Fandom has always been racist.

All fandoms.

Even your fandom, whatever it may be.

Both because there are no fandoms that are actively anti racism by default and because the shape of fandom discourse in 2020 is that folks are actually super comfortable with being racist in defense of fandom. You can go back to transformative fandom at its birth and guess what’d be there… lots or racism.

And yet, people are always so surprised that fandom is racist. That their fandom is racist. That there are racists running around being really freaking racist in fandom – harassing people of color and purposefully creating racist fan content.

Why wouldn’t fandom be racist?

Quick, use your knowledge noodles, darlings: when was the last time you saw an unrepentant racist – someone harassing BIPOC in fandom, someone who purposefully chooses to lean into racist stereotypes and storylines in their fan content, someone who whitewashes Black and brown characters– deal with any consequences for it?

Folks in fandom rage about cancel culture, social justice warriors, and antis taking their pornz and stopping them from having fun and frame criticism of fandom as something that has hard hitting and permanent consequences.

But that’s… not necessarily true.

It’s definitely not true for racists and other bigots.

Racists in particular –

They know that they’re actually more likely to be defended from “aggressive” BIPOC frustrated in fandom than they are to be chastised for racism. They know this because it’s right there in front of our collective salads. It’s so obvious in the way that the people who get excised from fandom, harassed in fandom when conversations about racism come around are… not the racists?

I mean, the sheer volume of harassment is not even and even when a racist gets a drip of actual harassment (like the measurable stuff, not people saying that they are a racist because they… did a racist thing), they are then coddled immensely and no one ever even talks about the racist thing they did except to say “sure, it was bad, but you know what’s worse? Harassment.”

Anyway, I’m really tired of y’all being surprised by all the racism festering in a space that has historically made excuses for racism and that welcomes and coddles racists.

Either crawl out from the rock you live under… or move over so I can squeeze on in next to you and we can just vibe.

Okay?