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.” Then again, 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!
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).