em_poc
Official Title of this Community: Ethnic Minorities and People of Color
Why is the title different?
We like to have fun here.
What is this place? A safe space for underrepresented peoples and peoples of color to talk, chill, and vibe.
What are the basic rules of the community?
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Follow Lemmy TOS and Community Guidelines. Non negotiable. This is the bedrock and mods will make decisions with this always in mind.
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This community is for ethnic minorities and people of color. This is a safe space where such people can freely discuss their struggles, insight, and thoughts without fear. If you are not, we respectfully ask you do not post or comment here. A future community will be established to allow for racial discussions with a mixed userbase. However, remember, comments here must still respect Lemmy TOS and Community Guidelines.
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Irony Racism is still racism. Racism is bad m'kay? We will treat irony racism and bad faith racist satire as racism. Will wield the ban hammer accordingly.
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No sectarianism: This is an identity channel not a channel for you all to complain about why XYZ isn't the "one true leftism". Take that to another place.
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Stupidpol is not allowed. Stupidpol is class reductionist. We are an identity community. Thinking like stupidpol ignores the struggles of the oppressed, their voices, and their need for unique support. Nothing says oppression more than someone saying that the identity you have is "not real" and that if you only thought like them you'd see what your "real" identity is. Mods reserve the right to ban users and content who promote stupidpol, stupidpol memes, and other class reductionist thinking.
FAQ
I don't look XYZ and/or sometimes I can pass as white so I don't know if I can post here. Can I?
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This place is for ethnic minorities and people of color. This includes those of mixed heritage and those who may be "white" but are of an ethnicity that is a minority in their area (i.e. Kurds, etc) If you've experienced oppression due to your identity that is not based on sexual / gender identification, you are welcome here.
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Moreover, for our American audience, we have people from around the world who are "white" but are oppressed due to being a minority in their country. They are and should be welcomed here.
What can I post?
- Anything you think is relevant to the mission of this community. Things will evolve over time.
- Topics and things relevant to EM and POC.
Suggested Posts
- [People of Spice]: Food recipes so others can taste your culture
- [Theory]: Vid/podcasts/websites discussing issues relevant to identity, anti-imperialism, etc
- [News]: Vids/podcasts/websites that talk about current events relevant to EM and POC
view the rest of the comments
Reading the struggle session in the trans megathread just makes me glad ethnic enclaves are a thing. My experience with various diasporic communities is that there's a huge correlation between how mentally fucked up you are and how often you're surrounded by white people. If someone's formative experience is in an ethnic enclave, they're nowhere near as self-loathing as someone who's the only POC in an all-white HS for example. And Lord help you if you're a POC with adoptive white parents in a town that's 95% white. And if not self-hatred, they always have a chip on the shoulder where they overcompensate. It's like the more you're surrounded by white people, the more likely you either have deeply-entrenched self-hatred or you have a massive chip on your shoulder constantly trying to assert your POCness.
This ties to the concept of passing. Being white-passing conveys enormous benefits of course, but if you're in an ethnic enclave, there's less pressure to pass for the sake of not getting hate-crimed because if nothing else, there's safety in numbers. It's vastly different if you're stuck in a 95% white place because being that 5% makes you stand out and there's enormous penalties for standing out.
Being queer is basically like the POC in a 95% white town and my fear is that all the brainworms and general mental fuckupness of a POC being stuck in a 95% white town is present in almost all queer people, meaning far more queer people have well-entrenched self-hatred and are far more susceptible to the siren call of assimilation. A queer safe space is basically an attempt at trying to create the queer equivalent of an ethnic enclave except they lack numbers so the safe space doesn't extend beyond a building. But there's massive qualitative differences between a safe space that doesn't extend beyond a building vs a safe space that covers an entire city block vs a safe space that covers the entire city period. There's the cliche of a Black American being transformed after visiting Africa into a Pan-African New Afrikan and the cliche rings true because going from an environment that's only 35% Black to an entire continent where everyone looks like you is transformative. How could it not?
Sometimes, you just need a break from crackers, and a POC living in an ethnic enclave can spend the entire day outside socializing with other people while at the same time not interact with a single white person. Can a queer person do the same with the cishets?
And these two aren't exclusive to each other, you can be a queer POC in a cis white area.
*mutually exclusive
Engalnsh