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: https://blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgone/111073451895257661

"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

Every once in awhile, I see a white person ask the question of why there aren't more Black folks on the fediverse. I don't see this that often, as I go out of my way to follow white folks who are a little more clued in, but occasionally it comes up.

There are a lot of reasons, which any Black person who has been here for more than 5 minutes could easily explain to you, but for the moment let me take you on a short journey to examine one of the primary reasons.

Imagine, if you will, that I am a random Black person interested in joining the fediverse. Now assuming I don't just go straight for mastodon.social (different scenario, but similar outcome for the most part) I'm curious to see what server I should join.

If I'm coming from any other major social network I've probably heard something, accurate or not, about the fediverse and choosing a server. Maybe that idea has turned me off before, but the Muskrat or Zuck or whoever has just done another egregious thing and I'm getting fed up with their shit. I'm stubborn, too, so I look into an option that's going to take some work.

So I do some poking around Mastodon since that's the service I've heard about. joinmastodon.org has an easy to peruse list of hundreds of servers (419 last I checked). This seems overwhelming, but they are sorted by language and region and topic, which helps.

Now keep in mind, I'm coming from another social network, so very likely I've heard how white the fediverse is. So, I start browsing through the servers on joinmastodon.org to find other Black folks because if I'm gonna try this new thing, I'm not looking to deal with users who may just be hostile by default for no good reason.

If I am especially thorough, I will find two servers for South Africans, a server for folks from Madagascar, and/or a server for Nigerians. If I am not from one of those three countries, guess what happens? I don't find anyone like me. I leave and I don't come back again.

Okay, story over. And here comes the moral of the tale: It's not that non-regional Black-centered servers don't exist. They're simply not included in the directory. And for the record, it's not as if none of us have asked.

Therefore, the next time you see someone asking the question of why there aren't more Black folks on the fedi, you can now feel free to tell them: we aren't wanted here.

Go look for yourself if you don't believe me.

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#BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse #WhiteSupremacy