Delivering Justice on Heaven's Behalf

Expanding a thought from Twitter.

So, according to the media and tons of people giving advice to POC is that the only sure road to success is hard work.

But when you see successful POC, or, specifically, successful black people, then the refrain is that the only way they could have possibly succeeded is unfair affirmative action.

The only way both of these could be true is if you subscribe to the idea that in the entire world of POC, no one has ever worked hard, and only white people work hard.

Of course, if that is true, then there is no point in telling POC to work hard, because you are believing it to be biologically impossible for them to do so for that many people to have NEVER worked hard.

There's a thing I see happen a lot, that helps lead to a wack internet.

There's this idea that if you run a discussion space, that you have to try to maximize the breadth of possible discussion topics, and ways of talking about a topic, that this is somehow necessary for "Free Speech", and therefore, moderation should be minimal.

What this misguided approach does, is lead to problems, in the form that sites become terrible places.

What do I mean?

Myth #1: Minimal moderation leads to breadth of opinion

Start with this flowchart: "So you're mad about something on the internet...

So, the most rational people do the best thing- they disengage. They leave your site, they stop contributing.

Everyone else who remains, ends up going back and forth, and ultimately, there's only two ways this can go:

1) Pile-on - the majority expresses their displeasure on the few, which could be useful if the few are asshats and the majority is fighting for civility and calling out bad behavior, and is shitty when it's vice versa.

2) The endurance test - the people who are dogged/obsessive, keep posting, and posting and posting. If you look back at the flowchart, not only is the problem that the odds are these people are terrible people, but even the good people at this point are likely simply repeating more and more obvious statements (or being further and further sidetracked into derailing) at trolls.

Notice that both breadth of opinion and quality of discussion die.

Myth #2 Continued debate leads to truth

This one is especially problematic, because it overlooks a core premise: that everyone involved is actually discussing in good faith and hoping to find the truth, instead of simply dickwaving, or worse, simply trolling for lols.

When you look at the scientific community, there's debate about some things, but other things aren't given the time of day... for example, the people who argue the Earth is flat. Do we really need more debate on this? Do we need to put our best minds to re-proving this?

No, we accept some people cannot be convinced and move on, so we can work on things that are worth discussion.

You can go to any public, mainstream site that is not, or barely moderated and find tons of racism, sexism, homophobia and idiocy. If unmoderated or barely-moderated discussion would naturally lead to truth, we'd be looking at Youtube comments for insightful commentary instead of being aghast at humanity.

Myth #3 Your site is not all the internet

"You're destroying free speech!".

Well, no, actually. Governments which block entire sites (that aren't, say, child porn or bomb making), or track everyone's emails, those are places that block free speech. Not being able to post on one site or forum, really doesn't block someone from going to any of the many other sites, or creating their own.

That said, it is worth noting, though, the difference between the silencing of voices like in Myth #1, where you let people shout down folks vs. actively banning people. The reason moderation works, generally, is that it lets someone use judgment as to whether the complaints are about being silenced by asshats or asshats being silenced.

For the moment being, I'm going to assume you actually want a space that isn't Asshatland (since, there's a lot of sites to compete with, and while the demand is high, the supply is even greater), so think about what you really want from your site and how you're going to go about getting it.

So, if having white actors always means more money, and therefore, is always a good idea, anyone want to explain to me why Memoirs of a Geisha didn't star white actresses starring in the lead roles in the movie?

Oh, maybe because the real formula is "Heroes = white people", "Hookers = POC", right? I think I'm just going to bring that up next time someone pulls out that bullshit logic.

"This is not the typical, tragic Mulatto story..."

I just got back from seeing Lisa Marie Rollins' Ungrateful Daughter - a one woman play about transracial adoption, and it was super awesome and worth seeing if you get the chance.

She does a series of vignettes of different scenes of her life- some real, some metaphorical (like having an argument with Aunt Jemima about representation or having her life reduced to an oversimplified platitude on the Oprah show). There's a good mix of comedy and tragedy, and a lot of scenes of human vulnerability and mistakes. She plays all of the characters with great effect, and though caricatured, you see the stuff that makes them human under the extreme.

There is one scene, where she's 7 and her white mother is trying to do her hair for her first solo in choir... and her mom's frustrations with her hair and inability to deal with her blackness roll together in a heartbreaking, horrifying way that just... UGGHGGHGHGH - exemplifies white people's issues overall.

So, obviously, this is some deep shit Rollins is digging into here, and not all of this is easy to watch. There is no sexual violence, and there's no use of white people's favorite racial slur, either. So yay, but still, emotionally wretching scenes at times.

Clearly, I must at some point make a mashup mixtape that's basically the soundtrack to a yet to be released Blaxsplotation 007 movie.

My friend Jono had a point awhile back that he wished cars had more ways of communicating to other drivers than just the horn/turn signal combo - stuff like, "Please go ahead, I'll let you in the lane", and such.

One thing I've noticed about email, is that when you have to email a bunch of people, it's almost guaranteed that the important info will also get crowded under non-important or poll responses to that info.

It'd be pretty neat to have something, like say a Gmail conversation, which had a button that takes you to a list of everyone emailed in this. And those people could change their "status" for this conversation and you'd see those statuses as colored dots next to their name:

Grey - "I haven't picked a status yet. I may not have even looked at the email."
Green - "I'm good with what has been decided/whatever you decide."
Yellow - "I'm waiting to hear more info/see where this is going/I need to go get some more info before I can respond."
Red - "I'm out of this conversation. I will not receive any more emails on this."

This does two things:

1. You don't have to clutter your inbox with these kinds of responses
2. It fills the "effort gap" below writing a full email- it means you have something better than silence, but not quite requiring real typing.

Obviously, the big problem for this kind of system is that it has to work with classic email in some fashion, and still requires people to do some minimal clicking. There's always going to be people who never read the email and slow the whole process, but generally I figure the easier you make things, the easier it can go for groups.

Of course, maybe stuff like Evite and similar "Yes/No/Maybe" RSVPs are the best way to go, though I could see projects and work using this system for much better results.

ETA:

Probably the easiest way to do this would be to incorporate it into something existing like Gmail or an email client like Thunderbird, with special links auto-generated as headers in each email for the folks who aren't on the tech to just click to respond or see the responses thus far.

Another issue is that this also doesn't track history like general email does, so it's not as useful if you need to track a history of agreement/delays like with classic email. That said, though, I've found that those trails rarely get acted upon anyway, when you have those problems.

While I wouldn't recommend Linux for anyone who wants to do anything beyond the most basic stuff (web, music, etc.), I will recommend that everyone burn a Linux Live Boot CD and keep it around.

A live boot CD will let you get your computer up and running if your OS gets jacked, you catch a ridiculous virus, your harddrive is damaged, or even dead. There's a lot of types of Linux which will run straight from your RAM, let you do some basic disk repairs if the HD is damaged, get the data off the harddrive or allow you to upload it somewhere else. You can still access the internet and email with a dead HD with many versions of Linux.

All you need to to do is pop the disk in, and boot to it (Most computers will have some kind of "press F12" or something to let you boot straight from a CD, otherwise, it's usually holding the C button).

If you want to have one around, this is what you do.

1. Download a CD version of Linux.

I use Peppermint because it's fast and has solid features*. For more features and included disk utilities, Mint will have you covered (Get the LXDE version at the bottom of the screen - it'll fit on one CD).

2. Burn the ISO to a CD

If you don't have a program for this, you can download an ISO burner. I'd have to dig up the one I use at work, but a quick cnet search for ones with lots of good reviews gives me ImgBurn and BurnRights.

And... that's it. If you've got a blank CD, most of the time is downloading the distribution of Linux and an ISO burner- the CD usually takes a few short minutes.

If you lack access to a CD burner and can wait a week or two, you can even buy the Live boot CDs for a pretty reasonable price: Peppermint OS $9.

*One caveat about Peppermint. The file manager is under "Accessories". Once you figure that out, you can access your files and get your data off the system if you need to.

Of Activists, Feminism, and Mammy Issues breaks down the whole expectation that black folks are somehow supposed to also go fight everyone else's battles as well as their own.

I think it's real interesting, clueless, and fucked up how many folks can't be bothered to learn something about black rights and the battles fought here, and simply buy into the McDonald's/American Kumbayah story that "Now all the black peoples are free and happy!" and imagine that, now everyone's sitting on beemers and Oval Office desks, and dammit, why aren't they helping anyone else?

The Reference to the Court of Appeals post puts it nicely:

The reference to ‘court of appeals’ is a metaphor for how (‘american’) Blacks are often expected to authenticate the suffering of non-Black people of color. For instance, I’ve read the work of diasporic South Asians who have faulted ‘american’ Blacks for not caring sufficiently about (or even supposedly participating in) the profiling of people-who-look-‘Muslim’ at airports. What gets erased is that, before Sept. 11, diasporic South Asians weren’t organized against racial profiling because it was Blacks who were (and still are) being racially profiled.

So ‘solidarity’ is always supposed to go in one direction, *from* ‘american’ Blacks *to* non-Black people of color. When non-Black people of color are in trouble, Black people are supposed to be front and center validating the struggle with their presence, even though non-Black people of color are only there for Blacks when it’s convenient.

There's a real split between "Get mine activism" and actual, equality & human rights activism. The former has a simple, fucked up goal - which is to get the same privileges as white men. Not to actually get equality for everyone, but just for themselves and maybe a few folks like them.

That mentality shows itself really quickly- they're only upset when it comes to power being used against them, but no one else, and unsurprisingly, accept that basic concept - that black people are supposed to be magical negros mammies for the cause subservient StepinFetchit "Allies" when they need it, though they remain silent in the face of police murder, economic targeting, focused relocation (who remembers Katrina?), and a host of other, goddamn-it's-blatant bullshit.

I had a conversation on Twitter awhile ago, pointing out the problems of how quick a lot of East Asian Americans are to buy into being #2 on the racial hierarchy system. If you have any understanding of racism, then it's pretty clear that your duty is to step up as an ally MORE if you've got privileges than it is expect more from the people with LESS or NO privilege.

And frankly, if you couldn't be bothered to know the people and listen to them who you're now asking for support? That you understand their history through the propaganda of the oppressors? Why should they ally with you?

There's no such thing as "equality for one" - either we all get it or it doesn't exist. "Get mine" greedy activism, in the end, only becomes the oppression it claims it's fighting, and in the end, supports it the entire way.

ETA: A nice commentary on willful ignorance with regards to black folks while demanding servitude in activism

This is one of the most interesting, and fun anime series I've watched in a good while. I wouldn't have believed that a supernatural Pokemon-battle based on economic systems would be fun, but this actually is great.

Kimimaro, a struggling college student, gets sucked into the magical world known as "The Financial District" - where you put your future up as collateral for vast sums of money. The people who can access this place have magical ATM cards and are forced to battle each other, once a week, and gain money (or lose money) from the battles. That said, the show avoids the "fight of the week" trope, that it could have easily done, and instead skips most duels or cuts them short and comes back to look at the fallout of these duels.

Each "Entrepreneur" has a magical spirit, known as an "Asset" who fights alongside them. The Assets can use magical attacks which take money directly from the person's savings. Successful attacks cause the opponent to spew black money which looks a lot like blood the way it geysers forth, and that adds to the attacker's account.

If you're ever forced into bankruptcy, you are ejected from the Financial District, and then, since the money was "your future", reality rewrites itself to make your life wack and the lives of friends and family around you, also wack.

This actually solves one of the big questions that comes up- how do you have these massive influxes of money without screwing up the economy? And the answer is, reality is constantly rewriting itself around people who make money through this.

The story revolves around Kimimaro trying to figure out what's going on with all of this, while major groups in the world are attempting to game the system - either to simply make themselves rich, to improve society, or, at least, to reduce the negative reality re-writes that occur with massive wins/losses, that end up completely reshaping economies, and, countries.

Although it seems like it's about money, the show is actually a fun look at the literal question of "borrowing from the future" and what does it mean? How do you prioritize living life in the moment, as tomorrow is never guaranteed, vs. planning and making long term life choices?

There's only 11 episodes and it's up on Hulu. If you're up for something fun to watch that moves quickly, this is a great series.