To think MN has a race problem and it’s getting worse

[MovingOutofZone2]

Posters say incredibly offensive, often outright racist things and MN lets them stand as it’s a ‘difference of opinion’ and that’s fine. Other posters complain about this and MN deletes said complaints as they are ‘personal attacks’ and that isn’t fine.

Then we have mods wandering in and going ‘let’s have peace and love’, as though ‘both sides’ need to calm down. No, we need to stop placating racists.

I’m not going to give examples as this will get taken down as a TAAT, but I cannot be the only person to be fed up with all this. MN needs to do something about the racism, race baiting and general cultural ignorance. Unless the site is ONLY meant to cater to white people and, even then, I firmly believe that most posters of any race don’t want to see all that ugliness.

It’s getting to the stage where, as a Black person, I’m steeling myself before I log on. And knowing that half the time I report a comment, I won’t even get a token acknowledgement. This isn’t right. It wasn’t always like this.

MN has a major race problem.

I know the thread you’re referring to, but aside from commenting in it myself I haven’t reported it because the mods are as clueless as the posters.

The whole of the MN team need to do some urgent racial training including Justine.

You implied that Black students shouldn’t expect to get Black teachers in a majority white country. I’m pointing out that 4% representation among teachers, evenly spread, actually means that everyone would get a Black teacher

Assuming proportional race representation across the whole teaching sector was achieved, it would still be unlikely that 'everyone' - or even near it - would have a black teacher. It's too simplistic. It discounts geographical split, primary schools, all sorts of things.

Generally, I stand by what I said - I don't think that black student in the UK can reasonably 'expect' to have a black teacher, in a country where only three or four percent of the population are black. Even if it was desirable for them, it's just not realistic.

I'm white - if I lived in a country where only 3 or 4 percent of the whole population were white, I might be delighted if my child's teacher happened to be white. But I would fully expect that most/all of my children's teachers would be of a different race, most of them the majority race of that country.

They whole post was equally clear. I only edited for the sake of brevity.

our moderation decisions are based on our Talk guidelines along with the thoughts and feelings of MNers.

How do you take our thoughts and feelings into account? As I don’t believe I’ve ever been asked for mine. Currently, based on the vote, roughly half of us think there’s an issue here. I see no indication that you’re listening to that.

And if you were to look at it in a cold, 'non human' way, leaving hate speech to stand would only ever be damaging for a business.

This is demonstrably untrue, as evidenced by the fact that the Daily Mail is one of the most successful media offerings on the planet.

Well, you're a perfect example here.

I have no clue what colour your skin is and it doesn't matter to me one tiny little bit.

But you can't accept an opinion different from your own. You're hard work because you don't listen, are dismissive of others and have your own agenda.

I'm clearly annoying you because I don't like your attitude and am challenging it.

And you probably think it's all because I don't like the colour of your skin!

I’m white so it’s not a problem I face. I just accept the word of others when they say that it happens to them and don’t try to turn the blame onto them for the way others treat them.

I wouldn't even bother questioning this comment. There is so much unconscious racism and xenophobia that I thought it was satire when I first read it.

Oh I’m aware. Read the thread before you appoint yourself as thread moderator.

This was my exact thought.

Do you doubt everything you are told? Do you work this hard at denying everything or do you just focus on racism?

Pretty poor, tbh

Thank you. I’m happy to be corrected and to apologise but I’m just a bit confused by it.

You're assuming all posters are genuine - I'm convinced the site is targeted by groups who post inflammatory stuff - not enough to merit a ban, but just shitty enough to start squabbles or give the impression that the people posting here are generally rascist etc.

Public forums like this should have an equivalent 'blue tick' system, which means that poster has been verified as a real human by the site, even if they have lots of name changes. At least that would make it easier to identify whether a post has been made by a real person in good faith - even if it's horribly bigoted.

One of the reasons given when posters petitioned for a Black MNers area was that they wanted somewhere where they could just have a conversation about something their racist neighbour did without having to constantly explain or justify that, yes, their racist neighbour is really a racist and no, they didn’t grow up ‘in a different time’ and think that that’s the polite word to use and no, they’re not short sighted or really bad at recognising faces, they do blank them …

Racism against Gypsy, Roma and Travellers has consistently been an issue on here. Misogyny is currently off the scale. Since men are more likely to be racist than women, it follows that since MN is currently inundated with MRAs, TRAs and incels that racism and misogyny have increased. They go hand-in-hand. As they did in the James McAvoy incident where the women were subjected to sexist and racist abuse.
It was interesting that certain Reddit subs were turned off overnight because that's when racism increased. MN could try that. There are a lot of trolls and abuse overnight.

I agree with this. Apart from everyone having their own issues and worries and not always time and headspace to “go and educate themselves” I think getting information from books and Google can’t always replace conversations with actual people.

I am white, but I’m an immigrant (with Ukranian heritage).
I have both Russian and Ukrainian friends here in the UK and of course we discuss the current situation in Ukraine.

What I’ve heard from my Ukranian friends is much more nuanced than what I’ve been reading in the media and seen on “educational” accounts on Instagram.

Of course such conversations can’t be forced, but I often see people say “educate yourself” to others and at the same time
“nobody owes you an education” and I don’t think it’s really conducive to understanding each other better.

I’ve have thought that too - and also agree with that measure. Trolls might be less inclined and folks might be more conscious is it was identifiable.