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by AshleighBasil 1922 days ago
Does this work inverted? Would showing only brown people drive away white users, or are white people a special, universal race that doesn't need to be coddled?

I'm not trying to troll or be obnoxious, I'm curious how people think about this. Does tokenism really make people feel included, or does it just give white people something to be moral and self-deprecatingly righteous about?

I'm Mexican and when americans do the 'latinx' thing is makes me want to vomit, but I'm a mennonite so I guess I'm not a 'normal' Mexican, I'm not the one who they're trying to include. This is so interesting to me

2 comments

If I was one of the only White people on say a job platform, and I was treated with the same level of respect, dignity and fairness as everybody else, I genuinely don't think it would bother me. That's what everybody reasonable wants, respect, dignity and fairness, and that's what I want to give to the Black, Brown, Indigenous and Asian people in our world. My understanding is that if someone truly wants something else such as domination, then yes, normal racial tensions will foment and cascade into hate and suspicion, making it harder and more painful for everyone to give or receive that respect, dignity and fairness, even where someone's actively trying to give it. Different nations and systems have had to deal with multiculturalism in the past, some of them dealt with it better and some of them worse. Our communications technology has created an inconvenient shift in terrain, but there have been other societal shifts, and chapters in history much worse, so I have some optimism about it.

Mind you I'm also not 'normal' in terms of faith let alone ethnic demography where I live, plus I'm what they call "neurodivergent". I've grown up being very, very accustomed to being out of place one way or another. Maybe it would bother White people who are very used to being in the majority where they live and work, and can't cope with a stronger subliminal desire for ingroup dominanance. Dominance is comfortable for the dominator, and we have a nasty habit of liking comfort, so, to get a little religious, we do have to resist the flesh and aim for higher values found in sacrificial love.

I'm genuinely curious what it's like for you being Mennonite in Mexico. How does it affect your life?

> Would showing only brown people drive away white users

It definitely would, but for different reasons. Black people seeing only white people would assume the platform will be racist, white people seeing only black people would assume that the platform is inferior.