I'm noticing folks leaving this place or 'taking a break'. Like it's noticeable. I'm not really sure what has been going on here the last few days, it's fragmented and confusing. I don't actually know what I need to do to fix this problem.
You are allowed to have disagreements here and there are tools for you to curate your experience here. What is going wrong this last couple of days?
Help me help us solve the problem. Whatever it is.
📜 Problem:
A proper town hall is a microcosm of the real world.
The real world is filled not only with racism, but also different ways of combating racism.
Some folks have life experiences that invite the idea that thinking of people "as equal" is enough.
The world doesn't treat people equally, though, so the work of education, and keeping critical conversations around injustice going, falls to those already suffering from the worst of racism's impacts. /x
This past week, for instance, there was an articulated experience of CoSo in which the racist murder of three Black people in Jacksonville was seen an issue that had to be relegated to "#Politics" so that white-majority users could "choose" whether to engage in a 24/7 trauma for other users - and also frustration that these topics seemed to have to be brought up by people who suffer daily from racism to be addressed at all. /x
To complicate matters, no marginalized group is a hivemind. In discussions of similar on Twitter & Mastodon, it became clear that some folks in X group *don't* want to see reminders of brutality toward their demographic all the time. Some folks even distrust the eagerness of, say, white allies to display Black bodies in distress in order to "educate" each other.
So some allies pulled back on those forums, especially around videos of murder in process, so as not to re-traumatize. /x
But some marginalized folks *do* want such trauma to be front and centre - no hashtags, no sheltering anyone from the horror of our social contract. That's the path to meaningful change they see as necessary.
(A resonant comparison is the argument about whether or not we should show more images of brutalized bodies in school shootings: some say it's the only way to enact changes; others disagree.) /x
And that's the nature of a thriving discourse: room for dissent, with no one person treated as singular authority for any demographic - because down that road lies thinking of X demographic as *flat*, when every group contains multitudes. /x
We're not there yet, though. Right now, part of CoSo experiences the pressures that come with carrying disproportionate representative loads, compelled to cater to white comfort (for example) and do the work of educating. These marginalized slices of CoSo don't get to be as effortlessly diverse in discourse as they could be, if others would pitch in and do their part to keep the conversation about daily injustice going. /x
Which brings us to the solutions part:
1) We have to recognize that the end result is not going to be *peace* all the time here. Town hall discourse involves dissent, sometimes strongly held and requiring reprieve.
An expectation of full-time peace allies us with the status quo, not the messy pursuit of justice.
We will hurt sometimes here. If fortunate, in ways that also allow us to grow. /x
2) We also have to recognize that we cannot fix the microcosm of this town hall in isolation from the world. So long as the world is unjust (always) we will act imperfectly here and there will always be transgression to work through. No one is precluded from the work of lifelong learning and real-world activism, and no one here *owes* anyone an education. (Do your own homework.) /x
3) We have to make space for a multiplicity of competing perspectives on what needs to be done in the wake of any harm that happens here. A multiplicity of solutions will serve our complex multitudes best. There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to fighting for our right to be complex and distinct humans in a world that wants to uphold a rigid set of tiered categories for our worth instead. /x
4) Similarly, there is no one magical fix that will make everyone *care* about violence elsewhere, and take up a more proactive stance with respect to the work of countering rampant and rising racism (and other hate) in the world beyond CoSo.
This is painful truth.
And we must never "police" the grief-work of those who articulate their frustration here over it: over the lack of full participation in the work of pursuing justice for all.
Listen, without jumping in. /x
Lastly (for me),
5) We *could* normalize a new hashtag, from day one, to replace the problematic coding of "Politics" around demographic trauma. Something more constructive, like "Reality", perhaps?
Either way, there are many reasons people might still opt out - including not wanting to see more trauma toward their own demographic. So we can promote a new hashtag, sure - but we also have to refuse to "police" individuals who don't use it. (That's what mute is for.) /x
That said, again... the key is remembering this:
There are no hiveminds, there is no One True Solution, and we will fuck up time and time again in our interactions here because we live in a fucked up world *out there*.
So, yes, the safety to speak what is uncomfortable for others to hear is hard won and easily lost.
And if it *has* been lost here, even if only for a bit?
Well, we just have to begin again.
And we will.
Much love, my messy fellow human beings. 🕊️
@MLClark @th3j35t3r
Thank you for this well-reasoned thread. Now I have a better understanding of what happened.
@SydneyHarper @MLClark @th3j35t3r
Thank you for taking the time to post this analysis.
I suspect I didn't see all of it. If people literally deleted their accounts, their contributions are no longer visible. (Or they may have already blocked me.)
My $.02 is that the Politics hashtag should only be expected on posts related to a single country's elected officials. Racism is much bigger than that.
@SydneyHarper @MLClark @th3j35t3r
And people should expect their word filters to do the heavy lifting, not hashtags. If an occasional post referring to our former US president with some new and original insulting name sneaks through, just scroll past or mute the OP.
@SydneyHarper @MLClark @th3j35t3r
Everyone can do better at not assuming malicious intent.
Even if malice was intended, a response that does not escalate the situation communicates your feelings to all the third parties reading the post.
You're not going to change the mind of a troll who doesn't even believe what they're saying, but you can still let other people know you're not falling for a troll without making an honestly clueless person go defensive.