In the sidebar for my website, I have the following block of text and a link to a resource on Adult Literacy:
Struggling with selective reading comprehension issues and think I’ve said something I clearly haven’t? Use this resource to brush up on your lackluster reading comprehension skills and consider leaving me out of your journey!
It is a snarky note, for sure, but this response to that block of text (from a Dreamwidth user who was responding to someone else who’d shared What Fandom Racism Looks Like: White Silence/Violence is really fucking out of pocket and nonsensical:
The top right of the meme has (not Voltaire) saying “I disapprove of what you say, but will support and profit from your right to say it.”. He represents “people in different fandoms reacting to bigoted fan content and/or fans”. On the bottom right is a Karen who called the cops on Black folks barbecuing with text that says “Hello, CIA?”. She represents “people in different fandoms reacting to Black fans applying anti-racism and critical race theory to fandom”.
I am always very fascinated by how many of the people online who claim to be “radically anti censorship” and who appear to be very strong advocates for freedom of speech also… actively work to silence other people and censor them.
Most often, as we’ve seen lately, via constant and successful attempts at silencing Black and brown people who write and teach about anti-racism in any space they (these white anti-censorship advocates) consider their own.
I’d known that I wouldn’t be able to depend on others to defend me regularly from a series of traumatic offline events – some of which did involve racism/antiblackness in my local friend group – back when I was a teenager.
So, in 2011, when I first experienced social shunning and harassment because I was a Black fan criticizing fandom – at the time, not even about racism, but about a BNF’s hypocritical hater stance on NSFW fanfiction – I kind of expected more of the same. I was not disappointed.
Fast forward to 2021 and now, I’m mad as hell about the fact that people will choose to be silent in the face of racism in fandom and watch as Black/brown fans are hurt and harassed for speaking up.
Mosley isn’t the first to be harassed because people in a given fandom assumed she was replacing a white actress (Javicia Leslie’s Ryan Wilder on Batwoman) or because she was playing a racebent version of a “historically white” character (Anna Diop’s Starfire on Titans). And she won’t be the last, because fandom is not a space that protects Black women from misogynoir. Misogynoir, a form of anti-Black misogyny present in the ways that Black women and femmes are rewritten and dehumanized in order to excuse the way we are treated (no matter how much power we have), is alive and well in fandom spaces across the internet.
I write a lot about misogynoir in fandom. It’s something i feel strongly about because of how much it affects a wide range of fans in fandom, Black women and femmes who aren’t seen as part of these spaces. Fan entitlement is huge and we know that aggressive fans truly don’t know an end to their nonsense… but there’s a very specific way that these fans will attack Black women (fans, celebs, and journalists) that needs to stop.
There’s nothing on this earth that can excuse how iCarly fans treated Laci Mosely or how different superhero fans have treated Candice Patton and Anna Diop over the past few years. Black women deserve better treatment in fandom and from fandom.
Revisionist fandom history is so annoying because:
– it’s always people in their 20s and/or who’ve been in fandom for like nowhere near as long as EYE have lecturing people about how shitty the youth these days are (like being awful in fandom is new or exclusive to The Youth)
– it’s always very white fandom history UNLESS it’s someone tagging in like Japanese creators and/or appropriating the term fujoshi for their own ends (my feeling on the term is simply that if you’re not Japanese, you probably can’t ACTUALLY reclaim it. The end.)
The “Skinner, Out of Touch” meme where Principal Skinner represents people in fandom first asking “Is fandom racist?” before then deciding that “no it is the newer fans who are sensitive and out of touch. There’s no racism here, just weenies.”
The phenomenon of white people deciding that in fact there is zero racism in a space they inhabit, usually because they supposedly haven’t seen it, is bigger than fandom.
People of color experience this annoying micro-major aggression everywhere. We get to deal with it at work, in the grocery store, while watching the news –
Basically, if you’re a person of color that has been in or around a racist place (digital or otherwise), chances are that you’ve had a run in with someone who thinks that there’s no racism anymore.
They’ve never seen racism and/or they’ve decided that what racism they have seen is too small to count and therefore, what you’re talking about is nonsense.
This is similar to how people deny that white privilege is even a thing in the first dang place.
I currently have almost three hundred thousand people blocked on my main (still locked) Twitter.
Half of them aren’t because of any specific fandom thing (once, I chainblocked a massive “Report for [SPECIFIC IDOL]” account to see if it’d work in early 2020 and… it did, but now I can never undo it).
However, a huge portion of my blocks are because I ran RedBlock or some other browser extension on accounts I didn’t like, that were harassing me, or that were harassing others. (The other account, for my website, has about 150k people blocked, maybe. Because I exported my blocklist from main to that account in 2018 in the middle of a harassment campaign from the most annoying Star Wars shippers.)
When people of color talk about racism in a given space, we are always met with a truly disproportionate amount of anger. We are harassed, made into harassers, and essentially “policed” into silence, often by people who are publicly progressive at some level.
Back when I was working on #StitchProcesses Blackface, one of the things that stood out to me was about the inciting event. Sam Okyere is a man known for gently and graciously being “Korea’s Black Friend”. He’s also been someone that spoke candidly about antiblackness he faced in Korea when he first moved to the country. In fact, one of the first times I was introduced to Okyere was because of a viral video clip of him explaining to a rapt audience of Korean people that he had experienced racism here and it was a thing that happened regularly.
That’s why the backlash to him calling out the racism of blackface from the high school students at Uijeongbu High was so shocking to me.
Here you have a Black man literally known for talking about racism and antiblackness in Korea and him doing so, offering gently to educate others on blackface so they know how harmful it is to do it, essentially triggered a bunch of antiblack assholes into harassing him and destroying his career in Korea.
Today has been full of people talking critically about the AO3’s failures in response to a viral tweet about ao3 as “the fucking fan fiction dream complaint” and yet another moment of folks in fandom going “well i don’t see valid complaints so they don’t exist. As I am still locked due to the horrifying antiblack harassment from February and the fact that I’m multiple fandoms’ favorite punching bag for no actual reason beyond the fact that I write about racism in fandom like this… I’ve reposted some of today’s Twitter thoughts here.
Starting soon, we’re leveling up to Fandom Racism 201.
The goal of what I’ve been privately calling my “school series” is to constantly level up and look at different fandoms, experiences, and displays of racism in fandom/fanworks.
Fandom Racism 101 is about general fandom experience linked with racism. So far, we’ve covered fandom fragility, the empathy gap, dealing with trolls, and body politics. While there’s more to cover for Fandom Racism 101 – we’ve got about 5-7 more pieces planned so far with commissioned guest pieces in the works – it’s time to move to the next level.
What’s the next level?
Looking at specific fandoms and talking about the facts of racism in those fandoms/their most popular fanworks. Incorporating screenshots and posts from people who were in the thick of it alongside theory and practical advice, Fandom Racism 201 aims to provide a framework for future understandings of where those fandoms went wrong and basic advice on how to avoid those particular pitfalls on your way through to other fandoms.
As with everything else I do: if you’re interested in writing about your fandom (past or present) for Fandom Racism 201, feel free to send me a message on my contact form or in my DMs on my website’s Twitter so we can figure something out and I can commission work from you!
One thing that’s super fascinating is that white people who talk about racism in fandom, especially doing a gentle “dear fellow white people” on their own with no attempt to link to BIPOC, get so much less shit for it than anyone else?
Originally posted here and retweets would be appreciated especially if your friends in fandom are falling for the disinformation focused harassment campaigns I’m talking about here.
This video absolutely speaks to my ongoing harassment from supposedly “progressive” fandom spaces (for writing about racism).
Like how this tactic of substitution & disinformation is used to cut people off from their communities + turn people against them.
Still locked on main thanks to people who believe boundaries and fandom are a thing they get, but not me, but if you’re following me, you can see the original thread here.
if your talking point for why the biggest fic archive ever can’t (or ~shouldn’t~) do anything about dehumanizing racist fanworks or the racists posting them on the site sounds IDENTICAL to the weirdos screeching about Dr. Seuss’s most racist works being removed from HIS archives you have a deep RACIST problem and you should work on it
the first amendment protects freedom of speech, true. but if you’re using that to be adamant in protecting overtly racist fanworks along the lines of racists moaning about racist “children’s” books from decades ago…
holy fuck are your priorities scary (seriously, using the 1st amendment in fandom discourse is weird no matter what, but it becomes a PROBLEM if you’re using it to defend racists and NOT people of color who talk about racism here) and i hope you step on something very sharp!
😀
(also the 1st amendment protects freedom of speech from THE GOVERNMENT/CONGRESS making laws, not a TOS: referencing it to wield it against BIPOC in fandom talking about the racism here/in fanworks – who have no power in or out of fandom – is super fucking racist & needs to stop)
I’ve never seen folks in fandom cut up aspects of a white hero to then give those characteristics to another white character. No one’s writing stories where Bucky was always Captain America and he went on to link up with the Avengers as a fandom norm. No one’s rewriting the Skywalker saga so that Luke is actually the (totally unrelated) rogue who falls in love with Leia while Han is shot into the icy vacuum of space.
White heroes are never stripped of their backstories, motivations, and the like to boost a minor white character or villain up to heroic status. The things that make heroes like Captain America, Luke Skywalker, or even Batman relatable are never stripped from them and handed to some other white hero. (And yes, that’s two superhero franchises and Star Wars, but I get to do that.)
What I have seen are plenty of instances where a hero of color has the things that make them unique in in their media not just stripped away, but then given to white characters in their show, film or comic franchise.
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