Moments of Permanence - On differences in oppression, derailment, and the hierarchies of hurt

From: alias_sqbr Date: April 7th, 2009 07:54 am (UTC) Re: Still hoping I can stop the words coming out as "I am pompous punch-bag. Please attend with fis (Link)

this was a classic case of me projecting stress from my own life into an online venting

Yeah, I've been there and done that (in my way) One of the reasons I posted about RaceFail on my lj was because I was going through a difficult period when it started and didn't trust myself not to make a fool of myself on other people's ljs (people who friend me have only themselves to blame)

I was ambiguous: I think there's nothing wrong with posts inspired by the Fail which are more general and can be read out of context. Coming into someone else's conversation on, say, why X person's behaviour was bad and making vague, not very relevant statements about the general nature of racism would probably be a derail.

To continue from one of tevriel's examples: there's nothing inherently wrong with posting about class, even if from someone involved in the Fail. It's when people say "I'm posting about class because that's what REALLY matters, not this petty race crap" or start talking about classism in the comments of a post/thread about racism that it's a derail.

I think there's a balance between stopping derailing and keeping everyone so narrowly on topic that the conversation is stifled. Where I think it's better to tend towards the former is when the SAME off-topic ideas come up repeatedly and the original topic is almost always ignored/avoided. I vaguely recall a post a few years ago the last time something like this happened (on a smaller scale) and the (POC) writer said "My last post on cultural appropriation ended up with lots of white people commenting about how nordic/irish etc culture is 'appropriated'. That's a valid topic, but I would like THIS post to just be about how POC culture is appropriated" and the comments were still full of almost identical "I'm of irish descent and conflicted about green beer on St Patrick's day" etc comments, with added "ARE YOU SAYING IRISH CULTURE DOESN'T MATTER??".

everyone who genuinely thinks the mode of conversation sucks will eventually depart

You'd think so, yet many stick around at length being loudly critical :/ Then again, a lot of them were people who were being criticised for being actively racist (or friends of such people) trying to come up with excuses for why they were being such prats and refusing to give up the last word.

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