#but if you can catch them at the beginning by knowing their dogwhistles

[philsdrivinglicence]

Killing the white supremacist inside you. Easy mode. From one whitey to another.

Disclaimer: I am not an academic or an expert. Just a white person who's life was changed for the radically better during the BLM protests of 2020 who wants to share what worked for them.

Below is a non-comprehensive list of first steps you can take to begin the hard work of unpicking the layers upon layers of white supremacist bullshit baked into you from birth by the culture we live in (even if you grew up progressive or in a big city you are not exempt from this).

I made this list because POC in the phandom have been doing a lot of heavy lifting the past few days. I figured the least I could do is share what worked for me to understand what racism is and how its more subtle forms can manifest.

I hope we can all use the below as a starting point to help make the phandom a less racist and more welcoming place.

(btw I do think we are generally more self ware than many fandoms but as we are a mostly white space we have to keep ourselves accountable as white supremacy is an insidious bastard that will catch you unawares if you let it.)

So. Without further ado.

- read this article

- Read "Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race" by Reni Eddo Lodge (how you choose to source this book I will not judge but consider supporting a local book store)

- Stop being so afraid of being called racist. - Hopefully, if you are engaging in good faith then you already accept that racism is baked into our society. Racist is not a dogwhistle for "evil person". It is a descriptor of very specific behavior that we can all fall into if we don't keep ourselves sharp. So part 2 of this step is -

- Look back on your life and identify a time when you have participated in racism. My go to example is my 14 year old "never met a black person in real life" self, yelling along to N****s in Paris (uncensored, duh) at a house party with a bunch of other white 14 year olds. If you're getting really introspective you'll probably have multiple of these such moments. Sit with them, feel the cringe, think about what you might say to that version of yourself now, how you might have acted differently had you been aware the behavior was problematic. And then forgive yourself. Self flagellation does nothing good, the thing to do now is learn and progress. But you can't know what to change/avoid if you don't have examples to work off of. (This one is lowkey hard mode but worth doing early on so you can see your own progress over time. Also, if the examples you are thinking of were directly harmful you may also want to consider making amends in some way).

- Look at your playlists/album collection. If you don't see many/any POC musicians make a conscious effort to change that. Seek out interviews with your favourite artists and see which black artists have influenced them. Add them to your rotation.

- Do this with youtubers, authors, actors, screenwriters etc, etc. In all forms or art and entertainment, look at what you consume and if you find it overerall skewing white, make an effort to fill it with colour.

(Kill the voice inside you that says "I just prefer - blank-", or "the stuff they make just isn't for me, I prefer stuff I can relate to". This is the white supremacy talking, POC are not a monolith, look harder, you will find artists you connect with)

- Every time a POC points something out to you that seems off to them (I often refer to this as "this doesn't pass the sniff test") before jumping in to defend your fave/point of view/TV show etc. really sit with what they have said and try to consider why what they are pointing out, while not a big deal to you, could be a big deal to them.

Like I said up top, this is a non comprehensive list and is only intended as a starting point.

I usually wouldn't post something like this as I prefer to stay out of discourse but the conversation going on this past few days has really disappointed me. So many people are being dismissive toward POC fans and completely missing the points they are trying to make. So here's my two cents. Hope it's helpful.

[icarusisbabygirl]

Okay so obviously you Cannot go through a giant vetting process for everyone involved in a post before you reblog it, Every Time. But you can do bare minimum stuff.

You see the red highlight around OP? That’s from my browser extension Shinigami Eyes. That highlight means op is a terf, and that reblogging their stuff gives them notes and exposure. I didn’t have to vet them for that to find out because I have the extension.

You don’t have to expend a bunch of energy. Get shinigami eyes. Block tags like #terfsdointeract, #lizardpeople, etc. And then you can know immediately upon seeing a post that it’s shit.

You don’t need twelve step bg checks. You don’t have to memorize all the dogwhistles. But you Can take steps to stop yourself from accidentally reblogging beginner bigot beliefs and blogs very easily.

[eeveelutionsforequality]

So, in the UK sexual fictional anime characters are forbidden and now depicting domestic and child abuse in a video game is also forbidden, because virtual children need protection, too, and abusers will think their behaviour is ok, even though it's seen through the eyes of the victim and you're supposed to feel for them. Why are we bringing back these old discussions?

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/obscene_publications/

http://thestudentlawyer.com/2014/05/27/what-is-an-obscene-publication/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscene_Publications_Act_1959

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_drawn_pornography_depicting_minors

I first learnt about the obscene publications act while reading Clockwork Orange, and there was one of those 'about' sections at the beginning that you get in new editions of old books, and it explained how publishers were concerned that the laws would prevent the book from being published.

I learnt about the legal status of loli in the UK by googling it myself out of curiosity.

They don't teach us these things, they don't even prevent the selling of explicit anime. And, I think what people misunderstand most - it's not tagged on to extend the conviction for actual CP, it's prosecuted alone. In fact, a guy was given a nine month suspended sentence for manga alone and told that it would've been longer had he had actual CP - insinuating some kind of link between, or increased likelihood of, actual CP being viewed just because loli is viewed, as if they were warning him or something, it's ridiculous.

These laws are pushed through by pressure and money from children's charities (charities that, literally from experience I can tell you, many times will screw over actual abused kids and spend way too much cash on advertising), while writers and creators stand there going "This isn't helping anyone and you're just trying to stifle creativity".

Also remember the limits on pornography in the UK:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/porn-websites-sites-pages-videos-internet-adult-uk-digital-economy-bill-a7433551.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/23/censor-non-conventional-sex-acts-online-internet-pornography

The UK is completely absorbed in this idea that the media we take in will influence us - we have our social problems, and instead of addressing the class issues and other causes, they're using them as an excuse to censor.

I live on a council estate, if I call the police there's a chance they won't even come, if they do it could take hours. There are kids here (I'm talking teens and pre-teens) on drugs, they walk down the alley past my window talking about who gave who a blowjob, they drink alcohol, they throw fireworks and flashbangs at people, they set fires - I've lived in places like this most of my life, because that's what being poor is like here.

The problem in this country isn't video games or books about dark topics - for most kids, those things are a release and a fun escape from reality - the problem is that some of us have to go without dinners to afford one of those games because we're fuckin' poor.

But, if you honestly want to know why we're still having these discussions... the tories, unfortunately (not that I think for a second that Labour would do better, both suck atm). They want to cut disability benefits, keep wages low, boost their own pay, populate the prisons, sue creators for more money, and make everything prim and proper, while using a scapegoat to hide the fact that it's their policies that are exacerbating the problem.

Every few years we have to fight the groups that want to demonize media, the difference is that we don't have free speech here, we don't have the constitution, we don't have adequate journalistic integrity, and it's the people with the money - some of whom got said money by funding massive ad campaigns full of false promises that preyed upon people's compassion for the vulnerable - who are pushing this stuff, while they demonize the poor people by calling us "chavs" and "benefits scroungers", blaming the struggles we have on us and on the media we take in instead of on the utter ruin they trapped the lower classes in.

What the UK needs, on the most basic level and to begin with, is inalienable free speech rights, an improvement to the class issues and the economy, and a better benefits system that can provide opportunities for education to those on benefits, in a career path that suits their specific needs, while not allowing the current abuses of the child support benefits that encourage poor people to mass produce children in exchange for money and perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

What we don't need is people getting arrested/fined/censored for watching anime, for fisting on camera, for daring to create a story that victims can relate to, and we really don't need there to be quotas on how many people need to be arrested/fined, because at the moment the police are this unpredictable combination of complacency and overreaction, sitting at the side of the road all day trying to catch people going 1mph over the speed limit because they'll get more people doing that and fill their quota.

And the final piece in the jigsaw is the rise of and power of feminism and socjus in the UK - it's all over the mainstream, the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, etc.

The middle class here is generally closer to the upper class than the working class, but they think of themselves as closer to working class a lot of the time - they also get involved in a lot of charity work and ideological stuff, with a very limited understanding of the issues aside from "I feel bad for these people", but they still cross to the other side of the street when they see a chav, or turn their noses up at the people who shop in Aldi. When working class people disagree with their ideologies and their obsession with the labour party, and point out flaws, they patronize us about our education and tell us that we "just don't understand the issues" or we're "going against [our] own best interests", along with the old slurry of isms.

You know that "grow the middle class" stuff you'll hear them talking about on the news, or that "shrinking middle class" stuff - that's not for the sake of working class people watching, that's not an assurance that our jobs are safe or our benefits system is being improved or our rights are being protected or our struggles addressed, it's pretty much a dogwhistle to middle class people watching. The concerns about the drop in religiosity that are massively discussed are the concerns of the middle class, the working class (and lower) people don't really give a fuck about whether you believe in god or not (in general).

That's, in my humble opinion, why feminism and socjus is growing here - the news programming realized that the middle class was their demographic (while the papers often have a wider variety, so you'll often see the news, or comedy based on the news, bashing a paper for being "for uneducated cretins", what they mean is "it's a poor people paper", while they also bash papers for being "for posh toffs", because they have just as much distaste for the upper class) and it catered to their concerns and their uninformed compassion for people worse off, to further an agenda that the middle class actually think they're doing good by supporting (*cough* communism).

That middle class didn't grow up in the council estates, they grew up safe with burglar alarms and driveways - it's easy to shock them with a scene of a violent video game, it's easy for them not to know about the actual causes of these struggles, and it's easy to use their good intentions against all of us.

TL;DR - We're talking about it because of the shitty prudish government, inadequate freedom of speech, charities spending donations on advertising to raise more donations to pressure the government instead of actually doing their jobs, feminism, manipulation of the middle class' compassion, classism in general, and a scapegoat to avoid discussing class issues.

It's not a conspiracy so much as charities and the news doing what gets them the most profit, then their goals, which go against the actual scientific understanding of these issues, happen to align with the conservative government's goal of making it look like they're doing something useful as they continue to be pricks.