Yesterday many of you expressed confusion about why I closed comments on this thread. Some of the comments questioning my judgment were written in good faith. Other comments were simply the normal jackassery from the expected 5-10 people.
I closed the comments not because I didn’t want to have a conversation about whether race relations is a zero sum game, or whether or not the photo was offensive, and whether I was wrong for using it. I’d love to have that conversation (or at least watch you have that conversation, and feel free to use this as an open thread to jumpstart that discussion.)
I closed the comments because of this comment:
You people take the bait EVERY SINGLE TIME. Everytime the white wing dangles these scooby snacks in front of you, you go for it.
They are baiting you with divisive issues. The Rapper in the white house. Blah blah yada yada.
You all deserve the blame just as much as the white wing echo chamber because if you just ignored their nonsense and let them wallow in their own filth they wouldn’t get anywhere and they would stop doing it. But no, you fall for it EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I think “stunned and speechless” is the best way to describe my reaction to that comment, and “disheartened and resigned” is the best way to describe my reaction to those who chimed in here and on Twitter to say “You’re misinterpreting” or “I don’t think he meant it like that” or “I think he meant liberals, not black people.”
You’re wrong. He meant it to be offensive. He did mean it like that. There is no question he meant it like that. What I find interesting is that rather than question the person who made the comment, folks questioned me. As if finding a way to render the comment non-offensive was more important than addressing the reasons that I was offended.
What followed in that thread seemed to me to be a roundtable discussion about me being a drama queen and taking things personally. I’m too emotional, you see.
For you women out there, imagine if you took offense to a sexist comment, expressed that you were offended at the time, and, indeed, had expressed offense at such rhetoric for months, but a group of men dismissed you out of hand, called you a drama queen, and made statements like “You’re always complaining about sexism. Why would you even want to be here? Why don’t you just go away? You’re the problem. It’s not us!” and then proceeded to discuss you, your identity, and your feelings as if you weren’t there. For you gay folks out there, same thing. Imagine a group of heteronormative folks trying to decide for you whether you should be offended about a perjorative attack.
Obviously the analogy is a bit twisted because this is a virtual world we inhabit, so it’s not the same as being in a room full of people while being ignored and spoken for, but it’s pretty damn close. Attacking someone based on their identity and then expecting the marginalized person to just “get over it” while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that the marginalized person is rightfully offended shows an incredible lack of compassion. Yet that is precisely what happened:
Why on earth would you keep associating with a site you consider racist? What does that get you? Either cut the drama and leave, or get Cole to seriously deal with the problem.
Though I did not see Exclamation Point Fred being the one to drive you off. Stunner really.
The point of me calling out these particular comments is not to shame the commenters, but rather to point out that such statements are offensive, that I believe the persons who made the statements knew they were offensive and intended them to be so.
By the time people began having the discussion that I intended to engender, I was pissed off to the point where I could not stand to sit here and watch people having an academic debate about me, my feelings, whether or not I was being a drama queen, or lame, or unself-aware. Certainly, because the rest of the folks on that thread had no stake in the “identity politics” they just moved on with the discussion while I sat there seething, wondering whether to bring it up again, or just shut it all down. And so I shut it down.