First a summary, jump to the bottom for action steps

In recent days, folks such as @ErickaSimone, @KimCrayton1, @timnitGebru (lmk if you want to be untagged from this post) and many, MANY more have been speaking out about how toxic fedi culture is for Black folks and how the tools we have access to just aren't enough.

In response, we've been seeing an outpouring of antiblack harassment directed towards them and others from a wide range of instances on the fediverse. This is nothing new, although it has meant a lot of extra work for mod teams who are trying to keep their users safe from this harassment.

This always happens when Black folks, particularly Black women and Black queers, speak up about their experience on the fediverse and Mastodon specifically. They get met with straight up denial, minimization, victim blaming, you name it.

After @are0h spoke up about how the team at Mastodon does not prioritize safety and someone offered to contribute $10k per year and fundraise more specifically for safety features, here was a response from one of the official team members at Mastodon:

oisaur.com/@renchap/1128795535…

It's clear what their priorities ARE and ARE NOT. They know what it's like for Black folks on here, and it's just not that big of a problem for them. Suggestions and offers for assistance are ignored and urgency is met with admonishments for patience. Clearly, us going to them ain't making a difference, so I won't advise we dogpile them about it (not because it would be "wrong" necessarily but obvs it won't work).

So, what can you do about it?

At this point, I am joining a growing chorus of Black folks on this platform who are seeking a better alternative. A project that takes safety seriously and builds infrastructure with the needs of oppressed folks CENTERED rather than MARGINALIZED.

We need a hard fork. And it just so happens that some folks are already hard at work cooking one up, but they can't do it alone. Along with general support, they need funding.

You can see @are0h's March blog post about it here:

h-i.works/2024/04/a-case-for-c…

Or, if you prefer a simple donation link, you can go here:

gofundme.com/f/a-new-way-to-so…

We're getting tired of playing whack-a-mole with white supremacists on the fediverse. We need something better. We need your help.

If what you've been seeing upsets you, if you are anywhere near as fed up as I am, if you want to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, here is something simple and concrete you can do.

Thanks for reading.

@blackfedi
#BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse

A Case for Community

Because it should be easy.

^h-i.works

Some white folks are continuing to use "fedi HOA" to describe the group of us who are trying to make the fedi a safer place for BIPOC. Seemingly, they have chosen to disregard the previous critiques that have circulated naming that practice as antiblack. So, I am going to quote myself from September of last year.

The following is an excerpt from this post: blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgo…

"Our Anti-White Grievance of the Day today is (get your white supremacist bingo cards ready, folks)........APPROPRIATION!

And just in case you're going to pretend you don't believe me, I'll give you a previous example and the current example. For the ones that need their hands held.

Our previous example is the word "woke". Woke originated with AAVE some time ago and more recently, in the past several years, has been distorted into almost unrecognizability as an anti-black dogwhistle. How did this happen, you may ask? Why, it's not complicated at all: the covert racists found out a word Black people were using and copied it! Now, similarly to how these instances of racist telephone typically go, they took the word but lost some of the nuance from the term. This led to them frequently misusing it publicly. And once that had started happening, why there was nothing for it but for the overt racists to go ahead and coopt it from the covert racists (who they are obsessed with, by the way) so they could have their dogwhistle term du jour ('politically correct' was starting to wear out). This dogwhistle, mind you, has very little to do with its original usage, but of course they can't tell the difference so they don't care. And so we can see how this was an example of appropriation.

Our more recent example of this phenomenon is none other than the nasty little number lots of you are tossing about right now, fedi HOA. I'm not the first person to point this out of course, but since when have white people bothered listening the first time? For 10 ally points, can anyone in the class tell me the history of homeowner's associations, housing, and white supremacy? Anyone? Well, in case you don't know, feel free to look it up. Throw in redlining, the wealth gap, and the GI bill while you're at it. Those who do so or are already aware, you can understand why a lot of Black folks who tried fedi have spoken about the feeling of HOA-style treatment they received. Some of you were even the ones doing it! And now, in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY AS THE PREVIOUS EXAMPLE, several of you white fedizens started to use the term fedi HOA. Only it's not quite the same thing when you all use it. Lost a bit of nuance, hasn't it? You're not actually talking about a historical comparison of systematic racial discrimination in physical space to systematic racial discrimination in digital space, are you? No, you're using it to mean that Black people and people of color are creating and enforcing boundaries that you don't like.

So, you can understand why that's not the same thing, right? Some of the nuance got lost in the shuffle? Now, can someone tell me (for 50 ally points this time!) why that's bad? Can anyone identify how appropriation enabled antiblack discrimination in both cases? Anyone at all? How about how abusive it is to get this aggressive over someone else's boundaries? No? Yes?

Great. Well, at least you learned something."

@blackfedi

#TBT #FediblockMeta #WhiteSupremacy #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse #BlackMastodon