Is it my imagination or are there more people pretending to be Black and making bizarre or race baiting comments on MN at the moment?

[Socrateswasrightaboutvoting]

There have been some decidedly odd posts and comments recently. Black women are a not a monolith but there are often some common points of reference.

Thanks for the head up about 'trending'. Thanks for clarifying,

I think I misread your earlier comment, hence another reason I shouldn’t have barged in! I will leave you guys in peace now 😊

Thanks @ChristmasFox Nobody minds people making a respectful contribution. Unfortunately, not everybody is respectful.

Totally agree......and who the heck walks around naked in this weather with the cost of heating!!😂(for the record I'm white and will leave by the back door, this thread was in active)👋

Yeah plus the riots really showed that the racists are getting bold again. One fake news story and they gleefully took to the streets. I don't think I was particularly naive before, but still, I don't look at Britain the same way now. It's uglier and more volatile than I realised.

I don't think all the rioters were hard core racists - from what I've heard, some were kids who were out and saw their neighbours fighting with the police, and kicked off with them because they hate cops too. Still, these are the people who might be convinced to hate their neighbours too, if they stay indoors long enough, like during lockdown, nursing an anger fed by relatively inexpensive but sophisticated troll bots spewing racist propaganda all over the internet.

Maybe I sound like a conspiracy theorist myself, but online influence works, and we've seen how it's bought.

Nigel Farage did it before, making dodgy deals between UKIP and leave.eu and Cambridge Analytica, which harvested Facebook data to target and persuade a crucial number of voters to support Brexit.

So why wouldn't someone like that use bots or hire a team to spam high traffic forums like MN and Reddit, increasing the volume of posts and comments in favour of the political views they want to inflate? Perhaps they stand to make money from the manipulation, or increase their audience share, or gain votes. Perhaps all three.

It's not hard to find an agency who'll do it, if you're willing to pay (or someone else is willing to help you pay for it).

Whoever is behind these kinds of posts, whether bots, mercenaries or genuine racists, I see them trying to push the "common sense" away from a general anti-racist consensus (with overtly racist comments being deleted by the platform host as standard) and towards racist ideas being the norm/acceptable again (and possibly "suppressed" by their deletion - playing into the victim mentality of the average white nationalist).

If I was on the Reddit or Mumsnet web analytics team, I would be closely examining the stats behind the posters of these kinds of threads and comments, and looking for incongruous patterns of any kind.

Oh stop it! It's a very important part of who Kemi is to the Conservative Party. The first Black leader, a paragon of diversity, just as Rishi was dubbed the first Asian/Hindu PM.

Having had my attention drawn to your comment on this thread - Well racists and those who enable it are like magnets to each other.

Why are your comments for LadyKenya and not ChristmasFox, a white poster? Surely if you take umbridge with Lady Kenya's comment you should be equally upset with ChristmasFox who articulated if first ( it took her two attempts). Does Christmas Fox get a pass because they are white? Is it just Black women that needs to be put in their place on Black Mumsnetters.

Unless you are Black you will never have to worry about the colour or your skin. Perhaps you should spend a bit more time reading up about Racism in Ireland before you come in here acting like the victim. Dirt kicked in your face??? White women's tears are the same whether they are English, American or Irish.

Don't let to door hit you on the way out.

Thank you@Socrateswasrightaboutvoting . I saw that poster's comments, and for the life of me, could not work out why she was directing her ire at me, and not say anything about the original poster, that I was replying to in the first place. Any way she showed herself, with some of her comments. It is a very thin veneer.

No problem @LadyKenya That veneer was transparent! The irony of coming onto this thread given the topic and taking umbrage with a Black poster and not a White one and thinking your White Irish privilege and a racist notice in Brixton from the 50's gives you a pass. Pretty sure it wasn't Black people who had that sign up in their windows.

💯 As always@Socrateswasrightaboutvoting .

I wish I’d seen the comment before it was deleted. I would prefer MN keep the racist comments up so posters can show who they really are (before the inevitable name change, of course). Or at least keep their name on the deleted post so there is some element of accountability.

Honestly, that poster's comments were not worth the effort of reading them imo. All they served was to highlight her own bias, whilst attempting to chide myself@GretchenWienersHair. Sometimes I do think, MN are too swift to delete some comments, while at the same time allowing other questionable/ outright racist comments, threads to continue.

Mumsnet doesn't delete "racist" posts, Mumsnet is racist.
Mumsnet deletes "racist" posts, Mumsnet is too swift to delete racist comments. Mumsnet should leave racist comments for everyone to see.
All black people are not the same but why do some black people say things I don't agree with. They must be pretending to be black.

Shocker that, what with us not being a monolith and the whole debate thing. Mumsnet more often that not allows racist posts to stand to flourish under the guise of free speech.

Are you black?

🤣😆 how often I ask this question in my head. For a multitude of reasons and to many people.

It's laughable how this thread is just proving the op point.

I wish we were more vocal on mn. I get saddened when I have to read the micro aggressions as well as live them in the real world every bc day

@MyNewNewlife Lol it never takes long for points to be proven on this board!

Honestly MN and most internet forums are just places for racist keyboard warriors. These are ordinary people who you see o the street, colleagues but they come to life behind a screen.

Of course, I don't agree with your opinions means I am not black and I am racist. I am black.

Whose or what opinions have you disagreed with? You’ve just repeated loads of random opinions from different people (because different people will obviously have different opinions on things, black or not.) So what exactly is your point? I am very confused here.

I’m not sure I’ve seen it but some of the posts about Meghan markle…..I actually can’t belive they’re allowed to stand. Genuinely wishing that her marriage collapses, suggesting that her children are ?fake. There are absolutely deranged individuals posting who do not ever seem to be as exercised about a white person.

The Royal Family board is a sea of racism. You only have to see Megan's name in a thread title to know how the thread is going to go. Mentally I imagine rats swarming when I think of the average poster there. Don't get me wrong, there are some decent posters but they are outnumbered 1000 to 1.

I don't think I've seen the posts originally referenced OP or I have just been naive.
Placemarking so I can follow.

There was one particular one which stood out to me about a month or so ago. A black mumsnetter had posted on this board about racism at work, cue all of the “visitors” to the board asking if she’s sure it was racism. So many of them avoided admitting they weren’t black. Just there to add their two pence to a discussion that had nothing to do with them.