This week’s prompt is about racism and The Avocado. This discussion is intended to be preliminary and exploratory. We are not going to “solve” racism on the site today.

Thread rules:

1. We ask that only those who identify as people of color participate in this discussion. White Avocados, while valued members of this community, should remain in ‘lurk’ mode.
2. Shaming and hateful speech are unacceptable.
3. Please keep potentially traumatic content safely behind spoiler tags.
4. Nobody on this thread is more or less a person of color than anyone else. (We will not set clearly delineated boundaries on who qualifies as a ‘person of color.’ As a starting point, this thread uses the definition of ‘non-European heritage of sufficient prominence to affect one’s navigation of a society built on white normativity.’ However, we recognize that there are identities which skirt either side of the divide. If people feel that they meaningfully experience the identity of being a person of color, then they are welcome to participate.)

[spoiler title=’Additional Guidelines’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’]1) The term ‘people of color’ encompasses a broad range of experiences. We are not a monolith. Therefore, we ask that participants respect each other’s experiences during the discussion, and refrain from promoting one particular experience as being more true to our shared identity as people of color. Furthermore, we ask that participants attempt to voice their own experiences as opposed to generalizing on behalf of the community as a whole. Of course, there are some exceptions. Participants are welcome to interrogate how shared experiences like marginalization help to forge common bonds within our community, but please remain courteous towards others in doing so.

2) We ask that participants remind mindful of the following: we would like to keep this space as safe from white privilege as possible. Even people of color can help to perpetuate systems of white privilege. For example, people who enjoy passing privilege may not understand the experience of being a visible minority. What people of one ethnicity know about people of another ethnicity might operate through the proxy of whiteness. We simply ask that a conscious effort is made to acknowledge white privilege. Likewise, we ask that visible minorities consider the unique challenges of passing privilege when posting. Again, we are only asking that participants keep this in mind while commenting.[/spoiler]

The Prompt

Given a number of incidents that have happened on this site over the course of its existence, some people have raised the idea of having an open community-wide conversation about racism on The Avocado, similar to the ongoing discussion about sexism.

1. Should we have this conversation?
2. If so, what form should it take, and when should we have it?

In order to make this week’s thread as useful as possible, I want to emphasize two things. First, you are free to speak about your experiences on this site. You should of course anonymize your descriptions appropriately and refrain from calling specific people out; as long as you do so, for purposes of this thread, such comments won’t be considered “vagueposting” or “dragging out drama.” Second, I know we’ve occasionally been slightly lax about this, but it’s especially important this week: this is a space only for people of colour to comment. If you do not identify as such, then do not comment here. We are going to have this discussion internally before we bring it to the wider community (if we do end up choosing to do so), and any intrusion will made it difficult for us to speak freely about our own experiences.

Some concerns about this project have been raised with me and the other site moderators, and I have raised some concerns myself. In order to save space in this header, I will outline those in a comment below.

Alright, let’s talk about this.