?
Why would it? It seems like it would just be similar to the circlejerk forums they’ve have for decades, alienated from the mainstream and unable to normalize their ideas and recruit so easily.
I’m not black so I am sure I am not sensitive enough to it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any racism on here. On a slightly related note have experienced transphobia only two or three times in over a year, and they were quickly banned. I imagine it works the same way.
“I’m not black but”. More than black folks experience racism, but at least it wasn’t “As a color blind white man”
It would be more helpful if you gave an example of the proper way of addressing the issue.
Thanks for the adrenaline spike.
“person of color” or POC is the broad category of people who aren’t white.
🤔 Sounds wrong to me
Possibly because “colored” is and has been used as a slur? That was the connection my brain made when I first heard it and put me off, but many POCs use the term POC comfortably, so…?
Well, I am not from the US so I don’t have that connotation. It’s more that it puts it relative to white people. And white people also get discriminated, so it isn’t an inclusive term.
They do for sure. I didn’t say POC is shorthand for “people who are discriminated against”, just “people who aren’t white”.
@thenexusofprivacy @asklemmy Go get raped by a pack of niggers if you want “no White toxicity”.
It’s a whole lot of smug whites more than happy to talk over subjects-of-empire like this is still Reddit out here, split out between the likes of lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, lemm.ee, jlai.lu, and feddit.de-- the last two are because they’re French and Germans respectively, though; no one’s expecting anything out of them but resource extraction (in the French case) and for them to go to bat for genocidal states lately (in the German case).
At least the aggrieved ashen lords don’t make a habit of coming to specifically demarcated Black-and-Indigenous spaces on the fediverse as much as they used to, ig.
As a POC I’d say Lemmy is way better than most similar sites but there’s still the prevalent sexism that always seems like the "acceptable casual bigotry" and I’m not a fan of that. The kind of "jokes" that guys mostly laugh at while women mostly roll their eyes at because the punchline is usually heavily reliant on sexism.
Are you white?
Lol
