Intractable Social Issues
... if you assholes WANT to brag online about how WONDERFUL and ethical and high minded you are, you can either walk the talk and learn to respect the well-educated homeless White woman in your midst or show your true colors as the deeply fucked up jackasses you really are, pick one.
That's from a recent piece called Race Relations. Racism, classism, sexism etc. tremd towards being intractable.
I did all in my power to participate on Metafilter in good faith and no matter what I did, I was never going to really be accepted, respected, etc.
You can try to earn respect from some group. You can't really demand respect and if they are prejudiced assholes who have no respect for yoir demographic, deciding to stop kowtowing to their shit gets you what I got.
Metafilter decided to come up with a bullshit justification for banning me rather than decide to walk the talk and actually be good people making the world a better place like they like seeing themselves and want you to see them.
Reddit appointed Michael Seibel to its board after Alexis Ohanian stepped down and urged the board to replace him with a Black member.
Ohanian isn't a waspy sounding name to me. Wikipedia provides the Armenian spelling of his name but lists his birthplace as New York, so I imagine he's not exactly your standard White American. I'm guessing his parents or grandparents were probably Armenian immigrants and his cultural heritage is Armenian, which I have zero familiarity with.
Wikipedia says his grandparents:
Ohanian's paternal grandparents came to the United States as refugees of the Armenian genocide.
His wife is Serena Williams, a Black tennis star and they have two daughters. His decision is almost certainly a very personal decision rooted in wanting a good relationship to his wife and daughters in spite of living in this racist cesspit of a country.
In looking up these names -- because I have Swiss cheese for brains and no longer remember names like I did in my youth -- along with Alexis Ohanian, the other founders of Reddit are Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz. I have zero familiarity with Huffman but I know the name Aaron Swartz.
He died by suicide in 2013 at the age of 26. He was a hacktivist, so probably a chaotic good idealist rebel with a cause. I know the name because Hacker News bears scars from his death.
He was in prison for something hacker related, I don't recall what. The government locked up his bank accounts and told him he couldn't tell anyone. When he asked for financial help without telling the world his accounts were frozen, people on Hacker News said "no." So he killed himself and Hacker News feels partly responsible.
My recollection is that there's an episode of Kung Fu the TV series where some guy doesn't want to marry a woman he loves because he's Armenian and feels compelled to go back. And takes a stand for justice and then decides to marry her saying "I've just gone back." and maybe something like "Fighting injustice anywhere is fighting it everywhere."
That's all I know of Armenia: That something bad and unjust happened there.
I have no idea if Michael Seibel's inclusion on the board has had any positive impact on the experience of Reddit for Black Americans. I'm guessing probably it's done little or nothing because if he's "reasonable" and asking for modest changes, he's basically asking them to beat Black people less and if he demands that they stop beating his people entirely, they will likely show him the door like Metafilter did to me.
How we fix this, I don't know. But I'm tired of trying because I get nothing but kicked in the teeth for it by both people of color AND White Supremacists.
Or both men and women.
Or both rich and poor alike.
Etc.
A relatively young idealist with very young children whose idealistic co-founder and most likely good buddy who died by suicide in his twenties as a consequence of his "hot headed" ideals probably doesn't know how to fix it.
He should perhaps find some other way to try to address his family situation. What? I don't know. I have absolutely no idea what prompted him to insist on a DEI board member for a board he was stepping down from and no longer participating in.
My experience of Reddit has been extremely negative. I've removed the app from my phone recently and I'm wondering how to change things in my life with an eye to probably never going back.
I have no idea if that's "me" or says something about Reddit. Me and Reddit never really did click and I don't know that much about how they operate etc.
But one of the founders either has serious concerns about it or is grandstanding to try to appease his wife and they now require administrative permission to take a sub private. That's a recent change and my guess is it's because of the history of protest blackouts.
I'm beginning to wonder if Reddit is in trouble.
Whether it is or not, one token Black guy on the board chosen because of the color of his skin won't likely do much, if anything.
Racism against so-called "Black" Americans is rooted in a history of slavery in which the slaves were a different color from their owners AND a Civil War that freed them against the wishes of the Deep South which was probably a case of whitewashing whatever really caused the war.
See also:
Footnote
Most Black Americans are considered mixed race in other countries and many would be viewed as "White" in Brazil.