I think slinging around "I'm Black and let people be racist toward me with no problem" is an impossibly corny take. You're not a professional basketball player receiving an influx of racist hate. People aren't photoshopping you onto horrific racial images. People aren't emailing you wishing you death. People aren't showing up to your games and hotels heckling and harassing you. WNBA players blocking you because you insult them isn't a "them" problem. It also doesn't mean they searched to find the whack things you said. Algorithms put things on people's timelines, friends and family see things, and often, in replies, people tag the person "you" didn't. Blocking you is the protection of peace you so claim they should be seeking. It's incredibly lame to hop on here and write off harassment as not that. It's tone death and frankly irresponsible. Things happening online are still real life and they have real life consequences and effects. Putting the onus on the players instead of actually taking issue with racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and the like tells me exactly what kind of person you are and you've done a disservice to the people you purport to be supporting by typing this nonsense.
That was not the take though. The point was that it's more important to call out the big time publications that are feeding the fire and focus less on a Twitter or Instagram account that was just created a couple months ago.
I think slinging around "I'm Black and let people be racist toward me with no problem" is an impossibly corny take. You're not a professional basketball player receiving an influx of racist hate. People aren't photoshopping you onto horrific racial images. People aren't emailing you wishing you death. People aren't showing up to your games and hotels heckling and harassing you. WNBA players blocking you because you insult them isn't a "them" problem. It also doesn't mean they searched to find the whack things you said. Algorithms put things on people's timelines, friends and family see things, and often, in replies, people tag the person "you" didn't. Blocking you is the protection of peace you so claim they should be seeking. It's incredibly lame to hop on here and write off harassment as not that. It's tone death and frankly irresponsible. Things happening online are still real life and they have real life consequences and effects. Putting the onus on the players instead of actually taking issue with racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and the like tells me exactly what kind of person you are and you've done a disservice to the people you purport to be supporting by typing this nonsense.
That was not the take though. The point was that it's more important to call out the big time publications that are feeding the fire and focus less on a Twitter or Instagram account that was just created a couple months ago.