Approximately 14 years ago, I started an account on SDMB as a 17 year old kid from Detroit. I was pointed to this message board after hearing rave reviews about it in a political AOL chatroom. I read for about a month or so and joined shortly after. For the first several years, I rarely posted and lurked, mainly because I didn’t think I had much to add (and, frankly, at that age, a senior in high school, and later a college student, I didn’t). But I read, read, and read. I learned a lot. I learned that there were people who were way smarter that I could ever hope to be, I learned to appreciate the English language, I learned to appreciate the complexity of international politics, and I even gained an appreciation of SCOTUS opinions at a ridiculously early age. The SDMB was both inspiring and important to me, in fact, I credit this message board for getting into my college of choice - I don’t think I would’ve scored as high as I did on the ACT verbal section if I hadn’t been an avid reader here.
As the years progressed and I continued to read, I became angrier; I was angry not just the subliminal racism under the guise of fighting ignorance but the flippant sexism as well. It made me angry that people could say horrible things about black people and could denigrate women without even a smidgen of challenge, not from the posters, moderators, administrators, or even the few self-identified blacks and women that posted here. It didn’t make sense to me that people whom I perceived to be so smart could be so stupid. I felt it was my duty - no, my responsibility - to defend not just women but specifically the blacks where so many threads ran amuck trashing us as low IQ animals.
It was the beginning of my own undoing.
The adage “hate is taught” is something I believe to be true; as someone who was fortunate enough to have positive interactions with white people as a child, had positive (mostly) and caring (mostly) white instructors, and had good number of positive interactions with white people (as peers) in college, I never questioned the motives of white people as a group until after I was exposed to the unchecked hate on this message board: the hate that hate produced, I suppose. In retrospect, that red-hot hate bloomed into white-hot rage during the Trayvon Martin threads and it went downhill from there. I remember my frustration at posters lapping up George Zimmerman’s recollection that after he shot Trayvon, the boy uttered “Oh, you got me” before clutching his chest and falling to the ground. The recollection was so cartoonish, so Hollywood-like, so out of a comic book yet the majority of posters here (and the public, for that matter) sopping it up as if were the gospel of Luke and John. I threw my (mostly) positive real-life interactions with white people out of the window and used this message board as a primer to discern how white people truly felt about black people and other minorities.
Based on years of observation of anti-black threads, I made my mind up right then and there - rightly or wrongly - and assumed most white people here were racist and would believe anything as long as it furthered their own cotorted, self-rationalized goal of treating blacks like shit. Likewise, I believed that most white males were sexist and misogynist, why else would they create threads every month about women lying about rape or have the audacity to debate the ongoings of her uterus and her body. This, combined with my interpretation of history, meshed in an admittedly contorted worldview that white people - especially the males - that posted here were just as evil as the history books depicted.
Anyway, there there I began to sharpen the knives of sarcasm and condescension and attacked those who attacked me, my culture, my ethnicity, women, and other minorities. Why not? At the time, I felt it was both their just desserts and my duty to do so. In hindsight, this was not the best approach, I should have kept my mouth shut. For all of this, I do owe this board an apology, especially to those who I have unjustly attacked (Stranger on a Train, iiandyiii, Odesio, Bricker, comes to mind as well as others I cannot remember right now). I was wrong. I am very sorry. You didn’t deserve to be lumped in with them.
Last month, I started a thread regarding Mr. Coates article on reparations. There, I was given a warning by the moderator after I replied to a poster who made a crack about my username, but that same moderator did not deign to moderate other comments in the forum including that one. I was suspended two days after I received a warning with no other infractions. In addition to negative and non-relevant comments about my username there was a poster who implied that I was high on drugs (See here) and two others who outright claimed (once again) that blacks don’t “value education” (See here) and that our culture and IQ are inferior (See here and here) to other ethnicities. How exactly do you expect me, as a black person, to respond to such? I take those comments as a personal attack and, by all that is holy and quite unapologetically, I struck back; to be silent or to retreat in the face of ignorance and hate is just as bad - and, indeed, in many ways, it is worse than advocating it one’s self. At least the person who said it wasn’t a coward. By saying nothing, you legitimize it. In the words of Audre Lorde: your silence will not protect you from your culpability. It never has and it never will. I believe that.
Speaking of which, God knows, if the aforementioned type of comments were made against the Jewish people or Jewish culture on this message board, text-based fire and brimstone would rain down from the firmament for forty days and forty nights. I have seen the moderators fall all over themselves in a rush to join in with posters in condemnation of anti-Semitism whether it be real, perceived, or imagined; however, there’s an unsaid - though certainly not unfelt - lack of that same condemnation when blacks, women, and other minorities are denigrated here.
I am (and was) fully able to debate and defend my position against any poster here but I am unable and unwilling to deal with uneven moderation. It is an insurmountable, uphill task that’s not worth the effort to expend. I am a guest here and I understand the ramifications of that. And thus, because it has become excruciatingly clear that I am not welcome here by the posters as well as the moderators, I am permanently taking my leave of SDMB. It was a good and memorable run. As of this writing, I have changed my password to gibberish as to preclude me ever logging in again. For the resident neo-racists, racists, and sexists, you’ve won, and you deserve your victory lap but I cannot be any clearer: the hurtful, ethnocentric, and sexist comments you promulgate about blacks and other minorities does not testify to our inferiority but to your own inhumanity and fear.
In my case, assume such fear is rests that I self-identify as black, that I am educated, that I insist that my self-worth is equal to your own, that I don’t ingratiate myself, that I am unashamed to be liberal, and that it takes 10:1 to debate a “genetically inferior” black person (and even then, by the second page, it’s just the majority hurling insults and snide remarks in syncopation). I also assume that fear is due, in part, that I make it a point to cite nearly every one of my posts, that I am willing to debate any poster here no matter the number in opposition, and that, more importantly, I can be just as - if not more - sarcastic and condescending to you and your culture as you are to me and mine.
I suspect the former is makes the scaffolding of that fear; after all, how exactly can you argue that the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act hasn’t been systematically dismantled since MLK’s death? How exactly can you argue that the U.S hasn’t let its education system and infrastructure languish while, at the same time, using the savings to provide exorbitant tax breaks for the rich and private corporations? How exactly can you argue Affirmative Action, since it’s inception, hasn’t helped millions of black Americans rise out of poverty and pursue their academic and vocational dreams? How exactly can you argue that the chipping away of the Pell grant hasn’t had a deleterious effect in giving the poor - especially minorities - a leg-up in pursuing a college education? How exactly can you argue that the Luddite policy of flattening the NIH and NSF budgets over the last ten years, at the expense of unpaid for tax cuts for the rich and tax incentives for big business, hasn’t stymied innovation and led to a mass exodus of scientists from academia to the private sector where they’re forced push pencils and fill tubes? How exactly can you argue that the generous tax cuts for the rich and tax incentives for corporations from 1980 onward were not paid for, put on the backs of the poor, and what was left, was put on credit that continues to accrue as debt to this day? How exactly can you argue that the U.S isn’t providing billions of dollars to other countries in free money while discontinuing unemployment benefits for Americans who lost their job at no fault of their own? How exactly can you argue that the U.S isn’t providing billions of dollars in lavish foreign aid to countries while letting its own cities file for bankruptcy, forcing them (and other struggling cities) to rely on the municipal bond market to fund essential services? How exactly can you argue that Arizona, during the government shut down, did not halt welfare payments and used the savings to keep the Grand Canyon open to the detriment to poor in that State? How exactly can you argue that a single gene (or even a cluster of genes) is an indicator of intelligence? How exactly can you argue that when a black person commits a horrific crime, the discussion on this board doesn’t fall into a hypocritical claptrap of confirmation bias, criticism of black culture, and mumblings about how genetically inferior were are, but, god forbid, when it a white person shoots up a bunch of elementary school kids or targets women in the street with in what can only be described as misogynistic bloodlust, that same kind of cultural (self-)reflection is predictably lost to the annals of time in favor of soothing, hand-waving talking points (e.g. “Gun laws are the problem”, “Guns are the problem”, “Assault weapons are the problem”, “It’s Obama’s fault”, “He was a lone wolf”, “He was mentally ill”, “He suffers autism spectrum disorder”, “He suffers from affluenza”, etc, etc)?
You can’t, which is why you sidestep those points rely on moderator-sanctioned ad hominem attacks on me, my intelligence, my culture, or my ethnicity. I’ll repeat it again: you can’t, which is why you dig through my post to find an obscure broken rule before running into the moderators’ outstretched arms with hot crocodile tears of fear cascading down your cheeks. I know this to be true, because if I were a black version of adaher running around promulgating the divine righteousness of Afrocentrism, you’d all be falling all over each other to post cite after cite proving me wrong and starting threads in the Pit folder going over each and every one of my points and knocking them down like dominoes. But mysteriously, no one has ever done that, ever; instead, one either resorts to snarky comments, personal attacks, or digging through my posts for some obscure broken rule while fighting back unshed crocodile tears of fear and outrage. Make no mistake, I get the Trundle-like strategy employed there: “Outsmart anyone you can’t beat, and beat anyone you can’t outsmart”. It’s a dirty and pathetic way to “debate” but, hell, I must admit: well-played and gg. While I regret not wising up to it sooner, I thoroughly respect the strategy.
Speaking of respect it is earned not given; respect is not given because your join date is earlier or later than mine, it is not given because your screen name is catchy (or not catchy), it is not given because you are a moderator, administrator, charter member, member, or guest on an anonymous message board on the Internet, it is not given because your education (or lack of one), it is not given because of whatever in-the-mirror status you have about yourself, it is earned by treating people with humanity. Period. When you do not treat people with humanity, you forfeit that respect, and, thus, I have (well, had, in this case) no qualms treating such posters as non-human entities (or, monsters, if you prefer the technical term).
While I promise the moderators that I will never post or read this forum again and have taken proactive steps to ensure that on my end, I ask that administrators to encourage the moderators to move forward to ban and/or to permanently suspend this username and/or IP address, as it is clear from my suspension, that 14 years (or >5110 days) and 4 warnings (<0.0008%) or, if you prefer, 4 warnings out of ~1816 posts (<0.0022%), is a direct and existential threat to what has become an ostensible echo chamber. This, combined with my own effort, will cement the integrity of the echo chamber. By banning, permanently suspending this username and/or IP address, it will also allow moderators to save face of which they can sidestep their own bias, their own selective rule enforcement, and their own culpability and wholly pin it on the stupid, evil, anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, Afrocentric Negro; further, the moderators can point out that I was either unwilling to follow the rules of which the enforcement thereof vacillates with each errant breeze or, just as easily, the moderators could make a persuasive argument that I was incapable of following the rules due to drowning in the murky waters of my dwindling IQ. Or, even better, you can weaponize a grammar or mathematical mistake in this post (or any other post of mine) for the sole purpose of attacking my intelligence to erode the legitimacy of my position. The leadership has done it before, you might as well do it again for posterity’s sake. If you ask me, it’s a win-win.
Combined with digging through my past posts for minor infractions, the aforementioned arguments provide the moderators with a kind of ironclad verisimilitude that to do exactly what they should’ve done months ago: to ban this screen name. To state the obvious, if my ban request was honored when I made it nearly a year ago, you would have never had to see this post or any other post thereafter. Next time, when a poster asked to be banned, ban them, it saves the poster and you valuable time; to the former, it removes the need for moderators to implement what can only be described as “banning by a thousand cuts”. In other words, you don’t have to run up the warning scoreboard for minor, weaksauce infractions in order to legitimize or rationalize my removal. Like Nike, just do it (and be done with it). In addition to the banning and permanent suspension of this username and/or IP address, I want to reiterate my previous request to the administrators to excise my account and the posts and threads thereof from the SDMB permanently, though I know, that too, will not be honored but it is worth a shot to ask.
Lastly, to the SDMB moderators and administrators: in the future, when you end up with a message board with the same 10 - 15 self-appointed experts of All and Nothing posting on everything from molecular genetics to library science with in-the-mirror surety, don’t you dare decry the lack of diversity on SDMB; for that, my friend, the fault lies squarely with you. It is not that black people, women, and other minorities aren’t logging in, reading, and wanting to post on this forum on hot-button topics, it is that you foster a festering environment of racism, sexism, and misogyny under the cloak of fighting ignorance. You let it flourish. The more it flourishes, the more your message board will turn into a steeple-high echo chamber where every poster is preaching to the choir.
To the moderator who suspended me: thank you. This time off has made realize the priority in my life right now is my career, my research, and my teaching. It is not “fighting the good fight” against ignorance, racism, and sexism; it is not getting angry over uneven and unmoderated comments that black people don’t have a “love or respect for learning” (See here), it is not getting upset over unmoderated comments that assert black culture is inferior to Asian or white culture (See here), it is not getting pissed off over unmoderated, personal attacks that I am high on drugs when posting (See here), finally, it is not about getting frustrated that the SDMB golden rule of “don’t be jerk” is either not applied (See here) , selectively applied (See here), or applied in such a way to coronate the winners and choose the losers of a thread (See here). So, thank you. You’ve lit a fire under me that I cannot even begin to describe (or thank you for), every lecture that I give, every paper, book chapter, and grant that I submit, every student I work with in the laboratory, and every conference that I attend, I will work harder to pursue my own dreams and aspirations to show through actions - not words - that your tunnel vision and the despicable, racist, unmoderated comments you allowed to stand as germane was sorely, sorely misplaced.
For the rest of you, feel free to trash me as you normally have done, feel free to cut, excise, peel, and rearrange this post into easily digestable and irrecognizable soundbites to sharpen your sarcasm with, feel free to make fun of my username and join date as you’ve always done with the tacit, if not explicit, blessing from the moderators (though a day late and a dollar short, I must give props to tomndebb [See here] for being the only moderator to recognize one of the ad hominem attacks in that thread. Though we’ve had disagreements in the past, I appreciate the glimmer of impartiality there), and, as always, feel free to sidestep the substance of this post entirely and focus on the non-relevant minutiae (e.g. spelling mistakes, grammar errors, the length of this post, accidental conflations, snark-filled comments, my post number, my username, my join date, and etc etc). I won’t be reading the replies nor will I be posting or reading this forum any longer. So have at the shadowboxing, it is good exercise.
Lastly, I have noticed there has been some confusion about my gender. I have not commented till now because I didn’t really care whether the SDMB perceived me as a male, female, neuter, or hippopotamus. Lest there be any confusion: I am 100% male. I was raised by a hardworking, single mother. It is my humble opinion that men who were raised by headstrong, hardworking, and determined women don’t need to use religion, the legislature, or their personal, in-the-mirror morality to dig into a woman’s vagina like a pap smear to discover and regulate what’s in her uterus. Nor do real men, in my opinion, assume that a woman is lying through her teeth when she claims a sexual assault occurred, which, let’s be honest, is nothing but a desperate and transparent attempt to slut-shame them. A real man, in my opinion, knows that women should not only be treated as equals but respected, protected, and cherished. And, what’s more, kind Sirs, this is coming from a gay man.
It was a great and memorable 14 years but, like most great things, it is time for me to move on. Thank you, good luck, and best wishes to you all in your future endeavors.
- Honesty
