racism, woke culture, and the sanders sides fandom
yo. so iâm back, i am indeed still black, and this entire situation that i just went through is wack, so letâs talk about the shit that just went down in this fandom. because we shouldnât just move past all this shit. we gotta address it as a collective, and learn from it.
so what just went down these past few days?
well it all started when one fander was harassed for making trans black roman art. this made a lot of fanders righteously angry. people started making a bunch of black roman art. someone even hauled ass to ask thomas what he thought about the art.
racebending isnât a new thing to the sanders sides fandom. and if this is where the situation ended, me and other black fanders would not be angry. however, this is not where the situation ended. what got us angry was when people decided to relate it to the b/l.m movement.
so black fanders spoke out about it. i spoke out about it. and. well. canât speak for what some other black fanders got but.
these two asks were only a taste of what iâve got in my inbox after i spoke out.
i canât speak for other black fanders, but this sort of shit continued and only started slowing down when a bunch of other bigger, mostly white and non-black poc blogs started speaking out about it.
a lot of the fandom got the gist after that and started taking off mentions of blm on their art.
again, though i canât speak on other black fandersâ experiences, but even with the fandom about to move on and things slowing down, i was still getting messages like the one before. most of them being like the ones on the bottom, albeit a little bit less accusatory. i had to take a soft break from tumblr, and now, here we are.
so letâs talk about all the shit that just went wrong here.
letâs go with the obvious one: connecting the b/l.m movement with fandom art. there are three obvious reasons why a lot of black people spoke. one, a lot of people only did this out of spite. two, a more important one, a lot of these posts were clogging up the b/l.m tag and blocking a lot of people from important information. three, the most important one imo, connecting fandom matters with a very real life movement where people are dying as we speak is also sort of not great. it shows that you can only process real things through a fictional lense, and it lowers the seriousness of the movement and the fact that, again, we are literally dying.
another thing was shit was the fact that when the posts started getting backlash, one of yâall decided to haul ass and go to thomas about it. and as much as i love him as a creator and respect his work, he is still a WHITE person. he should NOT have been the first person you went to regarding BLACK matters.
iâll give him the benefit of the doubt because fanders arenât that connected to thomas. he probably just supported the racebending, which is fine. we were NEVER mad about the racebending.
but yâall better believe iâm gonna hold the rest of yâall accountable. fanders may not be that connected to thomas, but fanders are connected well enough with other fanders. if people had an issue with shit, you shouldâve came to black fanders about it to verify whether shit was alright.
speaking of yâall seeking out nonblack peopleâs opinions on black issues: letâs talk about how yâall went up in arms and kept hating on me and the other black fanders that spoke out. letâs also talk about how yâall only started settling down when a lot of nonblack and, letâs not beat around the bush here, *mostly white* big blogs started telling yâall to knock it off.
like, i know a lot of fanders are white, so i expect a lot of yâall to make mistakes. hell, some of my close friends have done some problematic shit without knowing. mistakes are common and i thought when you guys are confronted with something, youâd come to the people youâre trying to represent. but apparently, some of you guys are so set in your ways that the only way you guys can take criticism is when your race has to tell you to knock that shit off.Â
and this is honestly one of the reasons i hate woke culture. itâs this us vs them mentality where people are stuck thinking âwell if they ainât with us, they against usâ. and then you start acting a fool towards the people that you were trying to âsupportâ.Â
but i think what a lot of yâall donât understand is that solidarity donât work that way. hereâs the truth that some of yâall just canât seem to handle:
you can do racist shit even if you support the movement.
you can do racist shit if you intend well. you can do racist shit and not know itâs racist. you can do racist shit and be âwokeâ.
if you do not experience a certain demographicâs experience, you are going to get some shit wrong. you are going to fuck up. just like how a lot of straight people fuck up when writing gay people, a lot of nonblack folks people are gonna struggle with portraying black people. this is inevitable and i do not blame some of you for fucking up. to act like youâll know everything about anything without fucking up is some puritan bullshit that i do not support.
but when you go out of your way to dismiss us when we bring up shit, only to pull back when people who are not us talk back? thatâs not solidarity. thatâs not activism. that is thinking that your social presence in our community is more important because youâre willing to support the movement under certain guidelines.
so yeah. thereâs my two cents as a black person, i hope yâall learn from all this bullshit instead of just ignoring issues like you usually do.
and to anyone who decides to go through all this shit and decide still disrespect me and other black fanders, suck my dick and choke on it.Â
tl;dr, like i said in another post, âit should not take a white person to whisper for yâall to hear what black people have been screaming at youâ. listen to black people when they say shit. do better.
ellievsbear
annaxmalina
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
snowghoul
gummygunk
