I beat up Edith Wharton once. It was awesome.

This server had a history of silencing bipoc to “keep the peace” when those who posted incendiary comments meant to start fights with those whose modding policies they didn’t agree with were allowed to speak freely. 

Things came to a head yesterday when I was backed into a corner by the mods after (rightfully) calling out another mod for their hypocritical stance on anon modding for fear of backlash to the mods, when that same mod had harassed myself and @samstevebuckyhq in the mod server over our mod policy. They were allowed to dogpile us for two days. I made one critical post of them and was told to stop the convo out of respect for other mod policies. 

Several others spoke out about how they felt unsafe in that space. The mods replied ‘we’ll work on it.’ 

Today we asked what was going to be done? They said fill out this google form. We asked about specific issues in the server. We asked for an apology. They said be quiet. Others chimed in saying we were witch-hunting. 

They were not told to be quiet. 

I dropped a link for a new mod server, as clearly we were not going to get anywhere and I knew we were going to be kicked soon. I was right. We were almost all instantly kicked under the guise that they told us to stop talking. Many people kicked hadn’t spoken, they were only associated with us. 

Those that agreed with the mods are still in the chat. 

But please, don’t take my word for it. Screenshots can be found on twitter here. 

It’s clear to see what happened here today. Fandom, as a whole, we need you to do better. It’s going to be uncomfortable, I understand. But we need y’all to do the work. BIPOC fans should not fear every space they are in will eventually turn against them. 

I am one of four mods of a small server for the Darcyverse, which keeps to itself generally. Until the day before yesterday, I hadn’t interacted with anyone involved in this incident. The response of this server - a server for all mods of servers related to the Marvel universe - to concerns raised by POC in their space was to summarily ban anyone who spoke out about it or up in their defence (including myself). 

It’s sure an incredible coincidence that this anon with this exact same wording is getting sent to so many people, officer

Hi there!

In light of [gestures at world] and discussion today among the mod team and other bingo participants, we’ve decided to rename a few of our prompt squares, specifically “miscegenation” and “Pro-Nazi.” We thank those of you who have trusted us with your concerns and brought this to our attention.

We’re sorry for the pain we’ve caused thus far and will be working to correct it. The continued harm to participants is not acceptable and there are alternative terms we should have switched to using instead.

The original intent with “miscegenation” was to copy the language of the 1930 Motion Picture Code, in part to show how heinous it was, but intent does not excuse impact. This prompt will be renamed “Interracial Relationship.” We’re also changing the prompt previously titled “Pro-Nazi.” The name has been causing a great deal of distress and confusion, and after lengthy discussion we have decided to rename this prompt “Nazi content.”

We would like to reiterate that our list of prompts was compiled from the many, many reasons why works have been censored/challenged/banned. The entries included do not reflect mod support for any specific banned work or prompt, and we continue to encourage you to creatively subvert prompts as you see fit. However, we hope the new prompt names make our personal stances more clear (and, to that end, the Anti-Nazi prompt is staying right where it is).

Here is what we’re doing to move forward:

We’ve currently added more context for the “miscegenation” prompt in the Bingo Squares Prompt List. This will be further updated pending the 4th bullet point below.

Instances of the “miscegenation” tag in the BTB AO3 collection have all been changed to “interracial relationship.” Going forward, we will be watching the tags to ensure that the original prompt is not used in the Additional Tags either. This has been added as a vetting step for our moderators when they review tags.

We haven’t received any works for the previously named “Pro-Nazi” prompt yet, but if/when we do, we will be bookmarking them with the tag “Nazi content” rather than “Pro-Nazi” as well.

We have asked our techie for some additional work to evaluate the steps it will take to rename entries on the frontend/backend. Once we get through this last round of revised cards, they’ll be able to focus on that work this weekend and going into next week. We believe it’s worth it, but addressing the technical side will not happen overnight. Please bear with us while we work with them on this.

After we’ve figured out how we’re resolving this on the tech end, we will be sending an email to the participants who have these prompts on their card to update them about the situation and tagging policy.

We will reblog this post with an update when we know how the technical limitations of our backend will allow us to resolve this. 

That being said, your “reasoning” for using the term “miscegenation” in the first place troubles me deeply. It suggests that you knew how racist it was to begin with, but you still chose to use it sans any context whatsoever to make it clear to your participants that it is an unacceptable term to use in regards to interracial relationships today. 

I have spoken to several participants in this challenge. None of them knew what the term really meant. Many of them were non-native English speakers. Several of them were too young to be around when we dealt with the same iteration of this debacle in 2007. By not properly putting this term in context, you set up your participants to unwittingly partake in racism, not to mention all the potential readers in fandom, especially fans of color, who would have been harmed by the perpetuation of a racist and offensive term that implies the corruption of white purity and the connotation that black/people of color are less than human. That is an outrageous failure of foresight. 

Hate speech is not free speech, and promoting it is NOT deplatforming.

We encourage you to keep those squares and interpret them creatively. We decided not to include those prompts in Structural Racism because those are prompts that can be filled without directly tackling structural racism as your subject. They can easily be filled by works that celebrate people of color simply living and existing as people. Society’s opinion on the matter is not required.

Honoring, exploring, discussing, and/or uplifting ideas put forth by Black minds encompasses such a broad range of innovative topics! Now may be a fun opportunity to do some research into Black thought. Consider the sci-fi worlds of Afrofuturism and speculative fiction if you need a place to start; there are so many good works out there. We encourage creators to cite their sources of inspiration, so even more people can learn about the great works available!

Or, if you’d like to go another route—the full text for the “Black People’s Ideas” prompt comes from a challenge to The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Parents said the book contained “troubling ideas about race relations, man’s relationship to God, African history, and human sexuality.” You could use all of that for extra inspiration if you wish (or not—remember, the full text is there as a bonus, you are not beholden to it). There are a lot of options to think about. 

Likewise, interracial relationships exist with or without the structural racism of modern society. People love who they love. If your fandom doesn’t have enough variety of characters to fill this prompt, we also accept OCs. The universe you are working with could also feature relationships between different non-human races and challenges that may or may not parallel those found in human societies.

In response to this I received the following message from @bannedtogetherbingo2020 (with a follow up message saying I could post this). I hope the mods will, after their discussions, post a similar update on their own blog as promised.

I’ve been, for the most part, impressed with how they’ve handled questions and problems so far, especially given the inherently fraught nature of this event, and I hope to see that continue.

A Harry Potter kink prompt community used “miscegenation” as a prompt. Spoiler alert: they responded very badly when Zvi (a black fan) called them out on it and asked them to use the term “interracial” instead. (Here is another collection of posts which can attest to the racist connotations of the term). 

“It’s too hard to fix” is NOT a good enough excuse to not try to ameliorate the harm you are causing right now at this very moment. You can’t change the bingo cards? Fine, but your participants deserve to know RIGHT NOW that the term is racist. They deserve to be told that if they fulfill the prompt and post it, it should be tagged “interracial” and include NO MENTION of the original term; I can tell you right now that you already have one work in your collection where this is tagged with that term. They deserve to know the full context of the term because I guarantee you that NONE OF THEM want to be unwittingly racist. But more importantly, Black people and other POC deserve to be able to move through fandom spaces without being confronted with racist microaggressions (in perpetuity but ESPECIALLY RIGHT NOW). 

As blackestglass says, your list of prompts does not indicate the term itself is offensive nor does it give a suggested alternative to use when posting. I hope to see you include and inform other participants of the bingo. It was a mistake to use this term and you should be working to mitigate that harm now, not just next year.