How To Stan The White Guy With Minimal Contribution To Fandom's Racism Problem

being a symbolism enjoyer should humble you because at the end of the day no matter how eloquently you articulate it youre essentially saying "i love it when things have meaning"

how do i properly articulate that the problem isn’t people shipping two white men once it’s about the TREND of people shipping two white men (or women) instead of the canon interracial & or poc/poc ship and defending it with the same identical arguments for why they just don’t vibe with it or don’t like it or whatever. 

like if you look back at the ships you tend to gravitate towards, the dynamics and the past fandoms you’ve been in, do you consistently shun the characters of color in favor of white characters and ships? have you considered that maybe there might be some implicit bias there?? 

like frequently with storylines and ship dynamics ppl would go crazy for if they were transplanted onto white characters ppl will call it boring just because it involves one or more characters of color. or they’ll find some petty reason to dislike the character/ship and pin it all on that. or even worse they’ll straight up steal it and give it to their white fave like?? 

the problem is you’re gonna have to make an effort if you find you don’t like characters of color/their ships like genuinely make an effort to seek out those you might enjoy and boost them because when it’s immediately obvious who fandom will choose as their next fanon white character to ship with the (white) main character there’s a real fucking problem lol.

219q vs 145q

ep2: :’) the only version of shkl@nce i tolerate

some people are so used to mostly consuming media where the women and people of color are static set dressing in stories about white men that they can't wrap their heads around the concept that female characters and characters of color can have arcs of their own. they'll see a character who's not a white man display a personality flaw that is clearly being set up to be overcome and they see it not as the setup of what promises to be an enticing character journey, but as an essential defining trait of their being, and proceed to demonize such characters for it. white men get to be dynamic and complex, women and people of color get essentialism and a pressure for likeability over good storytelling.

Your Meta has Meta

a response to the “canon did it first” excuse for racism

Whenever someone points out that certain metas/fics/headcanons have racist implications, the overwhelming response tends to be that it can’t actually be the product of racial bias—because it’s just “canon.” After all, if a character really is cruel, petty, or abusive in the source material, how can Fandom be held responsible for writing them in character?

On the surface, this can seem like a perfectly good argument—except that it completely sidesteps the actual implications.

Consider, for example, the following interpretations (all from real metas):

Finn from Star Wars is a predator—he’s obsessed with Rey.

Scott from Teen Wolf is a rapist—he attacked Derek.

MJ from the MCU is a fake MJ who should be replaced—her hair colour is wrong & she’s mean.

Iris from The Flash is a b*tch who should be killed off—she’s useless & whiny.

Each of these statements could be explored at length for the bad faith readings that they are, but for the purposes of this meta, let’s assume they are all correct.

What would be the implications of that?

If Finn, the first Black character with a leading role in a Star Wars film, is a sexual predator towards a white woman—a trope that has a horrific, racist history—why then is the meta using that discovery to explain why the white fave is superior, instead of a furious exposé on Disney’s racist depiction of a Black man?

If Scott, one of the few heroic Latino leads on US television, is a rapist and secretly the villain—when only 3% of all leading roles go to Latino men, as opposed to 22% of all Latino roles being related to crime—why then is the meta using that to elevate three white male faves, instead of calling MTV out for its bait and switch? Why is it not righteously angry at yet another racist depiction of a Latino character?

If Michelle, a mixed Black woman in the role of the most iconic superhero love interest of all time, is just a fake MJ and not the “real” love interest—when Black women are already relegated to less than 4% of all speaking roles in film, never mind the rarity of playing a romantic lead—why then is the meta focused on getting a “real” (white) MJ to take over her position, instead of pushing Disney to make her status as MJ as explicit as possible?

If Iris, one of the few Black women in a lead role on network television, is a b*tch who’s useless and whiny—when Black women are consistently over disciplined for being seen as louder/more disruptive than their peers—why does the meta choose to solve this by murdering Iris, instead of petitioning the writing staff to stop leaning into racist tropes?

This is only a sampling of popular metas—and only a few of the endgame conclusions that have to result—but the point is that the racism is not a bug; it’s a feature. If they were actually true, it would make the source material so reprehensible as to make supporting it unconscionable—but that’s not what they’re used for. Instead, time and time again, they’re just used to push the COC out of their own narratives.

If a meta wants to claim it cannot be racist because it’s simply restating what canon did, then it must consider whether or not that makes canon also racist. And if it does—what does it want to say about that? Is the meta going to continue that racist pattern? Call out the creators for their stereotyping? Create additional metas and fics to attempt to address the revealed problem?

And denying that—if none of those options seem tenable—then maybe the correct response is to question whether the original meta was all that accurate to begin with.

reading books to ur brother after school

the big three questions of media analysis: what the author wanted to say, what they actually said, and what they didn’t know they were saying

"Black/Asian Solidarity" Readings

A lot of Asian Americans have been sharing the dozens of think-pieces we’ve produced in the past few months on this topic. While I’m pleased to see more Asian Americans engaged with this than I’ve seen before, I think it’s critical we don’t only listen to other Asian Americans, but listen to Black folks and actually hear their voices and what they've been saying. I threw together this small list based on the bookmarks I have on hand - I’m know there are many more openly available. 

Proprieties of Coalition: Blacks, Asians, and the Politics of Policing - Jared Sexton [x]

People-of-Color-Blindness: Notes on the Afterlife of Slavery - Jared Sexton [x]

Black/Asian “solidarity” on MLK Day; some thoughts on the current nature of the discourse around African American and Asian American activism and “solidarity.” - I’Nasah Crockett (so_treu) [x] so_treu also makes antiblackness resources openly available on this tumblr [x]

We Real Cool?:On Hip-Hop, Asian-Americans, Black Folks, and Appropriation - Kenyon Farrow [x]

“Rap, Race & Black-Asian Relations” with Jeff Chang and Kenyon Farrow, moderated by Walidah Imarisha [x]

Black/Non-Black Divide and The Anti-Blackness of Non-Black Minorities - Robert Reece [x]

(3 pieces) Three Notes on Solidarity; or, In Want of a Requiem [x] | Black Imperative: A Forum on Solidarity in the Age of Coalition [x] | The Coalition Moment and a Black History [x] - John Murillo III, Nicholas Brady, Ben