On racism in fandom

cassandrashipsit:

Things that do not prevent or absolve you from perpetrating and participating in (particularly anti-black) racism:

• Having a black roommate (the fuck?)
• Having a black friend, or even more than one
• Dating a black person
• Fucking a black person
• Being married to a black person
• Working with black people
• Reblogging videos and gifs of black people and children being murdered
• Reblogging black lives matters posts and adding “THIS IS SO IMPORTANT”
• Agreeing that blackface in cosplay is bad
• Liking or reblogging posts about characters being white washed.

That’s just a basic list, but you get the gist. Are you white? You probably do racist shit, it’s the nature of living in a “post”-colonial western country steeped in patriarchy and white supremacy.

Fandom has a shitty record with racism. Ask any PoC who’s involved in fandom and they’ll have stories for you about the stupid and annoying shit “white fandom” does. The sad thing is, we keep telling you over, and over, and over, and over again that your behavior is painful, but you don’t fucking listen and it gets SO FUCKING OLD. 

Someone commented on my post about the “debate” about whitewashing mods, about how they were afraid it will drive people out of the fandom.

It will. I for one am fast losing interest in any kind of contribution to fandom, or even scrolling through tumblr.

I’ve been in fandom since… maybe March of this year? I’d already questioned so many times whether it’s worth it to continue on tumblr, to continue interacting with people who are going to hurt me, and then accuse me of over-reacting to their aggression when I call them on it.

There are things you’ll never know about being a person of color, especially one who’s navigating the predominately white media. (And I do mean ALLLLL media.)

So when a person of color brings up something like a tag name that leads them to seeing imagines of police violence, and you compare that to “seeing other stuff” in a tag, as if they’re the same weight? That’s fucking racist, microaggressive bullshit. That’s the kind of thing that can break the camel’s back. When you say shit like that, you’re contributing to the racism in fandom and making it clear that your convenience is more important that the comfort and mental safety of people of color in fandom.

So good job – enjoy your convenience, but when good people leave the fandom because they’re sick of being treated like their mental well being and trauma mean nothing? Well… you’ll know who’s to blame.

Just one last note… Please don’t bother liking this post. Share it or ignore it, but all those little hearts mean nothing to me except you’ve read it and you probably think it doesn’t apply to you, and that’s frustrating. That’s why we have to keep saying this shit over and over, because white people don’t stand up and help reboost what we say. Mind you I don’t say “contribute to the conversation” I say BOOST THE VOICES OF PoC.

Either help or get out the way.