Comment on Men are generous
Abyssian@lemmy.world 5 hours agoThe first image I definitely agree on. That’s fucked up and anyone should know it. This one I definitely don’t agree on. It’s based entirely on guess and assumption. Nothing about it is inherently racist.
I’ve honestly never even seen that movie scene used for racist shit. It’s a scene tons of people around the world are likely to know, because it’s sort of a popular book and movie series. It seems likely to randomly punish innocent nerds who don’t have experience with whatever racist image distribution networks you’ve joined.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 5 hours ago
Their previous history of racist posting was pretty clearly taken into account, it wasn’t some random nerd who happened to get misconstrued.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
For your first point, you’re talking about someone who checking shows has an absolutely insane 1.85K posts in 3 months. Through all of them 3 have been questioned on racism. One of those also called him a bot, which doesn’t seem true since he messaged me when I first commented here asking if he was banned, and I don’t know the situation there. Since that happened on another community, I’d assume the mod in question wouldn’t know it either.
They’d likely know about the other that took place in this community, that I agree was definitely something I’d call racist. But one single instance post isn’t really a “history of racist posting.” Again, I’ve never seen that scene used as anything racist. I’m not new to the internet, so I’m sure there are plenty of other people who haven’t. You don’t know it wasn’t some random LOTR fan being misconstrued. You don’t know that OP didn’t feel like a jackass for posting the shitty racist meme and wasn’t actively trying to do his best to follow the rules. Did anyone bother to ask? Was there a conversation about any of it? It can be difficult for anyone to read sarcasm in text or silly memes these days, so asking what someone meant by a thing and how they saw it is important.
For the Ceuta issue, I do understand what racist dog whistles are and the asshat strategies to get people to see those with other skin tones or backgrounds as evil. Mostly, anyone who actually looks into it will see the event we’re talking about had absolutely nothing to do with race in the first place. The Kingdom of Morocco directly borders the city of Ceuta. You can less than one meter and move from one to the other. This isn’t some situation where migrants from a very different culture with a very different skin tone are traveling a long way that racists can use to scare people who don’t pay attention. Everyone on all sides shares pretty much the same skin tones.
This is like if the people of Jersey City, NJ swarmed into New York City, NY… except 20x more people than Jersey City even has. Anyone trying to make that an issue of race or ethnicity would look like a complete fucking moron. The only way it could even be considered a racist dog whistle is not knowing that.
I also understand what an invasion horde is. We’re not talking about a relative handful of refuges trying to get into a large country that can support them. Wikipedia lists Ceuta’s entire population at 83,567, and reports are saying this event included over 60,000 Moroccans.
There’s no way in hell you wouldn’t feel invaded if a group of people almost matching the entire population of your city started swarming in, even if they were from whatever nation you live in. That’s not something someone ‘equates’ to an invasion horde, it is a literal invasion horde.
It seems more like the mod didn’t know the geographical, racial, and ethnic realities of area around Ceuta. Not a big deal, most people wouldn’t. They saw a meme of an invasion horde swarming a place, possibly read “migrants” and/or “African” and decided it must be racism and deleted it and banned the user based on that. That’s not great. This place doesn’t move nearly fast enough for that to be necessary.
And you proudly proclaimed that you as an instance admin would have given a permanent ban instead. Hopefully you’d have bothered to research more before actually pressing the ban button than you did before replying, since as I’ve tried my best to make as clear as I can the entire situation has nothing to do with race and knowing anything about it more than “migrants, africa” it makes no sense at all to consider the image a racist dog whistle even if it did show an image of a scene from a movie you’ve seen used that way before.
It’s a commonly referenced scene of a commonly referenced movie. Even if you know that many people have been stabbed with pencils and pens over the years it wouldn’t make sense to assume everyone you see with one has that intent, because pencils are common.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 hours ago
Notice that the user who received the temp ban went on to complain about it, and even after other users explained why the memes were racist (including the zuckerberg post that you also agree is racist), the user dismisses the racism entirely and just says “not arguing everyone has to like the memes.” They are showing zero ability for self-reflection and refuse to acknowledge the memes were racist.
I still would’ve given a permaban based on the evidence at hand, were it my community. You can disagree with that and give them more and more chances, but posting one blatant racist meme which is indisputably racist (even you agree), shows that we’re not working with some innocent lamb who just isn’t keeping up with modern dog-whistles.
If someone had only posted the LOTR meme without that previous history, then I would give benefit of the doubt, and just remove it and explain why.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
No, I can’t see that link. From how you’ve described that conversation it seems that I can see his end on his user message history, but can’t open the post so I’m assuming they deleted the it.
Yes, the Zuckerberg thing was racist, but it’s also what I’d consider an example of some of the tamest and most common racist jokes. It’s very common to hear from people of all skin tones, and before the last 10 years or so it was extremely common. Most people I know would just roll their eyes at it, some being a bit hurt or annoyed inside and some not. It sucks, but that one has become extremely normalized to the point where plenty of black people would post it as a dumb meme joke. It’s the type of thing a lot of people would need to have pointed out as racist, with genuine effort put into explaining and educating and not just insulting and assuming they’re an awful person.
Everything about this reads as somewhat socially awkward person, who doesn’t seem to speak English as a first language and is fairly uncomfortable with discussion (~15x more posts than comments) so they contribute to Lemmy by reposting memes and deals from Reddit. They’ve posted nearly 2,000 of them. One that was deleted and they were told it was racist. They didn’t argue, accepting that it was wrong. Two weeks later a meme about tons of people swarming some place with a lord of the rings picture is deleted and they are banned, with racism listed as the reason.
Going to the official support community to complain about being called racist… people do that when they feel wronged and are looking for support. A racist getting firmly told that shit isn’t welcome and then complaining to the same crowd of people would just be opening themselves up to more insults. They’re herd animals. They’re comfortable vomiting up their bullshit to one another because it’s safe and they know it’s welcome. When they test the water in a new group and get smacked down most of them would react by putting back on the same face the huge majority of racists we deal with in public every day are wearing.
You also didn’t quote his full message in your last comment. It was “I’m not arguing everyone has to like the memes. I’m objecting to the leap from “this post violates our rules” to “you’re racist.” Those are two very different claims. If the content isn’t welcome in that community, that’s the moderators’ call. But labeling someone’s character based on a single meme is a much more serious accusation, and I don’t think that’s justified.”"
That and all his other messages are the same tune. He’s literally upset that he’s being called racist. It bothers him so much people are thinking that way about him that he went to post for support.
“They are showing zero ability for self-reflection and refuse to acknowledge the memes were racist… If someone had only posted the LOTR meme without that previous history, then I would give benefit of the doubt, and just remove it and explain why.”
No insult intended, but I hope you’re willing to have some self-reflection. I’m in my late 40s and have been a computer/internet nerd for pretty much all of it. I’ve never seen that image used as anything racist, and I’m well aware of how insidiously innocuous racist shit can be made to look. If a person didn’t understand why the first meme deleted was racist, then of course they’re not going to see the second one that way.