shadowspar

Pro Tip™: if someone walks like a racist, talks like a racist, acts like a racist, they are, for all practical intents & purposes, a racist. You really do not need to know if they feel like a racist deep down in their heart of hearts to figure out what to do about them. This isn't rocket surgery, y'all. For a group of folks who coined the term "duck typing", we should be all over this.

To put it another geekly way: if someone does or says something racist, then follows it up with "I was just trolling, yo! I'm not really racist!" then one right response is "I voluntarily fail my Will save! I am thoroughly convinced that you are a shitbag racist, and henceforth will treat you like one! :D"

(Note: expanding on my twitter mini-screed here.)

I am just now starting to come up to speed on the Ani DiFranco / plantation retreat thing, but...

If somebody says that a given person's slaves were "probably well treated for the time", and the insidious depravity of that statement doesn't immediately thump you on the head, perhaps this quote will help put it in perspective:

The cells of the Inquisition were, as a rule, large, airy, clean and with good windows admitting the sun. They were, in those respects, far superior to the civil prisons of that day.

That from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica's article on Thomas Torquemada^{[trigger warning]}.

Further reading

• Response from Jay Smooth
• Nottoway Plantation: How to Profit from an Ugly Past

I tried for hours to form my experiences around camaraderie and the good ol' boys club in the military into a comment that would fit with this Geekfeminism post, but I couldn't manage to pull it together.

The phrase "This Man's Army" is very much appropriate to the military of today (or, at least, the Canadian Army of 1997, when I got out). By and large, it's still very much a white, male, heterosexist institution, but there are a lot more subtleties than an overarching summary would have you think, including a lot of pockets of very inclusive, principled, and thoughtful people.

Indeed, after a fashion, the military is a cornucopia of extremes. I saw humanity at its best and at its worst many a time during my short, part-time stint there. Young soldiers -- kids, really -- punished by being humiliated in front of their peers. Rumours that our WO had been passed over for promotion because he was black. But too, the noble parts -- soldiers standing up for an excellent officer when others tried to slag him because he was gay. Grizzled old sergeants admonishing junior NCOs not to address their charges as 'guys' -- "Call them troops! 'Guys' is sexist." Soldiers on a course rallying around a colleague who'd been harassed by one of her instructors.

I learned a lot there -- about myself, about others; about what it means to be honourable. That's one thing that can certainly be said about it.