Racist Harassment, White Tears, and the Targeting of Critics of Color

[renay]

Recently, Stitch published Let’s Talk About Tone Policing and (A Lack of) Reading Comprehension In Conversations About Racism In Fandom. It's essential reading.

The behavior Stitch has been subjected to is complicated and long, as the harassment has been ongoing, at various levels of intensity, for years. This summary post collecting Stitch's commentary at Oh No They Didn't (yes, really), was made in light of the most recent campaign to get Stitch fired from a gig at Teen Vogue. Stitch has written thoroughly about the harassment as well, in What It’s Like Being Fandom Critical While Black and Antiblackness in (Service of) the Archive: A Statement. In this most recent iteration of the harassment campaign, someone sent Courtney Milan proof of Stitch's "abusive" tweets. Spoiler: the screenshots were not abusive! It's literally just white fragility running completely out of control.

There are many issues at play in this situation, but I want to touch on two of them as a member of fandom and a survivor of abuse that resulted in lifelong trauma.

Unpacking the way race and racism shape our worldview is incredibly difficult. As a white person, I found very few structured resources when I first started working on anti-racism. It was primary source documents, all types of books, blog posts, and articles by Black writers, me stumbling through a history degree with ever increasing horror, and learning when to shut up and listen to Black critics when they spoke. I made a lot of mistakes. (I still make a lot of mistakes.) Many of our primary and secondary schools don't teach the truth and lots of colleges/universities don't fare much better if you don't deliberately search out classes that tackle these topics. Whenever the truth seems to be gaining a grasp on modern life, we see a backlash. Current offline example: the ongoing drama with Critical Race Theory as communities across the country attempt to shout down school boards and force those boards to ban it.

We live in a society where systemic racism is at the root of everything. U.S. public services are rife with it. The U.S. government, which anchors our communities, is teeming with it. It undergirds every single industry in the country—especially entertainment. I know less about how white supremacy works outside the United States, but I suspect that the broad strokes are similar. Our media is created by people who live in the same racial hierarchy we do. How can we, in a society where we grow from roots already laced with white supremacy, create communities that aren't tinged with racism? Fandom is built by our imaginations with the material other people imagined and made concrete. We're all steeped in racist tropes and ideas. Why do we expect that we're going to be able to create content uncritically and have it not carry the toxicity of our origins?

I consider these societal failures to reckon with our country's abusive, exploitative treatment of Black folks a lot when I see discussions of racism in fandom: the lack of experience people have with talking about race, how their perceptions of race influence their interests, and how the intersection of trauma/criticism can impact how people engage in fandom spaces. Criticism and trauma are connected for a lot of people because our cultures don't value emotional intelligence in any area, and that includes parenting and caregiving. There are generations of kids who grew up in households where "criticism" meant screaming, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, isolation, degradation, etc.

One part of anti-racism that traumatized white people must learn is that using their survival of abuse to justify another type of abuse is wrong. We can develop a trauma response that infiltrates every critical reaction we might have with another person. In our frantic need to avoid any hint of something that reminds us of the abuse we experienced or an abuser who hurt us, we become the abuser by spreading stereotypes and often deliberate misrepresentations about people who are already critically oppressed both online and offline.

I'm constantly unpacking this reaction from both myself and my fellow white people, some of whom don't even realize they have trauma around criticism that makes them react in ways that either play into racist systems or engage in actively racist behavior in order to deter the critic. I've lost count of how often I've heard, "[Black person] was mean to me about [X]." Black folks aren't, most of the time, "mean" when they're discussing their lived experiences. They're frank and unapologetic about the things they've endured and the racism they've witnessed. They've been conditioned by a society that doesn't value them and in fact tells them at every stage of their lives that they are inferior, disposable, and worthless. They have to advocate for themselves and be their own defenders because no one else will do it.

Stitch's essay says everything very carefully with deliberate citations, but based on how I've watched white folks speak to and about Stitch, some white people will read it and go, "Oh, that's hostile." My ongoing concern for Black critics is them having to see their work referenced in spaces where the host then proceeds to let commentators be grossly racist because those commentators drop specious justifications that their racist behavior is somehow necessary for their health and safety. I need white people to learn how to see through this and call it out when it happens around them.

If white members of fandom are going to highlight and advocate for work by Black critics, our responsibility doesn't end when we publish a post or send a tweet. That goes for me, too: I've recced Stitch's work often over the years but it's taken me this long to address the harassment they face when talking about race and racism in fandom. That was wrong and I'm sorry for it. We, as members of fandom, have to ensure that people don't use our celebration, discussion, or criticism of work by Black folks to engage in racist behavior. We cannot raise work by Black creators into the spotlight and then abandon them there, knowing that the chances of racist abuse from both the ignorant and the deliberately hurtful are so high. Otherwise, we are complicit in the dehumanization of the very people we claim to value.

I've watched the ongoing harassment of Stitch, and I continue to marvel at white folks in fandom who are determined to create a villain and have succeeded in propagating vile racist tropes that do real emotional harm to another person. Being at attention, ready to drop in to any thread to tell whoever might listen that the aggressive/mean Black person will come for them? That is a tool of white supremacy.

My wish is that white people in fandom learn that anti-racist critique is not necessarily a personal indictment. It's a bit old, but if folks would use the Jay Smooth method of reframing, where we ask, "is this critique about who someone is as a person, or is this about what someone did in a specific situation?" it becomes a lot easier to engage with and unpack.

Fandom doesn't have to continue replicating the racist hierarchies of society. We imagine this space for ourselves, we build our own infrastructure, we shape our communities, and we can choose, at every opportunity, to make them anti-racist.

Protect the health of your Black critics, fandom, even when you don't agree with their critiques. We need them now more than ever.

Comments

[egret]

Good essay.

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you for the post.

[cesy]

Thanks for highlighting