Thread by @SamiraNadkarni

I can't say I'm surprised. I've held for a long time now that the OTW is effectively somewhere between overt white supremacists and a ridiculously apt example of Bonilla-Silva's theorisation of racism without the racists (i.e. I'm too progressive/ nice to be/ know a racist).

https://twitter.com/Lecteronthelam/status/1451731470372966400

Not for nothing, but the assumption that antiracist work is erasure/ censorship/ is coming from "outsiders" & not those in fannish communities is absolutely white supremacy. Literally look at dog whistle discussions of CRT or any attempt to decenter whiteness; it's right here.

The claim that all these "outsiders" are seeking to destroy the ~greatness of the AO3 by asking for policy to deal with racism sits in parallel to entire histories of global anti-immigrant/ antiblack rhetoric. Zero recognition that POC have long asked for this/ helped build this.

So many people I know have outright said that fandom is escalating in its turn towards the right, using the language of free speech & pretence of inclusion to shut down any critique that asks for better, specifically antiracist conditions. It's honestly textbook by this stage.

The particular self-victimhood of the OTW here, heroically standing firm in the face of "censorship", not a call for antiracist policy and accountability, is just a dictionary definition for white fragility. You do you, but this shit is almost boring for how predictable it is.

At the end of the day, part of me is like "good grief, that's about whyte" (borrowing from a friend) & the other part is basically laughing at the fact that the OTW published these board minutes after that BLM statement. It's authoritarian fragility/ whiteladypalooza out here.

Since OTW is, like TV out here in the 90s, about 3 years behind any discussion in the mainstream, I cannot wait for someone to bust out the statement that the OTW is "decolonial" in 2025 because it's "self-made", with the claim that corporate-driven media is ~real colonialism.

(Oh god, I'm both laughing because it's such immense fuckshittery and also now almost 100% sure someone will try this because the level of co-option without any understanding of underlying politics at the OTW is like a volume dial turned all the way to 11.)

Aside from this, there are entire histories of global solidarities focused on similarities/ differences in structural/ individual violence. The assumption that antiracist work would not, by its very nature, be transnational is ridiculous to me.

https://twitter.com/RukminiPande/status/1451986843168231426

Can't believe I have to spell this out, but antiracist work is fundamentally grounded in histories, human rights, AND transnational solidarities. The presumption that asking for antiracist policy is somehow inherently "Western" is, in itself, the whitest thing anyone has said.

There is no place in this world, no country in our contemporary moment, that does not need to address racism. Wandering about claiming that race only exists within white gaze is not only critically mediocre, it elides histories of how racism intersects with local hierarchies.

In short, I don't have time for people weaponising their identities in the Global South to argue that NOT undertaking work to address racism is somehow more antiracist/ post-/de-colonial. Refusing to address fascism in your backyard doesn't make you a hero, it makes you complicit