#a seemingly fandom-specific problem related to racism
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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Fandom Community Spaces
One of my fandom servers recently imploded. I didn’t just want to post my immediate reactions and spend the next 3-5 business years litigating my feelings, so I took a few months to deconstruct what happened. Now I’m reconstructing everything into a case study on white supremacy culture in progressive spaces.
Below the poll, I’ve spelled out 17 traits of white supremacy culture, as they appear in progressive spaces, organized into four categories. I relied predominantly on the works of Tema Okun and Robin DiAngelo, whose works and websites expand upon everything I talk about.
I don’t want anyone to beat each other (or themselves) up if they’ve noticed these traits. Just fix it.
My goals with this guide:
Fans can put names to their observations.
Mods/Leaders of fandom spaces ask themselves, “how many of these have I done?”
Everyone gets an idea for what can be done about these traits.
Each listed trait has:
Definition of the trait
Common or fandom-specific examples
Suggestions to begin fixing it
Additional Commentary specific to this particular server incident
That makes this post very long, but it should be easy to skip over sections.
(If you are thinking of sending someone this post because they expressed a lot of these traits, first take a moment and identify how many of these traits you have practiced.
If someone sent you this post as an accusation, show them the above paragraph and ask what traits they recognize in their own behavior. If they say "none," ignore that person. I have will not facilitate the use of anti-racism as a smokescreen for bullying.)
I wasn't able to put this poll at the bottom of the post. I encourage you to wait until you get to the end and then answer the poll.
Because Tumblr polls expire in a week, I also encourage you to answer the same poll here on StrawPoll.
White Supremacy Culture Traits
Context (Basic Outline of What Happened)
In late Oct. 2023, someone on this server made an insensitive joke regarding Native American spirituality. They were quickly corrected by another member, and a third, indigenous member defended the gravity of their culture.
In DMs, a server mod (without the knowledge of the rest of the mod team) rebuked that indigenous server member for mini-modding, but claimed they would also moderate the person who made the joke in the first place; that person who made the joke was this mod’s friend.
This Inciting Incident Mod never did moderate their friend. When this came to light for the rest of the mod team in early Dec. 2023, the Inciting Incident Mod left before they could be ‘fired.’ Meanwhile, the Server Owner tried to cover up the preceding mess when announcing this mod’s departure.
The Indigenous Server Member used @everyone to explain to the server what had happened, dropped screenshots, and left the server.
When the community at large, including other mods, demanded more accountability and action from the mod team and the admins, the Server Owner doubled down on their defensiveness and denials for the next month.
Behind the scenes/in mod chats, the rest of the mods tried to advocate for the same things that the community was demanding. Most of their suggestions were shot down and input disregarded (primarily by the Server Owner).
Ultimately, all the mods were “let go” (fired), leaving only two admins. The second Admin largely followed the lead of the Server Owner, who was the one posting most of the announcements and engaging in the discourse.
The Admins unilaterally froze the server mid-conversations in late Jan. 2024.
They deleted the server on March 4th, 2024.
I. White Fragility
White fragility is the various phenomena by which white fans’ distress at discussions of racism take precedence over the actual occurrences of racism. This is not a conscious tactic, but the result of the layers of insulation from irl racism that white people are conditioned with, combined with white culture and experience being so pervasive as to become invisible.
1: Right To Comfort
Believing that white fans’ requirement for comfort in fandom spaces is more important than the on-going discomfort fans of color experience in the same spaces.
Examples:
Prioritizing the emotional and psychological comfort of some fans over the on-going experiences of other fans.
Scapegoating those who named the racism in the community and accusing them of ‘rocking the boat.’
These might sound familiar:
"This is just supposed to be a fun hobby."
"Can we get back to the good vibes?"
"Why can't we all just get along?"
“Hobbies/Fun shouldn’t be this much work.”
Treating any and all discussion of racism as acts of antagonism.
Fixes:
Learn to sit with discomfort before responding or (re)acting, especially if faced with an accusation. It’s an opportunity for growth, not an opening for attack.
Avoid taking criticisms personally, and avoid treating feedback as accusations. Yes, some accusations and call-outs are personal, but most are not. Even the ones that are personal need not be treated as final value judgments nor the end of the world.
Additional Commentary:
The white fan who’d made the insensitive joke in the first place did not lash out at being corrected. The discomfort was predominantly from some white mods who interpreted all mentions of racism as a conflict.
This trait is frequently found the trait called ‘Urgency.’
2: Defensiveness
Reacting to criticisms as if they were personal attacks, prioritizing comfort over growth, and using hurt feelings to derail discussions.
As author @xiranjayzhao put it in their video discussing a similar incident in the publishing industry, “If you are more concerned at being called racist than racism itself, that is an active hindrance to dismantling racism.”
Examples:
Treating criticism as threatening, inappropriate, or rude.
Focusing on making sure one’s own feelings or the feelings of community leaders are not getting hurt. This process often takes up more time and energy than addressing the actual problems do.
Spend energy defending against charges of racism instead of examining how racism might actually be happening.
White fans targeted by other oppressions (I.e. sexism, homophobia, etc.) express resentment because they feel that the naming of racism is erasing their experiences of marginalization from their other identities. This is especially prevalent in fandom as our communities are dominated by women and queer people.
Fixes:
Identify and understand the link between defensiveness and fear. When you recognize your own defensiveness, ask yourself what you are defending, and what you feel that you are defending against.
Develop culture of naming defensiveness when it arises.
Be honest with yourself and with the community about the power dynamics in the situation and respond thoughtfully. The person with greater power has the greater responsibility to name and move through their own defensiveness.
This is most important for small, online community leaders (I.e. Discord server mods). However little power we feel like we have, we still have more power than all the other members.
Additional Commentary:
Defensiveness was ultimately the biggest problem in this particular server’s implosion, and continues to be the most prevalent problem I observe in many other communities. The majority of the problems in these communities came not from actual acts of racism or patterns of insensitivity, but a few white fans’ defensiveness when these were named.
3: Fear of Open Conflict
When discomfort with talking about racism begets outright avoidance. This becomes “toxic positivity,” creating a pattern of suppressing any and all disagreements with a fixation on “keeping the peace.”
Examples:
Ignoring or deflecting conflict, no matter how minor.
Emphasis on tone, performing friendliness, and on everyone ‘calming down’ once even a hint of conflict arises.
Scapegoating people who bring up racism or equating criticisms with ‘rudeness.’
Fixes:
Role play, discuss, or plan for ways to handle conflict before it happens.
Don't require hard issues to be raised in `acceptable' ways.
Once a conflict is resolved, revisit it and see how it might have been handled differently.
Additional Commentary:
This particular server’s admin team was understandably hypersensitive to conflict; the server had been previously wracked by fandom dramas unrelated to racism. However, this sympathetic feeling metastasized into an unsympathetic habit of total conflict suppression. Had that Inciting Incident Mod not reacted to that faint hint of friction, or had the admins later been willing to name and acknowledge mistakes from the moderation team as an unintended instance of racism, almost none of this final drama would have happened.
4: Denial
Insistence that racism is an individual problem that requires intent; refusal to see or acknowledge systemic problems brought to one’s attention.
Examples:
A pattern of downplaying or denying what POC are saying about their experiences.
Insisting intent is more important than impact.
Insisting that if someone did not mean to be racist, then the harms they perpetuated cannot have been serious.
Insisting that a person or group can free from racialized conditioning, leading to statements like "I don't see color," “I don’t care what anyone’s race is,” “we can’t even tell race on the Internet,” and "we're all the same."
Fixes:
Learn to acknowledge any fear that naming racism brings up; the feeling is not wrong or right. Move through the feeling and address what has been raised.
Assume that any naming of racism is on target. Instead of asking, “is it racism,” ask, “how is it racism?”
Learn not to take accusations of racism or white supremacy culture as personal attacks or criticisms.
Get into the habit of saying, “tell me more,” instead of jumping to denial and counter arguments.
II. Exceptionalism
AKA “the Illusion of Control.” The belief, conscious or subconscious, that one knows the right way to do things and is uniquely qualified implement it. This might literally mean one’s self, or just people similar to one’s self.
5: Paternalism
The belief that one can dictate what is ‘best’ for everyone or make decisions on others’ behalf without their input.
Examples:
Deeming it unnecessary to understand the viewpoints and experiences of people for whom one is making decisions.
Labeling people for whom one is making decisions as unqualified.
Majority of community members get marginalized from decision-making processes. Either there is no mechanism for community input, or community input is disregarded by those in power.
Frequently, these decisions also have the most outsized impact on those with the least power, e.x. members who don’t have personal friendships with mods.
Fixes:
Realize that everyone has a worldview, including you. No one’s experiences or education (or lack thereof) disqualifies them from having agency in your community.
Always include those most affected by community decisions in the brainstorming and decision-making processes.
Build in an understanding that every approach yields unintended consequences; even the most strategically made decisions will have unanticipated consequences.
Additional Commentary:
The Server Owner consistently made unilateral decisions on other people’s behalf. They also required members to be 21+ in this server, despite the show it was for only being 18+
In the interest of living up to my own standards, I must acknowledge that I was also being paternalistic.
When I first joined the server, I questioned that age requirement. The Server Owner claimed that they felt uncomfortable talking about mature topics around 18-20 year olds…and “joked” that they viewed 18-20 year olds like children. Their defensiveness reminded me of elementary school children insisting kids in the grade immediately below them are babies. On the spot, I thought the Server Owner must be in their early 20s at the oldest. With zero evidence but a lot of confirmation bias, this feeling cemented into an assumption due to some of their moderation choices (e.x. pinning messages by their whims, thus confusing newcomers). I even wondered if they grew up in a cult environment due to unusual gaps in their knowledge (e.x. being surprised that it didn’t snow in most of Thailand). I thought I could and should, over time, convince them of 'better' ways to moderate, and attributed my disagreements with some of their moderation choices to their youth.
Then the Server Owner mentioned having been to uni nearly 20 years ago, making them almost double the age I’d assumed they were.
Looking back, this was an act of paternalism on my part that spanned over a year and a half. I’m not proud of this, and I would like to think I would still come to be ashamed of this even if the Server Owner actually had been as young as I thought they were. Regardless of their actual age, this was an incredibly paternalistic viewpoint for me to have about any adult.
6: Power Hoarding
People scrabbling to hold onto whatever little power they have; resisting anything which makes them feel threatened in their position of leadership or influence.
Examples:
Feeling threatened when someone suggests changes in how things should be done in the community.
Suggestions for change often get taken as an indicator of poor leadership.
People with power insisting they do not feel threatened or defensive in the face of suggestions for change.
Assuming that anyone wanting a change are ill-informed or malicious.
“Blaming the messenger,” such as focusing on the person advocating for change rather than the substance of what change they are trying to make.
Fixes:
Leaders should expect challenges and change and learn to see this a sign that someone cares about the community enough to want to stay and reform it. Because our spaces are predominantly for hobbies, people have less need to stay, even if they have a strong desire to. If someone truly thought we were hopeless leaders, they would not be advocating for change; they would just leave.
Adopt a “tell me more” approach when someone suggests a change or challenges an existing structure * even if the thing they are trying to change is something you care deeply about preserving.
Make friends with your ego. Everyone has one. You’ll do better in the long run when you know what will automatically kick up your defensiveness; don’t try to pretend nothing will.
Additional Commentary:
The admins caused many of their own problems by consistently disregarding others’ input; they not only ignored the criticisms of the community, they ‘fired’ the entire rest of the mod team for giving suggestions that the admins did not want to hear.
7: Individualism
Believing that one can be immune from social conditioning and systemic biases, or that individual actions are sufficient to change a community.
Examples:
Believing that one can be “isolated” from the conditioning of the culture they were raised in.
Not seeing the ways dominant identities * in gender, class, sexuality, religion, able-bodiedness, age, etc. * are informed by belonging to a group that shapes cultural norms and behavior.
This one is also hard for people in fandom to recognize. Many of us are marginalized in one aspect of our identity, and marginalization in one area can make it incredibly difficult to recognize or acknowledge privilege in another.
Accusing people advocating for change of “not being team players,” because one does not recognize the large groups on whose behalf they are advocating for.
Focusing on whether or not an individual “is racist,” while ignoring systemic racism in the community’s culture or leadership.
Fixes:
Get into the habit of acknowledging both your marginalizations and your privileges. For example, I am a queer woman of color, which are three traits of marginalization. I was also raised middle-class, I have a college degree, and I am cis; three traits of privilege. All these traits inform my experiences and world view and make me subjective in different ways.
Learn how our dominant identities and how our membership in dominant identity groups informs us both overtly and covertly (while realizing too that these identities do not have to define us).
Realize we all have internalized conditioning, including racist conditioning. Commitment to anti-racism is not about being ‘good’ or ‘bad;’ it’s a commit to challenge one’s own conditioning and subconscious biases on an on-going basis.
Focus on collective accountability as much as individual accountability.
Because many people, especially on social media, use ‘accountability’ as a euphemism for ‘punishment,’ I want to be clear that this does not mean collective punishment. It means recognizing that people react to their peers (dis)approval on even the smallest scale, that people want to fit in, and that people often fear standing out. We are often not making individual decisions so much as “going with their gut” or “going with the flow.” When that’s the case, that means we need to re-condition what our gut tells us and change where that flow is going * both of which are community actions, not individual ones.
Additional Commentary:
In the Individualism page on her website, Tema Okun shared a personal story about how her upbringing had blinded her to the very real risks her POC colleagues faced even while working with well-intentioned white leaders. This story resonated with me and my experience in this fandom server.
The white admins either did not understand (or did not care) what it would cost a POC like me to try to help them. I was attempting to mediate rather than prosecute, and speaking gently as I did - which I was only doing to try to balance the need for change against the admins’ need for white comfort. Multiple people blocked me during this time period, and most did not see what came after. I try not to assume I’m more important or relevant than I am, but I and many others noticed the drastic change in the admins’ behavior once my rhetoric shifted from ‘benefit of the doubt’ to ‘naming mistakes and suggesting changes.’ I was trying to help the admins, but it came out to nothing and I still ended up paying a price and losing friends.
8: I'm The Only One
The assumption that one knows best; therefore, they have the unique right and responsibility to take unilateral action.
Examples:
Believing that the only way to get something done right is to do it one’s self. (Related to ‘One Right Way.’)
Believing that only one person is entitled or qualified to determine the right way and take action, typically in isolation from the people who will be impacted by our decisions.
Often goes hand-in-hand with micro-management (or in the case of online communities, micro-moderation).
Attempting to downplay or cover-up flaws or mistakes in leadership, fearing that the community cannot survive people discovering leadership isn’t perfect.
Fixes:
Hold ourselves and each other accountable for mistakes without assuming that we need to be perfect to lead.
Focus on collaborative and collective strategies for responding to mistakes, including accountability but also growth and inner development.
Leaders should make an effort to take in input from as many sources as possible, including the people saying things they do not like, do not want to hear or are challenging their leadership.
Especially the individuals who hold the most power, such as server admins and owners (who have more power than other mods). The higher up in this hierarchy that we are, the more likely that anyone who truly thinks we’re hopeless would simply opt to leave…which means the higher up in the hierarchy we are, the more likely that anyone who is challenging us still expects both themselves and us to stay where we are. Their challenges are not a threat, but an opportunity for growth.
Additional Commentary:
Those last two bullet points under Examples and Instances are what kicked off the entire server-ending drama in the first place. Even though the Inciting Incident Mod made a truly disappointing mistake, I don’t actually see them as having made the biggest misstep in this mess. This mod micro-managed someone and abused their power to shield a friend, but had the admins been willing to acknowledge those mistakes directly, most of the ensuing drama would not have happened.
When I asked the Server Owner to let someone else take over the server instead of closing it off completely, they claimed all the people I suggested were not equipped to handle the server. The only person they were willing to let take over the server was someone who had uncritically supported them during all the discourse. (Though I later found out that this entire discussion was never in good faith to begin with; explanation in the Final Feelings section below.)
9: Entitlement.
Assuming a right to something without any consideration for the possibility that one may not have the right. This assumption frequently is unidirectional and/or implicitly only functions as long as most other people do not have a similar right.
This trait was not core to either Tema Okun’s work on white supremacy culture nor Robin DiAngelo’s work on white fragility. However, it is an underlying component of racism (who is entitled to what), white supremacy culture (entitlement to other people’s works), and white fragility (entitlement to comfort).
Examples:
Assuming that one does not need to ask (or wait for an answer) to use someone else’s work for one’s own purposes. (Related to the trait ‘Urgency.’)
Believing that people’s boundaries regarding their work or creations do not matter. I hope I don’t need to spell out why this problem gets so in fanfic-based fandom spaces. That can of worms would need its own post and I’m already exhausted from this post.
Related to Right to Comfort: believing one is entitled to a peaceful community, even when it comes at the expense of everyone else’s sense of safety and belonging.
Fixes:
Assume one does not have permission until and unless told you do.
Graciousness if someone does not want you to use their works.
Their reasons may have nothing to do with you, so also learn not take someone else’s refusal personally.
When you do assume a right, take a moment to imagine it’s reversal (I.e. everyone else having the same rights to your work or output). How comfortable are you with this prospect of everyone ‘borrowing’ from you that which you are currently trying to borrow from someone else?
Additional Commentary:
I detailed my direct experience with the admins' entitlement down below under the trait titled ‘Urgency.’
This trend continued with their behaviors towards what server content they did and didn’t delete prior to deleting the whole server. When fans who left or were banned insisted all their own messages in the server be deleted, they were refused on the basis of ‘preserving’ the server. Yet the admins had no problems deleting every channel that had even a shred of discourse in it. They later deleted a few other channels on the grounds of people’s personal information potentially being in those channels and putting members at risk…except that if there was any such information, it had always been present in this channels; why did it suddenly matter now? I concede that they eventually deleted the individual members’ messages per their requests, and that the fear-mongering about private information came from another member altogether. However, between nebulous accusations that an admin had been party to a past doxxing of this member in the first place and the on-going problem of the admins behaving with false urgency (another trait below), I’m having a very hard time being sympathetic about this or giving them any more benefit of the doubt. Their selection of which channels to delete look less like protecting server members and more like a failed attempted to protect their own reputations.
III. Binary Thinking
This is not just a futile attempt to simplify reality, but an entitlement to a simplified reality and a habit of attempting to force others into one’s own dualistic constructions.
10: Either/Or
Polarization of issues and assumptions, categorical thinking, and viewing everything through this binary lens.
Examples:
Positioning or presenting options or issues as either/or -- good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us, pro/anti, good/evil, safe/dangerous, etc.
Related to Perfectionism: a suggested solution must be either perfect or it’s useless.
Tendency to escalate instead of de-escalating, especially in a context where de-escalating is viewed as dismissing a problem.
Generalizing individual experiences or statements to the collective, or attempting to dismiss a claim because it is coming from an individual; either “everyone” is saying something or “no one” is saying it.
Fixes:
Cultivate a habit or community culture of looking for multiple ‘takes,’ viewpoints, and conclusions.
Break the habit of trying to sort people and ideas into two or a few categories.
Practice taking situations with seemingly only two possibilities and identifying points between them or alternative options altogether.
Be willing to set a future date or deadline for continuing a disagreement in order to de-escalate emotions in the moment. We have more options than either fixing everything in the moment or ignoring problems forever.
Additional Commentary:
When asked for transparency, this server’s Admins acted as if mistakes had to be either ignored or turned into a big production. This left no room to acknowledge a mistake, learn, and move on, since that was neither ignoring the mistake nor treating it with sufficient drama.
11: Perfectionism
Belief that there is a single right way to accomplish something. Belief that individuals must implement only correct, successful actions (and that missteps and mistakes represent fundamental character flaws).
Examples:
Mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them.
Making a mistake is confused with being a mistake; doing wrong is confused with being wrong.
Believing a problem can be permanently resolved with the correct or ‘perfect’ course of action.
Fixes:
Develop a community where the expectation is that everyone will make mistakes, but those mistakes are opportunities for learning, not value judgments.
Accept that, when faced with a systemic or deeply entrenched issues, community leaders will need time to address the problems.
They will probably need to try multiple ideas, some of which might not work. That’s okay; it does not have to be a failure if you learn from it and try again.
Additional Commentary:
In the case of this server’s implosion, perfectionism appeared with the Admins’ fixation on looking for a solution that would ‘put the matter to rest.’ They ignored or actively derided suggestions that did not ‘solve’ the problem in its entirety.
12: One Right Way
The belief that there is a particular correct or ideal way of doing this (and that fault lies with others for not following this particular correct way).
Examples:
Assuming that once people are introduced to the right way, they will ‘see the light’ and adopt it.
Believing that when one’s way is not working, the fault lies with everyone else for not ‘converting,’ not the method itself.
Related to perfectionism: believing there is a singular or permanent solution to on-going, systemic problems.
Believing only certain people are qualified to address or resolve problems. This is especially prevalent among people whose post-secondary education was mostly institutional (i.e. college).
Fixes:
Create a culture of support that recognizes how mistakes sometimes lead to positive results.
Challenge notions of what constitutes the "right way" and what defines a "mistake."
Catch our internalized assumptions about being ‘qualified’ to fix a problem on our own or take on a large responsibility.
Additional Commentary:
Once again, in the interests of living up to my own standards, that means admitting when I’m doing or did the very habits I’m castigating. While my intent was not to behave as if I thought there was One Right Way, I recognize that my actions had the same impact as if I did believe in One Right Way. I presented a solution (collection of rules, guides, and channels) from a server I owned in another fandom entirely, and implied that there was only one right way to ‘fix’ the server.
That said, their conduct in utilizing this also reflected Entitlement and Urgency (which is where I elaborated).
13: (Belief in) Objectivity
The belief that there is some neutral, unbiased experience or viewpoint a person can have.
Because patriarchy so often uses claims of emotionality to dismiss women, many women become oversensitive to claims of subjectivity or identity-based bias. This can make recognizing the invalidity of objectivity difficult in communities whose leadership is dominated by women, especially white women (as white men tend to be most likely to rely on accusations of excess emotion in the first place).
Examples:
Fixation on prioritizing facts over feelings, or thinking feelings can be disregarded and ignored.
Requiring people to think in a linear fashion or otherwise expecting others to perform only the type of logic validated by those in power.
Those in power get to be scared, hurt, or angry and still viewed as rational/logical, while marginalized people who are visibly scared, hurt, or angry are deemed irrational/illogical.
Refusal to acknowledge when a certain line of logic is covering an emotional bias, perspective, or agenda.
Fixes:
Own up to one’s subjectivity; instead of assuming that one can have some arch-neutral worldview, be clear about your background, experiences, and potential biases (whether you believe you actually have these biases or not).
Recognize your own worldview will be as subjective as everybody else’s. If your view of society is also part of the dominant view of society (e.x. if you are white and/or cis and/or male and/or…), this means you were probably conditioned to believe certain assumptions are objective when they are actually subjective.
There is no way to be human without being biased by one’s identity and experience; some identities are just so privileged or normalized by institutions that they are the “invisible” default or norm.
Get into the habit of trying to determine what a situation you are in looks like from the outside, what information others do and do not have, or getting diverse perspectives on various situations.
By “get into the habit,” I mean we should practice doing this even in situations without confrontation, crisis, or argument. Analyze successful incidents and events this way to get the practice for handling unsuccessful incidents and crises.
Utilize ‘I’ statements and make sure not to assume that your personal experience is the same as everyone else’s experiences.
Community leaders have to take extra special care with what we say about our communities and how we present our assumptions and experiences. When we claim a community is trustworthy or safe, we just make it even less trustworthy or safe for anyone feels otherwise, because this disconnect between our experiences (that we generalize) and theirs (that we individualize) creates a barrier against further feedback.
Additional Commentary:
This was also related to at least one admin struggling to disconnect their own experiences with everyone else’s experiences. To the admin, because so much of their own time was consumed by this discourse, they spoke and behaved as if this were consuming the entire server. They did not realize that most of the members of the server had nothing to do with this discourse, and many did not even know it was happening…until the admin started repeatedly utilizing @everyone. This implies the admin viewed their own experience as “objective” and thus projected their own experience onto everybody else.
VI. Validation Seeking
I called this collection of traits ‘validation seeking’ because they all trace back to appeals to external authorities or claims of external pressures.
14: Progress = More
Assuming solutions always require “more” of something; never considering that existing resources could be sufficient or that “less” might be a solution.
Examples:
Assuming the goal is always to grow membership, rather than maintaining an enjoyable community
Assuming that “more” will fix a problem (e.x. more moderators will fix a moderation problem)
Disregarding the costs of growth (such as how increased number of channels can make a community overwhelming to newcomers)
Valuing people who have achieved a certain milestone or objective metric of progress more than those who have not (e.x. valuing older members over younger ones, valuing college-educated members over those without college education, etc.)
Fixes:
Try to make sustainable decisions, with an aim not for endless growth but maintaining the actual goal of the community.
When pursuing “more” of something to solve a problem, first evaluate what you actually need and determine why the existing number of resources is no longer sufficient when it previously had been.
For example, are you actually pursuing more moderators because there is an increase in activity and the existing moderation team feels burnt out and falling behind? Or are you just assuming that you need more moderators regardless of activity levels?
15: Quantity Over Quality
Believing that only things that can be numerically measured have value (and that things which cannot be measured have little to no value).
Examples:
Fixation on things like number of members in a community (quantity) over the members’ relationships and experiences in said community (quality)
Treating quantified milestones as a goal in their own right, rather than means to an end or a guideline (e.x. acquiring a certain number of moderators or maintaining a certain number of channels in a server)
Discomfort with emotions and feelings (as they cannot be measured objectively)
Fixes:
Determine traits and practices important to your community which cannot be easily quantatively (safety, respect, mutualism, etc.) and think of ways to evaluate them (for example: open-ended questions in a survey instead of relying exclusively on numerical ratings or menu options)
Focus less on output goals and more on process goals, such as how many new ideas were considered or how many people felt fully heard in a meeting. Even if, in the short run, this feels like leading to a bunch of unproductive meetings, in the long run this creates a more robust decision-making process.
Treat ‘accountability’ not as a euphemism for punishment (which social media tends to do), but as an opening for receiving support.
Additional Commentary:
The admins fixated on obtaining more moderators, but the reality is that the problems facing the community did not need more moderators, but rather a shift in culture altogether - a thing which could have easily been engendered by the admins on their own, even without additional moderators.
16: Worshiping the Written Word
Fixation on knowledge provided by institutions over people’s lived experiences and on-going, dynamic realities.
This one is hard to recognize in virtual communities because most or all of our interactions are “written” in chats and social media.
Examples:
Attempting to use dictionary definitions of words as arguments in and of themselves or treating them as the end of an argument.
Refusing to acknowledge that the way people use a word in daily living may not match up to the institutional definition.
Using errors in spelling, grammar, or language to justify dismissing someone’s arguments.
Over-valuing people who can write well (or just write a lot), and undervaluing the contributions from people who rely on other media formats or informal documentation.
Fixes:
Treat encyclopedia articles and dictionary definitions as a conversation starter, not an argument ender, e.x. “This is my understanding of that word; what’s yours?” or “In what ways does this ‘official’ definition fall short?”
Focus less on using resources (articles, videos, guides, etc.) as an appeal to authority in an argument, and more as a starting point from which you develop your own community guidelines.
Additional Commentary:
I had an out-sized impact on discourse simply because I could write a lot in one go. Some of that was me anonymously relaying other people’s words on their behalf and some was original on my part; most of what I said simply reiterated what others had already conveyed. However, as I did so in a pseudo-academic manner, my word was given more weight.
Sharing of resources like educational articles or videos were treated as the end of a discussion, rather than the start of one.
17: Urgency
Applying extremely short deadlines to action, giving no time for rest or consideration. Utilizing the overarching urgency of racism as an excuse for short-sighted, short-term actions.
Examples:
Related to Quality Over Quantity: prioritizes measurable actions over impact.
Fixation on appearing to address racism moreso than actually doing it.
Uses expediency to justify poor-decision making processes or lack of consideration (related to Entitlement, Power Hoarding, and Conflict Aversion).
Often relies on perpetuating the idea that racism can be “solved” (which in turn implies that future accusations of racism cannot be made, nor community problems discussed).
Creating a culture of anxiety as people believe they must act immediately or they will never get to act at all.
Related to Right to Comfort: rushing decision-making in order to rush towards an idealized state of no further conflict.
Fixes:
When the feeling of urgency arises, slow down and encourage people pause, restate the goal, and dive deeper into alternatives.
Avoid making decisions under extreme pressure.
Work to distinguish what is actual pressure and what is pressure that you or others are creating.
Establish plans ahead of time for how decisions will be made during times of urgency, and how crises can be handled in the short-term while leaders evaluate ideas for long-term change.
This is related to Conflict Avoidance. When community leaders are uncomfortable with conflict, this also means not wanting to think about potential conflicts, and thus having no plans when conflict arises anyway. Becoming comfortable with conflict also allows planning for conflict management.
Additional Commentary:
When I showed the admins my fandom wank resolving set-up from another server (as mentioned in my additional commentary on One Right Way), they asked me if they could just use it as it was. However, they were too impatient to actually wait for an answer and used it, anyway, before I could respond. It was very clear that my answer never actually mattered to them. Had they waited, I would have explained how this exact set-up was not a good fit for this community and its current problems; I was sharing it assuming they would use it as a source of inspiration to brainstorm their own ideas for their own server. In addition, while I did not mind sharing, these were not my sole creation, but the product of a team of mods in my other server. Even if it had been a good fit, I would have checked with other mods whose labor had gone into this set-up to see if they were also alright with its wholesale reuse.
My experience is only one example. Ultimately, the admins kept fumbling, and increasingly claimed it was all due to the pressure and demands from the community that they ‘handle it’ - refusing to acknowledge that community members weren’t asking for an immediate solution to every problem. This urgency was self-inflicted. The server admins disregarded all their remaining mods’ suggestions that would have given them more time to address these problems carefully. Server-wide slow-downs, channel trimming, temporary server freeze, etc. - the admins had multiple ideas given to them, but shot them all down. The admins’ goal was not to address the problems, but to suppress discussions of racism as fast as possible because they were uncomfortable with admitting its existence in the first place (see Right to Comfort at the top).
Final Feelings
What Took Me So Long To Say Anything?
I didn’t want to risk the admins prematurely deleting the server out of spite. They were already unilaterally and suddenly taking away a community space from hundreds of fans entirely for their own benefit. I could not count on them being above robbing people the final opportunity to recover the last shreds of their materials and memories from the server.
I also, quite frankly, just had a lot going on in my offline life.
I continued to take my time even after they deleted the server because I was hurt and furious. I needed time to turn what was originally a soliloquy of my sorrows into an educational guide.
This was exacerbated by finding out that the admins faked the ‘death’ of the server:
As you can imagine, I was furious - and to be honest, I still am. That anger was precisely why I made myself slow down. I did not want to burn down the fandom for the sake of keeping only myself warm.
Complicated Feelings
I feel hurt and betrayed by the Admins and disappointed in the Inciting Incident Mod…but one thing I will say for them is that they expressed interest in learning the language and culture of the country that our fandom’s show came from.
They showed far more interest than that aforementioned Indigenous Server Member ever did.
I don’t begrudge this indigenous fan for defending their cultural tradition, nor their anger over how it was handled. I also acknowledge that in fandom and irl, Asian diaspora often end up partaking in white supremacy culture and entitlements. However, I do find this fan's umbrage at the initial ignorance to be tremendously hypocritical given this fan’s approach to Asian cultures, traditions, and histories. Their fanfics, server interactions, and other fanworks in this Asian media fandom demonstrated incredible disregard about Asian cultures - one which this fan never showed any interest in undoing or challenging.
I doubt it was a coincidence that this fan blocked me on Discord right around the time I started talking about the westernization of eastern characters and settings. Even if it was, that doesn’t lessen the pervasive apathy towards Asian culture in their fandom activities.
I routinely see fans call for the decolonization fandom when it comes to BIPOC people settings, only for these same fans to turn around and perpetuate the colonization of fandom when it comes to Asian people and settings.
This does not mean western fans shouldn’t participate in an eastern fandom! This participation is the best way to learn about a new culture. Mistakes and missteps are parts of the learning process, both at the individual level and at the collective level.
This is also not to pass a judgment on that specific fan or their creative works. That would be hypocritical of me in turn, given I’ve enjoyed some of those stories and fanworks, anyway.
I am bringing this up to demonstrate why solidarity is difficult for fans of color.
As an Asian diaspora fan in particular, I hate feeling like my choices are “BIPOC fans with ignorance and apathy that they don’t want to unpack” and “white fans with supremacy culture that they don’t want to unpack.” Either way, I’m going to have to put up with a ton of entitlement (never mind the rampant fetishization of Asians from all sides, which is its own can of worms I can’t even open right now).
And if I try to speak up about any of this, I will get blocked or I will be accused of being an anti-fandom killjoy.
Again.
Final Thoughts
People change for the better, and communities change for the better.
I know fandom can change because I’ve seen how it’s already changed. Fans take social justice issues and racial justice issues far more seriously than they did 20, 10, or even 5 years ago, and that’s just my own living memory of fandom.
We should always take a moment to recognize and celebrate how much better we are today than we were in the metaphorical yesterday.
But being better than yesterday does not mean being good enough for tomorrow.
And we still have a long way to go.
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Thank you for reading this monstrously long post all the way to the end. Please remember to answer the poll at the top. Please reblog, and I encourage you to add your own experiences when you do.
#kinnporsche#discord#fandom#shipping#discourse#meta#thai bl#teen wolf#star wars#marvel#on fandom#fandom meta#fandom issues#i'm sure this is happening in lots of fandoms#the ones tagged are just ones i've seen or immediately heard#fandom racism#fandom problems#i encourage you to tag it with the other#fandoms#you have seen these traits in#it would not be the first time i made a post about#a seemingly fandom-specific problem related to racism#only for it turn out to be super relatable in other fandoms#that i have never been in or even heard of
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i think what many people fail to realize about hp as a whole is that it has reached 100% cultural saturation. everyone has either seen the movies, read the books, or at the very least, they have some vague understanding of the overarching story line. but, still, most people are unaware of jkr’s vile bigotry, unless they are both: chronically online and in our hp-related/fandom adjacent spaces. i was actually having a conversation with a co-worker today who had no idea about jkr’s views/the active damage they have caused. yet, she’s not only queer, but also an ally to the trans community. and i think a lot of the people who go out of their way to send anon hate do so with a “white-lens” view of advocacy. that is not to say that every hater on the internet is a white person, but what i mean to say is: most of these individuals have never actually done the tedious and often exhausting work that real advocacy calls for.
it reminds me of when people think they can hastily plan for a strike, where they publicly announce that they are going to stop financially supporting a multi-billion dollar corporation for three days and assume that will “hit them where it hurts” and incite significant change. when, in reality, advocacy takes months of planning and preparation and prioritizes the needs of vulnerable populations first. people are reasonably angry, but they fail to turn that anger into action because our society as a whole makes “on the ground” advocacy work seemingly impossible.
what we do here in fandom where we dissect, pick apart, inspect, and transform canon from a critical lens or create joy and inspire imagination are quite literally revolutionary tools, and i say that with no exaggeration. this is not a new idea, in fact, it is something black activists, trans women of color, and other marginalized populations have been saying for decades.
i don’t believe fandom spaces are inherently revolutionary and i don’t think they are the end all be all of advocacy work, but i do believe them necessary specifically because they incite joy and create space for imagination. instead of a breeding ground for revolutionaries, they are a "practice-ground" for these revolutionary tools. they allow us to deconstruct the things that have caused harm and transform them into something joyful and imaginative, which is important because it does not erase the reality of what exists, but instead, allows us to engage with it under a new lens.
to want to denounce and erase all media for how problematic it is would be to disengage with works that have both failed us and brought us to where we are today. popular fiction and culture is a powerful reflection of social problems, and to erase them is to both denounce how far we've come, but also to leave us with nothing to look back on. what would the world look like if we had nothing to reflect upon? nothing to consider? nothing to dissect and say: this is what we've gotten right so far and here is what we've done wrong. it is specifically why disney+ has not removed content that is blatantly racist media, but instead added a black screen with words that read: "this program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions" with the stated intention of sparking conversations about harmful stereotypes. while disney is not a shining example of allyship, this corporation has still managed to grasp an important concept: to erase, denounce, and disengage with content that is problematic is to remove examples of racism, transphobia, xenophobia and disallow the critical conversations that fandom spaces can be host to.
when we erase examples, and therefore critiques of these things, we stop being able to identify them, becoming first oblivious and then desensitized to tropes and stereotypes that find its way into the imagery of the world around us, even when they are right in front of us.
big thank you to @saintgarbanzo for your input and for helping me find the courage i needed to post this
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Western Shintō and Orientalism
Frustratingly, and disappointingly, my years in the Western Shintō community have been tainted by years of racism and Orientalism. Teen Vogue has a great article introducing the concept of Orientalism here. I shall quote a particularly relevant passage which defines Orientalism quite clearly:
Put simply, the “Orient” is a colonial invention. Orientalism is a collection of binaries — between “East” and “West,” foreign and familiar, civilized and uncivilized, primitive and progressive, colonizer and colonized, self and Other. It is a system of representation through which the West produced the East as its opposite, its “surrogate and underground self” — a strange, backward, barbaric land, steeped in mysticism and danger.
You may wonder how Orientalism is applied to Shintō specifically. To give some examples, people may obsess over the more ‘dark’ folk customs (i.e. seemingly sexual rituals or ‘spooky’ folklore), or they may claim that Shintō should be praised for enduring as a polytheist religion (which it is not necessarily, and I find this argument to be only repeatedly made by white right wingers out to tokenize Shintō). Other times, people treat it like a fandom activity.
It is completely okay to like anime, manga, and Japanese video games, but what is not okay is to assume you have an understanding of Shintō, or any part of actual Japanese life and culture, from that media. I believe most Japanese-Americans have related to the frustration brought by well-meaning white people who misunderstand Japanese culture to be “just like anime”. Many people assume I watch anime or manga simply because I am Japanese.
Too often, I have seen white people who think that Japanese culture is one extreme notion or the other without actually reading about it. In Western Shintō spaces, this tends to manifest itself as a romanticized country where tradition is valued, which is not necessarily true. The opposite is also an Othering view, however -- Cool Japan (i.e. the Japan of technological future) is not any less Orientalist than “I have brought shame to my family” Orientalism. Like any country, Japan has its problems, and many people are struggling for rights and change within it.
Orientalism within Shintō means white people who are not ordained nor familiar with the culture feel qualified, or even entitled, to being resources on Shintō, to acting like priests, to speak over Asians. Orientalism within Shintō means people sexualize miko, or fetishize Japanese women and girls.
Orientalism and its Othering dehumanizes us. By treating Shintō as rare, exotic, traditional/unchanged etc., you are treating our culture like a specimen under a microscope. It oversimplifies the diversity of practices that take place within Japan, is simply not historical, and silences voices from people of Japanese descent. Orientalism, of course, does not apply only to Japan, and I feel obligated to mention that I stand in strong solidarity with peoples from other parts of Asia who continue to be victimized by Orientalism. It is disheartening that we have to remind people we are humans and our cultures are as complicated as they are beautiful.
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What I miss most: “the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue.” ~June 8, 2021
I’m so glad to have finally read this book after it was repeatedly recommended to me by several different friends. Hanif Abdurraqib has an absolute gift for crafting essays that braid his personal experiences with the (sometimes seemingly cosmic, and therefore daunting to explain or conceptualize) forces of racism, sexism, economic inequality, and nationalism in America. He also jumps seamlessly in scale and in scope, summarizing the heart of something hugely complex—a masterpiece album, a regional sound, a decades-long relationship—without reducing the irreducibly complex, without sacrificing specificity, without sounding trite. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like this, although I haven’t read very much Creative Non-Fiction. Regardless, Hanif moves skillfully, masterfully. I love the collection’s confidence in narration, the love of language, the direct confrontation with that which makes us all deeply flawed (deeply human).
Each of these essays could stand alone. It’s a joy to read even one and Abdurraqib’s style shines through in just a couple pages. He crafts his stories with such dexterity. It’s clear that he comes from a background in poetry, as he celebrates language, builds vivid images, and thinks thematically. (I love the moments that are truly experimental—erasures of his own work, pieces without punctuation that flow on and on in one interlinked sequence). At the same time, he relies heavily on facts and content. Part of his conviction is born of research and depth of understanding. He knows his subject; yet, within this knowledge, he expresses personal preferences and sentimental love. I learned a ton from this book about music, about the history of particular musicians, about the relationship between racial inequality and self-expression within the field of music. Together, these essays form of complex tapestry of recent history in America seen through the lens of music. I absolutely loved the experience of coming to understand the interweaving of so many of our lives’ central questions and tensions through the history of music.
Art is inherently political, as many contemporary artists would agree (a viewpoint that counters the modernists before them who argued for the apolitical nature of art—art for art’s sake). Abdurraqib makes a very compelling argument for the deep integration of art with politics, social systems, economics, and trends. These things, however, are also deeply tied to the powerful forces of our choices, our identities, our love, and our compassion. It does not cheapen art of have it be so informed by, so shaped by political and social forces. In Abdurraqib’s worldview, art is the medium by which we reflect ourselves back to ourselves. And it’s also the medium by which we find freedom, by which we challenge ourselves to grow beyond the ways we understand ourselves to be. Race is the most central political and social theme that weaves throughout these essays, starting with the title of the book, which is introduced in the essay on Bruce Springsteen. “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” are the words that hang above Michael Brown’s memorial in Ferguson, Missouri. It might be hard to imagine an essay that weaves a Springsteen concert with a trip to Michael Brown’s resting place, a task that would certainly be daunting to any other writer, yet Abdurraqib navigates this with dexterity that seems natural, fundamental to how he thinks about the world.
Within the framework of race in America, some of the themes from these essays that I most appreciated and internalized included: Black joy (when it’s expressed and what it means), the markings of wealth (in the context of a journey out of poverty), and the policing of authenticity (or other forms of self-expression/emotion). Black joy is mentioned repeatedly in these essays, as something to be commented on for its rareness, while also positing the idea that music is a space that more boldly permits Black joy. Awareness of joy seems flow underneath these essays; it’s something not taken for granted, something treasured. I found this awareness of joy in the essay on Nina Simone’s Blackness and in the contrast between how she is portrayal by Hollywood and how she lives on in Abdurraqib’s childhood memories. I found this awareness of joy in the essay “Surviving Punk Rock Long Enough to Find Afropunk,” which focused on the exclusion of Black bodies from punk rock spaces (and the disregard for the handful of Black bodies that dared to enter anyway), while emphasizing the inherent survival in the African American experience that resonants deeply with punk rock’s values. A longing for a space that is joyful for Black people was addressed beautifully in the essay on Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, in which Abdurraqib wishes for a home in the darkness of the photo of the two of them, where he sees “a small & black eternity.”
One of my favorite essays in the collection was the piece “Burning That Which Will Not Save You: Wipe Me Down and the Ballad of Baton Rouge,” which focuses on the rise of three Baton Rouge rappers—Foxx, Lil Boosie, and Webbie—in the years that followed Hurricane Katrina, which changed the outlook of Baton Rouge and its relationship to loud neighbor New Orleans. The essay breaks down the fundamental pieces of the rapper persona (circa mid-to-late 2000s): shoulders, chest, pants, shoes. For each of these elements, the essential nature of each is discussed, particularly as they relate to signaling both wealth and self-confidence: the dream realized. I loved this essay because it brilliantly articulated something I’ve always sensed (understood in myself in certain ways), but been unable to well-articulate, which is the power of “markings of wealth” in the life of someone who has survived through poverty, or an understanding of the proximity of poverty. For this person, the possession of wealth (things that show wealth, that communicate its presence to others, whether or not there is a real depth of wealth) feels and is different. Someone wears their wealth differently if they are conscious of it. This is a different look than that of the third-generation millionaire’s son for whom a real depth of security is so deeply ingrained as to limit the frame of imagination to always include it. I loved how this essay explained that wealth is not an universally proud/cocky look, but instead braggadocios, something that has a lot of context, a lot of nuance, a lot to do with environment and habit and understanding of temporary/permanent.
Sports, another space in which the economic and political forces of America come head-to-head with the personal and lived experiences of diverse Americans, also center several of these essays. Abdurraqib has a similar appreciation of sports—spaces of fandom, spaces of mass-appeal, spaces where the struggles and triumphs of a few become the struggles and triumphs of many—as he has of music. The social discussion around sports also holds a magnifying class to systemic racism, a process which Abdurraqib unpacks and examines. Serena Williams is discussed as an example of the policing of Black self-expression (policing how she expresses anger, how she expresses confidence, i.e. “too loudly” for the white Western world), topics also addressed in depth in “On Kindness.” “Black Life On Film” tackles the way violence is romanticized and compartmentalized as part of the Black experience, allowing an observation of violence for white viewers that is unhinged from a need to alleviate it, to address it. These same tensions and problems bubble forth in the dialogue around sports, as the eyes of the nation are turned to popular topics, which are filtered through (nearly exclusively, exhaustively) the same biased lenses.
As Abdurraqib develops these complex themes, he relies on a few central tools that are essential to his literary project. To point out these common tools is not to say that Abdurraqib only has a couple tricks up his sleeve. These aren’t “tricks” at all. Instead, these seem important to how he thinks about the world, things that are inseparable from his mode of observation.
His most central tool is the “parallel events” essay structure. With this approach, Abdurraqib details what happened for him personally as events occurred elsewhere that rocked the framework and landscape of America. A collapse of time collapses distance. Abdurraqib seems to have experienced many of these such moments of collapse, as he vividly recalls where he was and what he was doing as particular significant events unfolded. The eeriness of these experiences are not lost on a reader; we’ve all been there. To say that Abdurraqib has experienced many of these is to, perhaps, point out how much current events impact and rock him (as they always do those who belong to the groups that are, time and time again, targeted and destroyed in America). But it’s also, perhaps, to point out the precision of Abdurraqib’s memory. He holds onto details like a vice, capturing for us in painful and poignant specificity the situation in which he personally broke against the tragedy of the news (as the news breaks to us, we break against it, like waves). One of the delicate powers of Abdurraqib’s use of this essay structure is the way that his personal narrative is not cheapened, nor lessened when set up against the national event, the event we all remember. Instead, one is given the right urgency and the other given the right intimacy.
This technique for framing an essay (an experience, a life) begins in the essay “A Night in Bruce Springsteen’s America” in which a white older man at a Springsteen concert tells Abdurraqib he was at another Springsteen show on the evening Lennon was murdered. While this man wishes that “no one gets killed out there during the show this time,” there’s no world in which, for Abdurraqib, someone is not killed out there during this show. The cycle of loss that is stitched into Abdurraqib’s environment, his racial identity, is too great for him to ever hold that same hope. I think that this technique of parallel events (one personal and intimate, one tectonic and tragic) is best maximized in the short piece “August 9, 2014,” a poetic erasure of Abdurraqib’s own writing. In the main text, Abdurraqib recounts something that seems, on the surface, like an every day experience: another passenger complaining on the flight he’s boarding, a mother asking to switch seats so her son can look out the window. With the bulk of the text crossed out, the secondary narrative that emerges from the remaining words is of another mother asking for her son. The date in the title clarifies that this secondary mother-son narrative centers on the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The longing, the seeking, the asking of both mothers exists in a poignant overly. Perhaps what the mother on the plane asks for is trivial, all things considered, but Abdurraqib never dismisses her impulse to shelter her son, from fear, but, at the same time, to let him see the world beyond the plane’s window. The personal and small that occurs in Abdurraqib’s unique experience takes on the sacredness, the elevation of the cosmic, the tectonic plate shifts of death/life, and also the heralding in of a new/old era in America with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
My favorite, though, of all these essays was “Fall Out Boy Forever,” one of the most personal in the collection. Abdurraqib places the loss of his closest friend to suicide into the context of the rise, fall, and rebirth (as if from the ashes) of the band they both loved. Abdurraqib’s long-term fan following of Fall Out Boy works like pearls on a string, moments in time that span years, yet unite into a collective personal narrative. This narrative rang so, so true to me, as someone for whom the bulk of the past six years has been shaped by my relationship to a specific band. Their narrative contains my narrative; my narrative contains their narrative. Their concerts, their albums, their successes, their growth—these things exist like glowing points on the thread of my experience. I recall my life within this thread, anchored by it. I know the previous time I was able to see my grandparents, down to the exact date three years ago, because it followed on the heels of a particular BTS album that played in my ears over and over that week. I know when and where I traveled within the timeline of their music. I know when my friendships blossomed, pinned to the backdrop that is their musical evolution. I know the ways they challenged and changed me, changed my writing, grew my sense of myself. I know how inseparable I am from BTS, and I saw this so poignantly reflected in Abdurraqib’s journey with Fall Out Boy.
Like any true fan (the fan who is not self-interested, the fan who is there for the ups and downs, the fan who is there for the real story), Abdurraqib observes the members of Fall Out Boy with such astuteness (this made me go and listen to more Fall Out Boy songs than I ever had before). I loved the way he captures the dynamic between the band members. He’s great at this in general (his insights into the intra-band relationships in Fleetwood Mac and the production of the album Rumors was also so engaging), but there’s a different intimacy, a different kind of care with Fall Out Boy. Abdurraqib’s ability to so clearly reveal his own close relationship with Tyler in the context of Fall Out Boy’s inner life is striking and heart-breaking—from Patrick’s frantic internalization of his music (performed for himself, yet in front of a crowd) without Pete’s complimentary/conflicting (necessary) presence when Abdurraqib seems him perform solo in Austin, to Tyler’s DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU patch that Abdurraqib casts into the pit at a concert after wearing it to shows for years. To me, Tyler leapt from these pages, alive in the space where Fall Out Boy and their audience come together, transcending his own life’s timeframe in the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue. This essay made me feel less alone in my experience of life perceived through the lens of music. This essay was Abdurraqib’s project at its most intimate, where the perception that happens through the lens of music is, most fundamentally, that of one’s self.
#they can't kill us until they kill us#hanif abdurraqib#music criticism#important reading#race in the context of music#art is inherently political#writing about race#writing about music#rap#hip hop#pop music#creative nonfiction#popular culture#black lives matter#fall out boy forever
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Cultural Appropriation among East Asian Popular Culture
*I am aware that amidst the rise of AAPI hate crimes, this is a very sensitive time to be talking about this. However, I think it is very important for East Asians (in my case, a Chinese immigrant living in the States) to address our own ignorance and avoidance on this issue in order to have solidarity with other BIPOC communities. My emphasis is on the media portrayal of cultural appropriation and how that could be potentially damaging, I do not intend to imply that cultural appropriation is prominent among all East Asians.*
If you are a frequent consumer of East Asian pop culture, you would be lying to say you haven’t seen an idol or a celebrity wearing dreads on camera. Sometimes they do so to create a streetwear look, sometimes they do so to deliberately play a character. We also tend to turn a blind eye to the countless bad rapping performances and the occasional half-joking bits about tribal, native cultures. As of now, many fans tend to defend their favs by calling these instances as acts of negligence, that none of these celebrities had an intent to harm; but how much longer, and farther, should we tolerate cultural appropriation in East Asian pop culture?
East Asian popular culture has become part of the global mainstream in recent years. With the help of social media and the supplemental supports from local governments (think South Korea), today’s cultural flow go in both directions: while Asian pop culture is often inspired by Western elements, East Asian media production is now the new leading force of culture.
One “neutral” definition of cultural appropriation could be summarized as the representation of cultural practices or experiences and the distinctive artistic styles of the particular culture used by nonmembers. However, misrepresentation, misunderstanding and manipulation of culture is frequent and damaging to many marginalized, underrepresented groups.
Appropriating Hip-hop
Even though there is a “neutral” definition of cultural appropriation, there is no neutral way to appropriate a culture. The moment you partake in a cultural practice that is not your own, you are marking it with your own social marker. Just to give an example, the rise of Gangsta Rap was in response to the mass incarceration of Black people during the War on Drugs era. The history of rap and hip-hop, as a whole, is tightly connected to Black lives in America.
So why is Asian rap so filled with flexing culture? The answer is simple. The rise of hip hop and rap in the East Asian music scene is a simple copy-and-paste of the Western pop chart. Hip-hop has become the best selling genre, yet it’s important to note that today’s hip-hop has taken a detour away from its root. Hip-hop and rap has been rendered with pop sounds, often rendered with the voices of white performers as well.
The idol factories in both South Korea and China had picked up the trend. Hip-hop and rap is what gets the cash, so that’s where the executives want to take their trainees. Shows like The Rap of China(这就是说唱), Rap for Youth(说唱新时代), received enormous popularity in the last few years among young Chinese people. While the popularization of these shows can help nurture more diversifying music tastes beyond the typical Chinese pop music, they portray rap and hip hop in a highly inaccurate fashion. The flows and forms featured in performances felt unilateral, often with a strong emphasis on flexin’ solely for the sake of flexin’. In addition, in no way did any of these shows serve to educate music lovers on the history and background of hip hop and rap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hIJnBh7Dv8
P.s. this video features Rich Brian, I think it goes without saying that he’s probably not the best person to be educating Chinese youth on rapping.
Appropriating Black Hairstyles
Some contestants of these hip-hop shows also wore appropriated versions of Black hairstyles, and it wouldn’t be far fetched for me to say that the increased popularity of dreads among Kpop idols had kicked off this trend. Some of these celebrities are people who I have immense respects for, such as Jackson Wang. As the Chinese member of the Kpop boy group GOT7, he was the only Chinese celebrity (that I’m aware of) who spoke up for the BLM protests openly on his social media (I should note that he received quite a lot of backlashes for “defending violence”). But he—as I found out—refused to apologize when being criticized for wearing dreads back in 2016. He was called out in 2016 for wearing dreadlocks in a Pepsi commercial. He claimed that he did not intend to be racist. However, his fans questioned his response, as his defense did not acknowledge the history of dreadlocks.
More recently, BTS’s J-Hope was also called out for his hairstyle in his first solo single, “Chicken Noodle Soup.” Not only was his hair called out to be tiptoeing the line of cultural appropriation, it also felt odd that he only switched to the dreadlock-looking hairstyle during the nighttime break-dancing scene in the music video. While this might not have any further implications intended by the artist himself, this is an example of how infiltrating the unprofessional, gang-affiliated stereotypes surrounding dreadlocks could be.
Part of me thinks they are doing this to please white people, I could easily be right. White people are interested in hip-hop but can’t go as far as getting interested in Black culture? Sure, we Asians will provide. I sound harsh but that’s truly how I see the logic behind Asian pop stars appropriating Black culture. It’s true that many from the K-pop industry do not have full authority to their own identity, but I simply do not get the extent of appropriation employed in the K-pop scene—and this sabotaging trend is spreading in a scary rate to both Japan and China.
Reality TV in China features mostly celebrities, but I assume the goal of the government (for producing all these shows) is to achieve some sort of relatability through portraying famous people doing normal things. Again, just like how Western culture and East Asian culture influence each other, creating a feedback loop, an echo chamber of what’s socially acceptable and what’s not, famous people and normal people alike are all capable of influencing the social norms of Asia. We in America indulge in drama, the unethical wrongdoings of distant rich people. It’s not like that in Asia. People look up to celebrities. So if someone in Blackpink decided to wear braids in their newest music video, you’re bound to see kids trying to do the same.
Internalized Colorism
Sure, one can argue that it’s all negligence and ignorance, but we can not pretend the acts of cultural appropriation are not a result of internalized colorism. Blatant racism is less likely to occur in East Asian societies since they tend to have a less diverse ethnic makeup, but internalized colorism has always been an underlying problem in East Asia. Take China as an example, being “light skin” (though the direct translation of the Chinese word “白” is equivalent to “white,” the phrase is usually perceived as “light skin”) is generally viewed as elegant, pretty, or decent. Phrases such as “yellow skin,” “black skin” have risen to popularity in recent years as internet slangs used by online participants to criticize celebrities or themselves. People strive to be as “white” as possible by setting a societal expectation for public figures to follow, creating this social discourse chamber that deems the white skintone to be superior.
Even more recently, the phrase “非酋” (direct translation: “African tribe leader”) is used as a metaphor for people who tend to have very bad luck and never get what they wish for. From the perspective of an outsider, not only is this phrase obviously racist, it is also more dangerous in the sense that the metaphor entails a long line of other language-specific words that imply racially-charged stereotypes that could not be easily understood by non-Chinese. The phrase itself, however, is often used lightly by gamers--since this is actually an official phrase that ties to certain characters in certain games--and other young internet users to ironically joke about themselves without really considering the racist undertones of the phrase. Therefore, while using the phrase itself does not necessarily make one racist, it certainly reveals ignorance of the Chinese society on the issue of race.
Online Community, Bullet Comments and Echo Chamber
A single character in Japanese/Chinese tends to carry a lot more information than a single letter. As a result, there could easily be more combinations of words with the same characters in comparison to the alphabet for Roman languages. With the rise of fan-fueled, fan-made, fan-moderated video/social platforms like Bilibili (Chinese) and Niconico (Japanese), internet slangs are becoming increasingly niche. However, “niche” is defined against the traditional sense here. Slangs are only “niche” in the sense that the context is only known to a very specific audience, perhaps a fandom of a game or a show, but this audience itself could be enormous--certainly in the case of China. In these separate but internally united communities, people communicate in slangs that are culturally specific among themselves. How, you may ask? Through the persistence and permanence of bullet comments.
Up till this point, bullet comments are popular only and specifically to Japanese and Chinese cultures, again, a likely result of the linguistic natures of the languages. The chaotic, seemingly-never ending feature of bullet comments is an easy tool to nurture a sense of tight-knitted community for young internet users. Teens no longer need to worry about parents’ attempts to understand youth culture--most adults literally can not bear with the overwhelming screen of repetitive slangs. Bullet comments granted a new sense of freedom that previous generations of Japanese and Chinese youth did not experience.
However, it also means that bullet comments could create the perfect scenario for a social echo chamber. It’s hard for outsiders to penetrate the existing banters among a community that talks in their own lingos, and it also encourages the repetitiveness of the same idea, same belief. But this is not a characteristic specific to bullet comments or online communities in East Asia, this is a characteristic common among many East Asian cultures. In comparison to Western cultures, East Asians are way more comfortable, even dependent on group mentality and general consensus. Relatability is often prioritized over individuality on the internet scape, which on its own isn’t necessarily an issue; but this nature of East Asian online community certainly makes it a particularly weak target to colorist beliefs and culturally-insensitive content.
The reliant tendency on echo chamber and group mentality of East Asian communities makes them vulnerable targets of certain Western influences, including cultural appropriation and internalized colorism. In the case of China, its government literally banks on unity among its citizens to establish more extensive social control in order to rule. In both Korea and Japan, unity and group mentality are strongly encouraged and embraced as well. Ultimately, while the problem of cultural appropriation is becoming increasingly worrying among pop culture in East Asia, this is a foreign concept and problem for East Asians who might be helping the spread of cultural appropriation. Regardless, education on the subject matter is necessary and we need to start addressing the problem now.
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there is a follow-up on the op's tumblr to the racism post you reblogged that i think is just as important. it talks about the emotional labor of educating other fans. especially significant because the original anon said "but you can't tell me they don't handle their black characters well" which is not a good look at all. something that @septiembur & you mention having to do in your workplaces. sorry for that, btw.
Thanks, Anon! (x)
So that everyone who reads my blog is aware, I personally don’t mind discussing race here to the extent that I am able (I’m fairly educated on the topic in general – in my country there is a huge emphasis on race at every single level of education and it was especially a huge part of my tertiary education – but as I’m not American, I’m not as up on everything pertaining to black Americans and Latinx cultures and specific struggles) because I find it better than never having the discussions to begin with. Dean’s obsession with Rio and its sexual slant (x, x and x) was bothering me a lot, for example, and there wasn’t anyone talking about it, so I was glad to bring it up and see if others resonated with how uncomfortable I was.
I totally agree that that burden is unfair and that it’s not POC’s responsibility to educate anyone on the basics. I do hope that that doesn’t limit the discussions about the race relations on this show, though, because I do already find it fairly minimal in this fandom – I don’t know if that’s a consequence of most of the BNFs being seemingly white, or just a direct result of the show’s failure to meaningfully engage with intersectionality.
I do want to speak to the burden in the workplace, though, because I’ve seen the argument from some people that criticising the way race is handled on the show is an erasure of the writers of colour on the writing team.
First, for context, I work in a writer’s room, of sorts. My brand is an industry leader in a white-dominated space and we make decisions that directly impact the industry – think the judges for the Oscars deciding which movies get nominated, making the rules that determine who will qualify and who will win, etc. Those are the kinds of decisions we make and the massive ramifications that follow.
It’s a huge responsibility – every room I sit in is 90% white. My boss is white, their boss is white, their boss is white and their boss is white.
There are three more brown people on my team vs 9 white people. Based on my position (that I’ve worked hard over years to attain), my opinion carries a fair amount of weight in the room and yet, still, ultimately I have no decision-making power. (Remember all those white bosses?) The best I can do is raise issues relating to diversity and hope enough of the white people in the room will deign to agree enough that it will be taken into account when it’s moved further up the white chain. When they make decisions I don’t agree with, I’m grateful for there being a public outcry about its racism, because I did what I could within the confines of remaining employed. Furthermore, it’s up to consumers to recognise what’s wrong. So people saying/implying “Manny/the writers obviously agree with what the show does” is tiring to me. If there are issues, those people would find themselves in very hot water if they spoke out about what actually happens behind the scenes.
Secondly, just because there are POC in a group of people doesn’t necessarily mean they’re advocates. Those three other brown people I mentioned? They barely say a word about race in any of our meetings. It’s something that means a lot to me, so I’m the one constantly feeling the weight of the responsibility we have. But they’re just there for their paycheck. And you know what? That’s cool, too. Just like it’s not our responsibility to educate people, it’s also not our responsibility to have to advocate tirelessly (and it is exhausting) just for white people to acknowledge their privilege, especially when we’re in a professional setting and in an industry where that should be basic homework before we even get into the room. Every decision should include an intersectional discussion and it never does unless I bring it up. Again, that is so exhausting, not to mention demoralising.
So to look at a group of people and just based off the colour of their skins assume that the product they’re making is somehow more noble is BS to me. I hope nobody ever thinks a decision my brand makes is racist, sees a team photo with a few brown people and goes ‘Oh, there are brown people so obviously this isn’t actually racist’. NO! Please, call out how racist it is because I can’t do so publicly! The very thought of someone using the colour of my skin to excuse something terrible The White Man I work for has done nauseates me. And it’s especially bad because I’m contractually obligated not to say anything against it.
Ultimately we don’t know whether the writers or actors of colour do in fact face these same issues. But I do know that if any of them do, it must’ve been a world of shit to deal with the horror of 2x13 (how that went down definitely would’ve been a high-level, and thus likely white-made, decision) and its problems just being buckled down on for S3. So to excuse the show by pointing out POC’s existence or seeming agreement with it isn’t a valid argument to me.
TLDR: If you don’t know the emotional burden the POC behind the scenes are carrying then don’t use them as a defence just because you like the end product.
#Anonymous#NBC Good Girls#thank you so much Anon you're incredibly sweet!#it is tough and I send my love to everyone behind the scenes of this show who may feel similarly
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