[you have to be loud okay]

TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications.

It helps to know that people are complex beings, the product of their life experiences, with the capacity for kindness and cruelty. My family are not all saints or all devils. In all honesty, I cannot even predict how they would react if I were to come out to them. I like to think, nothing extreme or hurtful. Maybe a lot of preaching, but really, who can say?

I am not ready for it, though. And that is alright. I am currently openly queer with only my close friends, and I do my sex⁠ writing under a pseudonym. I have a working relationship with family, and I am in a position where I can gently push back on anti-queer conversations or state my stance in silence. For the moment, this works. I am at peace with who I am. When my mental health permits, I am even joyful."

“Waking up at 3am to catch the sunrise at the famous Bali Gates of Heaven only to be disappointed as I was received by gloomy skies. Nonetheless I was soaking in the peaceful presence of the sacred ground, when suddenly Mt. Agung started smoking from afar. Standing in the middle of the gates is the local guardian of the Lempuyang Temple. Thankful to be at the right place at the right time to capture this once in [a] life time, incredible moment on camera.”

Gentle Spring 🌼🐞

I'm going to put this gently because you're 15. I wouldn't normally answer this type of ask, but everyone deserves a chance to learn. (And to everyone who sees this post, if you harass a child online, I'm blocking your ass.)

Pulling from other things you have said about this incident, you argued with a Black girl that racism goes all ways, and in response, she called you a cracker and a white bitch. Is that right?

I think what one of the big problems in this scenario is, is that you're uncomfortable with swear words and slurs. I get it--I was raised in a household where swear words were strictly banned, along with a lot of other milder insults. However, I'm going to encourage you to get more comfortable hearing and seeing words that you don't like. Euphemisms tend to obscure meanings; being uncomfortable saying what you actually mean can lead to further misunderstandings.

Also, a large part of the problem was that you were using your discomfort to police this girl's language. Black people have a long history of needing to censor themselves or be hyper-aware of their actions in order to appease white people and make them feel comfortable. You might not have done that knowingly, but your naivety to the situation, when she has to know how to change herself to avoid trouble with white people, is a shining example of white privilege.

And to your question about whether racism goes all ways: anyone of any race can be racist, to other races or to their own. However, "anti-white racism" or "reverse racism" does not exist. While some individual people can truly hold the belief that white people are inferior, and not just hold resentment or frustration towards white people for racism and microaggressions, those beliefs are almost always due to inversions or extensions of popular racist beliefs. It's the same logic as positive stereotypes (such as "Black people are good at sports" or "Asian people are good at math") still being racist. Even if they're not, the rare person who does truly just believe that white people are lesser does not hold any systemic power or influence for their beliefs, and are more likely to be punished for it than a white person is for their racism.

Racism does and will always impact her more than it impacts you. That's the reality of your being white and her being Black.

Yelling and swearing are not the only ways to be racist. There are plenty of microaggressions--small, seemingly harmless (to you) statements--that perpetuate racist stereotypes and attitudes. I want you to think about something: did she actually yell at you, or are you inflating her response because you've stereotyped her as angry?

I've been somewhat skirting over the part where she called you and another white person "nigga". AAVE reclaimed the slur as slang that can refer to any person, regardless of race, and isn't offensive. Black people using their dialect isn't ever racism, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Here's a paper about it if you want to learn more.

I want you to also think about if you felt hurt by anything other than the language this girl used. Was it just about policing her tone or her language? If not, what was it that got you upset? And why?

White people's reactions to perceived insults or aggression from people of color consistently lead to worse outcomes for the person of color, compared to white people who enact violence upon POC. Upset as you may have been, your principal probably looked at you, a white person, complaining about a Black girl being mean to you, and decided not to act. Disciplinary action can go on transcripts, and that hurts POC and especially Black people substantially more than it hurts white people.

Everyone, not only white people, will say racist things in their lifetime. We live in racist societies that push racist stereotypes into our subconscious. Being "not racist" or, even better, anti-racist, means questioning our underlying beliefs, listening to people from marginalized ethnicities, and understanding our own capability to do harm. "Not racist" isn't an identity, it's an ongoing process of learning and growing.

You didn't want or intend to be racist, but you were. That doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means you're a young person with unexamined beliefs. Like many teenagers, you're also running into a bit of a blind spot when it comes to understanding perspectives of people from very different backgrounds.

I encourage you to learn more about the history of racism, and about microaggressions and racial stereotypes. I want you to understand the context of why you thinking that you're being ignored because of your skin tone is not a neutral statement. You walk through the world with privilege that non-white people don't have, even if you don't realize it, because you've always benefitted from it. And if you're not open to realizing this, you're at risk for falling into more racist beliefs.

This has gone on long enough so I'll end on this: you are not a bad person for doing something racist. I appreciate that you came here and asked about it, and I hope you're open to reading my answer and learning from it.

You'll have a single mother of three who's fleeing a DV relationship. She has no recent work history because her ex kept her barefoot and pregnant. She's struggling with depression+PTSD while trying to find work in a horrific job market.

Now I have to be the one to tell her "Dept of Social Services insists every child over the age of 5 have their own bedroom, so you'll have to get a 4 bedroom, which will likely cost $5000/mo. You will get a housing voucher that covers 50% of the cost, so $2500/mo. You will need to make $90k/yr to comfortably afford this"

You and her both know a full-time minimum wage job comes out to $32k/yr in your area and most of that is going to go towards child care so she can work a job that will never pay enough to cover her living expenses. Even if she worked two full-time jobs, she'd still be ~$30k/yr short of the required income.

She can do everything right, she can work her ass off, she can get benefits, and it still won't make a difference. Her abusive ex is going to get the kids in the divorce simply because he has a steady income and home.

Second, I feel like whites, and nbs genuinely believe this simply because they try to push the fact that Black people are more homophobic/ lack any care for the concept of individuals existing in such a way because of the way they tend to masculinize black people as a whole by default, even down to the women, and children (misogynoir, hypermasculinization, adultification, etc).

They view our women, and even children as “threats,” in their minds, and we’re viewed as more dominant, and angry for no reason other than pure, old fashioned racism. What makes you view Black people specifically as more hateful when bigotry can be found throughout every community equally??? What makes these people believe that their communities are more accepting of queer people, and that black people would be more safe around them when they hate us so bad as is 🫡?

It’s just funny that white and nbs conveniently forget that black LGBTq ppl even exist when they want to run their mouths about what goes on in OUR communities, but be too scared to look a cashier in the eyes.