#cw antiblackness

[stobinesque]

The last post I reblogged has me thinking about how Lucas is treated by his friends/the wider UD gang in-universe/from a more Watsonian perspective. Because here are the facts:

Lucas has spent most of his childhood being explicitly/overtly bullied for his race [being called "Midnight" by their season 1 bullies]¹

At the beginning of Season 2, Mike clearly assumes that Lucas agreed to go as Winston for no other reason than both of them being black. But when called on this, Mike cannot bring himself to admit that's what he was thinking. (He also does not apologize to Lucas.)

Until Billy attacks him, Lucas doesn't really know why Max is trying to avoid being seen with him when Billy picks her up/at her house, but having been on the receiving end of "my family is racist so I can't be seen with you," whether or not you actively know the reason someone is trying to hide you from another person, it feels alienating. Also, he absolutely figures it out in hindsight.

But since at first he doesn't know that Billy inexplicably and aggressively hates him/doesn't want him interacting with Max, from Lucas' perspective he gets attacked by a white boy 4-5 years his senior and almost twice his size out of literally nowhere. Said boy explicitly declares to him "You're dead, Sinclair."²

Lucas, upon entering high school, decides that he wants to acquire enough social pressure to protect him and his friends from the bullying they had to deal with throughout middle school. Neither Mike nor Dustin seem willing/able to understand why he might be interested in that protection.

There are a couple different ways to interpret Lucas (and Patrick)³ choosing to stay with Jason and Andy, but I think it's reasonable to assume that Lucas would be able to recognize a mob/witch hunt forming, and I also think it is reasonable to assume that Lucas knows that mobs tend to target the most vulnerable members of a population, and that he himself both as a black kid and a member of Hellfire is at risk.

Nancy knows for a fact that Jason was at the army surplus store in search of a gun, and while it is implied that she informs the group of this, they seem not to take that into any consideration when planning because

Taken altogether, this paints a picture that in-universe, all of Lucas' friends should be intimately aware that he has experienced overt racism for his entire life. But, the Halloween costume argument also suggests that even though they're all aware of said racism, none of the white members of the group really feel comfortable talking about it. Lucas does explicitly call Mike out on thinking that he would be Winston (or that Mike can't be) "because he's black," and Mike flat out lies to his face. If this is one of the first times Lucas has confronted one of the Party members about their own implicit racism, I think it would be reasonable for him to walk away from that exchange deciding that race isn't something he can have honest conversations with his friends about.

We also never see Billy attacking Lucas addressed on-screen after it happens. Which means we never get to see anyone check-in with Lucas about what happened, or see him process what happened.

So come season 4 Lucas has great reason both to want more social capital/protection and to feel uncomfortable explicitly talking to his friends about why that might be. (Especially with the added baggage of Billy having just been killed, which assuredly inspired a lot of complicated feelings for Lucas, especially because of how much his death impacted Max.) Instead, he makes one simple request of his friends (who he both wants at his game and still wants to play D&D with them): get Eddie to reschedule the game. And, sure, it's Eddie's fault that the game doesn't get rescheduled. But it is absolutely on Mike and Dustin that they didn't choose to skip (which honestly probably would have forced Eddie to reschedule anyway??).

So for the most important game of the season, Lucas winds up without his friends or his sister there to watch him make the winning shot, and he misses out on the D&D game that he wanted to play with his friends. It's entirely possible that Lucas still would have decided to go to the afterparty even if Mike and Dustin had come to the game. But I think it's reasonably likely that he'd have gone to celebrate separately with them! Or at least would have left the party early, rather than getting so drunk he pukes the next morning. So when Jason riles the whole team into becoming a mob out for blood, Lucas ends up stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can't really say or do anything to stop Jason that doesn't also put a target on his back. Sticking with him is the best way to 1) ensure his own physical safety and 2) have any hope of protecting Eddie/his friends.

And then Lucas risks his life to lead Jason & co. off Eddie's scent and bikes eight miles to come warn Dustin that he's in danger. He actually explicitly says that Dustin is in terrible danger. Lucas (and, honestly, all of the Party--except arguably Will) at this point is intimately aware of the fact that a white boy fueled by rage can been homicidally dangerous. So the fact that even after knowing for a fact that Jason has acquired a gun, the whole team send Lucas, Erica and Max to the Creel house without weapons, protection, or any sort of plan as to how to deal with Jason & co. if they turn up is not only baffling, but honestly feels downright callous.

From a purely Watsonian perspective, Lucas has every right and reason to be absolutely livid with his friends. Their consistent inability to recognize or acknowledge the racism Lucas experiences directly results in Lucas and his sister being attacked and nearly killed--and not even by the supernatural bad guy.

¹The show never returns to this, but to me it is broadly illustrative of the racial climate in Hawkins

²Please do not waste your breath trying to argue with me that Billy "wasn't really trying to kill him." I honestly don't care either way. He threatened to kill a 13-year-old boy whose only "crime" was being black. There is no other explanation for Billy's treatment of Lucas that makes sense, since he explicitly targets him, and not Dustin or Mike. Regardless of whether or not Billy had genuine homicidal intent, Lucas had no reason to think otherwise in that moment. I have no interest in arguing this point with anyone.

³Patrick is another excellent example of the show being unable to meaningfully reckon with with its racial implications, but that's its own post.

#lucas sinclair #stranger things meta #meta #read.txt #...not gonna main tag this #cw antiblackness

[palipunk]

What happened with Motaz and the antiblack thing you posted? Im not very up to date did something happen?

I'm late to respond to this (I still don't get notified with my ask box for some reason) but I am going to link you a post with an ask from a Sudanese user explaining the issues with it - the only thing that happened since was Motaz apologized (I will make it clear though it is not my place to accept it as someone who is non-black) and the person who originally brought it up, Ze, was almost harassed off Twitter by antiblack Arabs. It's a really messed up situation and I'm just hoping the Sudanis who were targeted get the support they need.

#suffering-and-misery #ask #cw antiblackness

[ghostlyg0ssip]

hey maybe don't make fun of g3 venus' face which was based off of black facial features

#monster high #monster high g3 #venus mcflytrap #spectra's whispers #cw racism #cw antiblackness #dollblr

[transducttape]

31-year-old Johanita Dogbey was murdered in broad daylight, in a park in Brixton, while talking to her grandmother over the phone. A stranger attacked her and stabbed her from behind.

We are a truly broken nation - a nation where a woman can't even go shopping and walk through a park without being murdered for it. Justice for Johanita.

#BLM #Johanita Dogbey #ukpol #uk news #say her name #cw antiblackness #cw antiblack violence #cw violence #cw murder #black lives matter

[stonebutchwritings]

Sure, "spook" can refer to a ghost. It can refer to a spy. But as many of us know, it's also, sometimes, a racial slur for black people. One of our Ask Code Switch readers wrote in to ask about the etiquette of using words like spook and spooky.

... So here's the deal: Spook comes from the Dutch word for apparition, or specter. The noun was first used in English around the turn of the nineteenth century. Over the next few decades, it developed other forms, like spooky, spookish, and of course, the verb, to spook.

From there, it seems, the word lived a relatively innocuous life for many years, existing in the liminal space between surprise and mild fear.

It wasn't until World War II that spook started to refer to black people. The black Army pilots who trained at the Tuskegee Institute were referred to as the "Spookwaffe" — waffe being the German word for weapon, or gun. (Luftwaffe was the name of the German air force).

Once the word "spook" was linked to blackness, it wasn't long before it became a recognizable — if second-tier — slur.

... Renee Blake is a sociolinguist who studies the way language is used in society, "whether it's based on race, class, gender or the like." She says she doesn't hear the word spook all that often, but she does have two salient reference points for it.

The first is The Spook Who Sat By The Door, and the second is the 2000 book and 2003 movie The Human Stain, by Phillip Roth. His novel tells the story of a professor at a New England college who is forced to resign after he calls two African-American students spooks.

The word spook hasn't just gotten fictional people in trouble. In 2010, Target apologized for selling a Halloween toy called "Spook Drop Parachuters" — literally miniature black figurines with orange parachutes.

In light of all this baggage, I asked Blake what she thought about the use of words like spook and spooky during Halloween. She said that, while it's clear that spook has multiple, distinct meanings, it's still important to think about context.

The way that certain words get attached to particular racial groups is incredibly complicated. (Take thug, for example.)

"Be thoughtful about the fact that [spook] now might have the connotation of referring to a black person in a disparaging way," Blake says. "If someone says, 'Did you get spooked?' and there are no black people there, then, OK, you mean 'Did you get scared or frightened?' That's fine, I get it."

But once you insert black people into the situation, Blake says, it's important to be more tactful.

- "This Halloween, What Does It Mean To Call Something Spooky?" by Leah Donella for NPR (2017)

#cw antiblackness #cw antiblack racism #text #mine

[cockworkangels]

but honestly though this episode feels like another example how supernatural often only has black characters there to be either the ones who suffer the most or to be vilified. like yes every character in supernatural suffers but black characters tend to suffer especially brutal fates and isaac and tamara are an example of that....

#it just feels like it really jumps out this episode #and idk the bleach scene is brutal enough in on itself but it gets an extra layer for isaac and tamara being the the only black people in #the bar and getting cornered and brutalised by all white people. and then tamara is tormented by a demon possessing isaac's body. like they #suffer so much more than anyone else in that episode and then we never hear of them again. #cw antiblackness #s3 rewatch #3x01 the magnificent seven

[blackcultureis]

From @empressonyx (they/them/theirs) on tiktok

#black history matters #black history #florida #florida education #black people #enslavement #african american #important #blm #racism #cw antiblackness #cw sa mention #ask to tag

[seasoning-city]

if there is ever a tv show inspired by BG3 it will inevitably suck because the objective main characters of the story are wyll and lae’zel. and mainstream fantasy media is allergic to Black main characters and unconventionally attractive women

#baldur's gate 3 #cw antiblackness

[stevesbigbazoxngas]

The fact that Captain Carter got her own comic series, Cameos in a major MCU film, main character status in What if... , got the CA twitter account changed to CC after Sam had it for less than a couple months, meanwhile Sam is only officially Cap in ONE EPISODE. OF HIS WHOLE DAMN SHOW, we don't have any trailer or release date for Cap 4, don't have any information about what Cap 4 is going to be about other than Sam "proving" himself as Cap despite the fact that's kinda what TFAWS was about, and has not been acknowledged as Captain America outside of his show??

The fact they even gave Peggy the Captain America role at all when shes a nazi collaborator???

Get her! Away! Get her out! Please!!!!!! My god!!!!!!!!

#really disgusted with the way sam has been treated by the fandom and the franchise itself #sam wilson #sam wilson get behind me #anti captain carter #anti peggy carter #cw nazism #cw antiblackness #cw antisemitism #captain america

[theunluckyvandalist]

Quick reminder with Halloween coming up

"spooky" without the y, aka the word "spook" is an antiblack slur

The term was coined in ww2 by nazi Germany from the word "ghost" in dutch/German with black soldiers being referred to as "spookwaffe" waffe meaning something like weapon or gun.

Don't use spook if ur not black, not that I get why you'd want to.

#slur education #cw racism #cw antiblackness #do research on the words you use and say i am BEGGING

[im-just-a-br0adway-baby]

Pepa I’ve been meaning to ask you this but couldn’t find the words at first, was growing up even more difficult being the very light skin compared to your mom, father and siblings? Not only that but does any bigot give you and Felix strange looks for being together because you’re lighter than him.

I do remember one time Julieta, Bruno, and I introduced ourselves on our first day of kindergarten and when we said we were triplets, one of the girls in our class said to me "You can't be related to them! You look nothing like them!" And I asked her "What do you mean?" And she said "Well, brothers and sisters are supposed to look similar, and you have light skin and red hair, and Julieta and Bruno have dark skin and dark hair." That was when I asked mama about where I came from and why I'm ginger. That was when she showed me pictures of mi papa and shared our similarities and how I looked more similar to Julieta and Bruno than I thought.

When I first started dating Felix, mama had this "friend" that asked her how she would allow me to date Felix and how "interracial dating was a sin." Needless to say she hasn't talked to her since. I also had this "friend" when we were teenagers that was talking to me about my relationship with Felix and told me that we'd "make cute babies." That caught me off guard and I was thundering for three days after and I didn't know why until I talked to Felix about it and he told me someone told him the same thing and how that made him uncomfortable.

#encanto #disney #disney's encanto #encanto asks #encanto roleplay #pepa madrigal #felix madrigal #abuela alma madrigal #julieta madrigal #bruno madrigal #pepa x felix #felix x pepa #cw antiblackness #la familia madrigal

[convertgrapeling]

It's very weird to see people freaking out about Twitter hate speech when you live in a country where TERFism is mainstream, prominent politicians have been complaining about "cultural Marxism" in speeches for the past few years and prominent black women are publicly attacked by their own colleagues. If I was making a list of Notably Horrific Things Said in Public Discourse, I think I'd run out of pens before I even got to Musk-era twitter. Does it really take the involvement of an absurd moustache twirling villain like Elon before people notice what's been going on for ages, or is it just easier to blame all this on one platform's shitty moderation policies?

#uk politics #cw transphobia #cw antisemitism #cw antiblackness #racism

[permian-tropos]

conservative reaction to the murder of jordan neely is not surprising but it still pushed me over the line to even greater levels of hatred

#cw antiblackness #cw murder

[hanzajesthanza]

Hello! I have been a fan of the series for a few years now. I am currently on my second read of the books and I have played the games 1 and 3 extensively.

Throughout this time I had never really interacted with the community and I have to ask how can you handle all the bigotry?

Simply going on witcher themed subreddits and typing the words "racism" or "diversity" left me dumbfounded. From people ignoring Sapkowski's interview in which he said racial changes are fine, to people trying to flat out justify irl racism...

I get the arguments from people that wanted more Slavic representation in the show and other witcher media like it. I get the people saying they wanted it to feel Eastern European while presenting other cultures through things like Zerrikania or Zangwebar but I find that those arguments, even if they are in good faith, are often accompanied by phrases like "blacks don't belong in The Witcher".

How do you handle things like this? I am so disappointed...

this ask comes at an interesting time, as i've also begun to use reddit more frequently for r/wiedzmin and r/witcher (began lurking in r/wiedzmin around 2019, and have begun to actually post and use the app in recent months). i don't really have "tips" to share, but i have my own experiences.

reddit as a site

first thing's first, as a tour around, because not all tumblr users like to also use other social media sites, particularly reddit, so they may be unfamiliar with how the witcher fandom works on reddit:

r/wiedzmin is the discussion sub for analysis and "deeper" conversations (and one of my favorite places to hang out!), and the canon is mostly books canon/occassional games canon.

r/witcher is the main sub, for all canons, books, games, netflix, etc. - but mainly, games and netflix.

r/wiedzmin has a lot less people subscribed to it than r/witcher (though in the past couple of months, r/wiedzmin did just hit 20,000 subs!).

and, on reddit, tumblr, and racism:

i'm not singling out reddit as the only site, or the most prolific site where racism occurs online, especially since racism takes MANY forms; however, in my experience, i have seen more overt racism on reddit and more covert racism on tumblr. on reddit, racist attitudes tend to be more upfront and direct (such as the comments you mentioned) whereas on tumblr, i've seen racist attitudes expressed and then covered up, explained away, or just unrecognized and unacknowledged as being legitimately racist.

racism DEFINITELY occurs on tumblr, and it occurs right under your nose - so i'm not saying that tumblr communities AREN'T racist. rather, what i am saying is that i have personally encountered more overt racism on reddit.

it also matters how tumblr and reddit are structurally set up which affects how opinions are shared and seen.

reddit also has less of "cult of personality" that tumblr does - you can follow people, you can DM people, but it's not like a tumblr dashboard in which you only see posts from people you follow. rather, on your homepage, you see posts from communities you follow - subreddits.

on reddit, you don't reblog posts to your own blog which your followers will see. instead, you can make a post for a specific subreddit, comment on an already-existing post, and upvote or downvote comments on posts.

i like this forum-like structure in many ways, because it contributes to discussion way more than tumblr does - posts can be threads, where discussion about one topic will always be in the same place with all comments about it underneath the topic - unlike tumblr, where you only see the version of the post which appears on your dash, reblog chains exist, and you can only see the full discussion if you look in the notes.

however, i think this structure also contributes to racist attitudes being shared and proliferating on reddit. because it's not such a "cult of personality," you don't have to follow somebody to see their opinions on a post. plus, upvoting and downvoting is pretty anonymous, and if you see a comment which has a lot of upvotes, there's no way to tell who upvoted or downvoted. therefore, racist attitudes can appear near the top of the post, showing that they are "agreed with"... pretty much anonymously. if a racist comment gets 100 upvotes, not all 100 people sharing racist beliefs who upvoted it had to individually reblog the post to their blog, or make their own posts. they could anonymously and casually upvote for that comment. and that culture of convenience around upvoting/downvoting, i think, leads to a lot of bigoted opinions being "agreed with," because while someone might be aware that this is a stupid racist opinion that someone would roast them for if they said on their own, individually, there's no consequences to upvoting the racist opinion that someone else posted. and since racism is shared among cowards, the anonymity and casual ability of it makes it easy for racist posts and comments to get support.

why do i talk about how the site functions? because it affects which kinds of opinions surface and get "agreed with", and what you will see as a user of the site.

moderation on witcher subreddits

one thing i will say is that i've seen the mods of both r/wiedzmin and r/witcher in comments of posts saying that they do not condone racism and will remove racist posts they see, but the subs are very big and they can't mod 24/7. so, while this may be true, in practice, i have not always seen this enforced - though i have seen rules enforced and posts deleted, i have also seen rules not enforced and posts and comments... not deleted.

could mods do more? of course. but it's more than the mods' responsibility to take down racist posts, it's more the community's responsibility to... not be fucking racist. so i won't be digging into the mods of these subs, since i just basically don't know enough about them, how they moderate the subs, or their personal beliefs and attitudes, and i'd rather not talk about stuff that i have no idea about.

i will say that i've seen r/wiedzmin mods generally be pretty decent (both in their own opinions they share on posts, and also in the sense of modding the sub - their attitude seems to be like, we want discussion and conversations, so we are against whatever hinders that goal).

i haven't seen r/witcher mods around as much, but i did pop into the r/witcher discord once and... um... (it was full of n*zi memes... jfc). however that was in 2019 and i just saw a comment from a r/witcher mod on a post yesterday in the sub saying that they don't condone racism and will delete any racist posts/comments they see, so maybe attitudes differ amongst mods or... again, it's up to speculation, this is just what i've seen.

this precursor to this post took way too much time, but i want to provide context for using reddit and the witcher subreddits, if people are unfamiliar with it. it's both good and bad, it's kind of better than i expected, but still has unsavory parts. and again, tumblr isn't innocent either...

dealing with racism

now to talk about the actual topic, for starters, i feel what you're saying. i've seen racist attitudes in the witcher fandom on both tumblr and reddit.

there's two situations in which i've mainly seen racism in the witcher fandom: 1. people saying racist slander against netflix, and 2. people assuming that all book fans are white, cishet, etc... these two attitudes come from the same presumption that the books are a white-only space, which... obviously... isn't the case...

my method for dealing with the first issue (what you've described above, the hateful kinds of comments flat-out saying that people of color don't belong in the witcher) is to block and report. i don't engage, i just block, because there's no discussion to be had, and i know that engaging with them could actually put me in danger (doxxing, for example).

dealing with racism (emotionally)

however, this ability to block doesn't change the emotional impact of seeing these comments. i think anyone would be disturbed by these kinds of comments, and there's also times when it hits a little more personally.

for example, when the casting for milva was released, even comments which i saw on r/wiedzmin (generally... the less-racist of the two subs...) were upset because of meng'er zhang being chinese. (for context, i am half-chinese and half-white). there were a lot of comments expressing exasperation, skepticism, and the general attitude of "no WAY that there would EVER be an east asian person in the WITCHER" ... yeah...

i've got to say, it makes me less encouraged to participate in the witcher fandom, particularly in circumstances where that participation involves me showing my face online (my poor little youtube channel with one video... i'll come back to you soon!).

so, yeah. there's that element of slimy revulsion and disgusting fear and shame. i'll acknowledge it. and there's no instant solution for it.

community as healing

what has helped me is participating in spaces that are publically diverse and deliberately anti-racist, such as in my own circle of mututals and in my our discord server. it's helped a lot to speak with fans of color, lgbt fans, disabled fans, neurodivergent fans, etc., as well as allied fans, about these attitudes - but not only that, to just exist in the same spaces with them. our conversations aren't all-of-the-time about race, unless the topic comes up, but we're just having discussions and sharing thoughts, headcanons, memes, art, etc. to know that the book fandom includes these people, and myself, is all the encouragement i need to stay active in the community.

the simple existence of me and my friends disproves the rhetoric spread by people saying that the witcher is a white-only space (which, by the way, i've also heard from netflix fans on tumblr). that's just a straight-up lie :'). we're just going to continue enjoying and discussing the books while simultaneously existing as ourselves because there's no other way to exist. nothing much more to say about that.

though i will say it's funny that white twn fans think that people of color can't possibly read books and be fans of them... how do you not recognize that as a hugely bigoted assumption?!

further posting

this post was about the fandom and existing in the fandom as a fan of color. i haven't touched on how the book series itself or its 'adaptations' deals with race, sapkowski's opinions, etc. i've saved these topics for another time. here are some posts about this on my sideblog, if it interests you:

how twn plays into white supremacist rhetoric: "1/2 TWN has uncovered an interesting problem (...)"

design of twn: "“hey, we are adapting got the rights to a polish series and there’s this short story that takes place in farmland and fields reminiscent of the polish countryside, (...) where should we film this scene?” ... “ive got it! … new zealand!”" | everyone and everywhere looks the same (grey, uninteresting, featureless) because of their design decisions. + orientalism in twn's costume design

xenophobia of twn: polish identity of the witcher and why it matters

representation for women and people of color: "i’m not willing to accept offensive trash that demeans marginalized groups as “representation”" | this post lol

antiblackness of twn: netflix whitewashing mecia simson (francesca) | "lauren responded to a black fan’s concerns about antiblack violence with “thanks for your feedback” and no further explanation, thought, or consideration."

the messages of the books: "if people believe the point which the books make is “neutrality is good, always be neutral!” then they either have poor reading comprehension, or didn’t read at all (...)" | the "cynical fantasy" of sapkowski | garfield meme

#ask #anon #the witcher books #cw racism #cw antiblackness #twn critical #the witcher netflix #the witcher

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

I find it really irritating that Saiki K, a show that came out in the late 2010s, draws its Black characters in a really racist way. I don’t know if the show gets better at some point but as soon as I saw that shit I stopped watching. And then there’s a blonde character with really tightly curled hair and big lips, that’s shown to be a creep and a bully? That doesn’t seem right to me.

I have a Japanese friend (she moved here) who has big lips and she doesn’t enjoy watching anime at all (besides the classics) because, among other things, of how big lips are either grossly sexualized and/or demonized in a lot of media.

I just really don’t like that it isn’t mentioned by fans at all. These gross stereotypes weren’t cool in the 1900s, I don’t know how these awful character designs were allowed in the 2010s. It affects so many people, including Japanese people themselves.

Sorry I’m just frustrated.

hey so I'm really sorry that you had to see that!

but like google isn't being very helpful

Like as you can see there's more than half missing. *sigh*

mod ali

#saiki k #antiblackness #cw antiblackness

[comradepingu]

Random men on the internet are the dumbest people on earth. I just saw some dipshit say Native Americans and Africans "invented" fascism before the Italian fascists did it.

#bad history #fascism #cw antiblackness #cw anti indigenous racism #idk what the term is for anti indigenous racism is so ill just tag it as that