This post directly addresses recent issues that have taken place at rahmbamarama, concerning a story posted that contained extremely offensive treatment of African-American hair. That post has since been edited, and an apology has been issued by the authors.

As you may recall, one of the very first mod posts made on rahmbamarama asked the community to respect one another's political, racial, and cultural sensitivities.

In order to keep the commitment we made then to making this comm a safe space, and especially in light of the very fraught and painful recent discussion within the sci-fi and fandom community known as RaceFail09, the mods wish to have our own in-house talk about racism: how it can manifest despite the best of intentions, ways we can help educate each other and learn to look for telltale traits of privilege in our own writing and behavior, and what we can and should do when we recognize that such traits exist.

Your mods would like to be totally upfront and acknowledge that this is an area where they both have blind spots. We both have unconsciously and unwittingly performed and stood witness to racist acts, as have most members. The point is that we all need to help educate each other on the subjects of racism and privilege. This post is designed to get us talking so we can do that; so that we can become more aware of what to watch out for when we come across issues dealing with race.

Often times talking about race and racism can be confusing and uncomfortable. But as uncomfortable as it might make us, as members in the fandom of life, it's our responsibility to respect other people as people, and sometimes that means we are rude, or ignorant, or make assumptions that are very hurtful. And before we know it, we've hit every square of the Racism Bingo Card.

Ignorance is not an excuse, though sometimes it is an unfortunate reality. In order that we might truly be a safe space for fans of all genders, colors, sexual orientations, political views, etc, we invite you to speak up if there have been any times where you have felt uncomfortable with anything that was expressed in this community, so that we all can take proactive measures to ensure the same won't happen again. Of course we hope that you will do this any time you've felt uncomfortable, but this post is a chance to talk about any worrying trends or habits, or just to bring up things up that slipped your mind/didn't feel comfortable bringing up. They're important to all of us as a community, and we want to hear them! To better facilitate this, this post has been made public, and anonymous commenting has been enabled (at least for now; if it becomes problematic, we will be forced to disable it again).

In return, as mods and as people, we encourage all of you to actively seek out, of your own accord, anti-racism and anti-otherisms resources, so that it won't just be something that catches you with your foot in your mouth.

Below are some links that the mods and others have felt were helpful in understanding how to approach discussions about racism. We can't promise to have the answers to your questions, but if you ask them at least, someone might!

First, if you're confused about privilege, please check out:

• Unpacking the Knapsack
  
• Check Your Privilege
  
• White Privilege with links out to other articles about it
  
• Privilege is not limited to just race; for an example, see how privilege comes into play in this Ann Coulter bashing and its follow-up

Second here are some links we found essential when it comes to how to react when someone points out your own racism:

• How not to be insane
  
• How to Fuck Up
  
• How to Apologize
  
• How to handle 'intent'

Examples of racist imagery:

• Jim Crow Museum
  
• Subconscious Connection Between Blacks, Apes May Reinforce Subtle Bias
  
• Chinese immigration images
  
• Nazi Propaganda

There are many other invaluable resources that have been pointed out to us:

• ibarw: International Blog Against Racism Week
  
• A Collection of Important Posts for Clueless White People on Delicious
  
• How to Suppress Discussions of Racism
  
• 16 Maneuvers to Avoid Really Dealing With Racism
  
• The Angry Black Woman's require reading list
  
• Rydra Wong's RaceFail09 timeline
  
• Sophy's racism resources
  
• Paradox Dragon's four goals for active anti-racism
  
• DebunkingWhite's resources-- in fact, debunkingwhite in general
  
• deadbrowalking
  
• mystickkeeper's Racism 101 primer

Conversations about Being Afraid to Write PoC characters:

• Being an Imaginary Conversation...
  
• Stop Complaining About Needing to Research
  
• 'Damned if you do, damned if you don't'

If there are any other resources you would like us to add, please comment and tell us!

Thanks,
Your mods, Aja and Cathy


EDIT: Two things, from Cathy. ( an explanation of 'racism 101' and please stop calling incidents 'racewank' )

EDIT2: For those of you who might be wondering why RBR is talking about this at all or think this comm is not the appropriate place to have this discussion, ( the mods would like to politely disagree. )

By Executive Decision, this community shall have a permanently public, permanently open post dedicated to the beauty that is Rahm Emanuel.

You may:

Picspam the hell outta this post. You can even spam the fuck out of it, because that's what Rahm Emanuel would do.

Post photos/Comment/contribute without being a community member.

Take/share/repost/iconize/whateverize all pictures posted here, without credit to this comm. It goes without saying unless otherwise noted, this is all crap we found on the internet. If you hold the copyright to a photo posted here, and you'd feel really burned if random strangers violated it with their lame photoshop skills, just like Rahm Emanuel violating some lame non-contributing member of the Democratic party, then please tell us.

( RAHMSPAM )

Tags: picspam, rated 9.5 out of 9.5 possible millirahms, saucy authority, this is not your mother's presidency