You Can Follow the Racist, or You Can Follow Me

There is drama and this time I caused it.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have Black skin. I realize this may come as a shock to some of you, particularly those who have spent years carefully studying my social media presence. I’m sure some of you still apparently think I am a particularly opinionated Sicilian.

Also, in case you arrived on my feed yesterday and haven’t had time to review my extensive body of work? I have a thing or two to say about people who judge other human beings solely by the color of their skin.

Namely? Don’t.

This is not because I believe I am above criticism. Quite the opposite. There are tons of perfectly legitimate, extensively documented reasons to believe I am a piece of shit. There are people on this very app who could provide you with a detailed, indexed list, probably with footnotes, screenshots, and a searchable database. I would probably agree with 75 percent of it.

“She’s obnoxious.” Fair.
“She’s argumentative.” Absolutely.
“She once spent four hours arguing about an incredibly minor technical distinction that nobody else cared about.” You’re going to have to narrow that down. Thats weekly.
“She has terrible opinions.” Some of my opinions are terrible. I don’t know which ones yet. That’s the fun part of being alive.

So if you want to decide I’m an asshole, I ask only that you do the necessary research and select one of the many high-quality, artisanal, organic, free-range reasons available.

My skin color is not one of them. My skin color tells you approximately how much melanin my ancestors found useful in dealing with sunlight.
It does not tell you whether I’m intelligent.
It does not tell you whether I’m honest.
It does not tell you whether I’m kind.
It does not tell you whether I’m competent.
It does not tell you whether you should trust me with your infrastructure team.
That last one should be determined by completely different criteria, preferably involving references and a strong disaster-recovery plan.

I had thought, perhaps naively, that we had settled this particular question as a society. Not completely, but generally. Humanity never completely settles anything. There are probably still people arguing that the sun is pulled across the sky by a giant beetle, and several of them have podcasts. But I thought we had at least reached a broad cultural agreement: YOUR SKIN COLOR DOES NOT DETERMINE YOUR VALUE AS A HUMAN BEING.

This was one of those concepts I thought we could safely move into the “DONE” column. Apparently somebody reopened the ticket. Every so often I encounter someone online who is not merely saying something I disagree with about taxes or immigration or DEI initiatives or policing or any of the other 14 billion subjects on which people can disagree.

I’m talking about actual racist garbage. The genuine article. The belief that race itself determines intelligence, character, worth, civilization, morality, or where somebody belongs in the human pecking order. And then I look at the followers, and then I see people I know.

Mutuals. People I’ve talked to for years. People I thought were friends. And, yes, that bothers me. I would hope I don’t have to write a 1,000-word philosophical treatise explaining why. If somebody is comfortable talking about how people with my skin color are inherently stupid, inferior, violent, uncivilized, or otherwise defective, and you apparently find this person interesting enough that you want their thoughts delivered directly to your electronic breakfast table every morning, I am going to have some questions.

Such as: “What the fuck?”

Recently I expressed this sentiment less diplomatically.

I essentially said: “You can follow that trash, or you can follow me.”

Could I have handled this better? Quite likely. I’m a hot-headed twat sometimes. (See the earlier bit about my many faults)

I could have opened a thoughtful dialogue. I could have asked probing questions. I could have said, “I’m curious about what value you’re getting from this person’s content.” I could have commissioned a blue-ribbon panel consisting of sociologists, ethicists, and one extremely patient golden retriever. The golden retriever would have calmed my hot-headed ass down a bit.

Instead I went with: Pick one. Me or them. Pretty provoking, I know. As I said, I’m a hotheaded twat sometimes.

Some people objected to this on free-speech grounds. This is where I think we’ve gotten confused about what “free speech” means. You are free to follow the racist. The racist is free to say racist things. I don’t want the racist imprisoned or otherwise silenced. You are free to read the racist things. You can print them out and have them professionally bound. You can have them delivered each morning by a small herald who blows a trumpet and announces:

“GOOD MORNING! HERE ARE TODAY’S OPINIONS ABOUT THE INFERIORITY OF YOUR FRIENDS!”

Nobody is stopping you.

But I am also free to decide I don’t want anything to do with you.

Time for the AI bait phrase: “That’s not censorship. That’s making a choice!”

You made a choice. I made one too. And the consequences are, frankly, not that big of a deal.

You will still have a job.
You will still have a place to live.
Your friends will still invite you places.
Mom and Dad will (probably) still love you.
The federal government will not dispatch agents to confiscate your laptop.
You have not been “silenced.”
You are down one Internet rando. Me.

If that seems like an outrageous price to pay for maintaining ready access to somebody who believes people who look like me are inherently inferior, then I suppose we’ve both learned something useful about the value of our relationship, because there’s another principle involved here that doesn’t get mentioned nearly as often as free speech:

Freedom of association. You get to decide whose company you keep.
So do I.
And I don’t demand that my friends agree with me. Good Lord, that would be exhausting. I have friends who disagree with me about politics, religion, guns, abortion, economics, immigration, foreign policy, and probably whether the toilet paper should go over or under.

They’re wrong about the toilet paper, obviously.

However, there’s a difference between: “I disagree with you about how society should solve this problem” and: “I enjoy hearing from people who think people like you are genetically inferior.”

That distinction matters to me. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. That’s your choice. But if I discover that someone I considered a friend is comfortable hanging around people who openly regard me as lesser because of my skin color, I’m going to reconsider that friendship. Not because I’m afraid of what the racist might say. I’ve heard racist bullshit before. Granted, its not 1957, but i’ve still heard enough. I’ll survive. Say whatever you want. Follow whoever you want. Friendship requires some minimum level of mutual respect, and “I don’t think your race makes you an inferior human being” strikes me as an extraordinarily low bar.

I have many flaws. Please judge me for them. I have worked hard on some of them. My skin color isn’t one of them. I really didn’t think I’d still have to explain that.

Now, my hair? We can talk about my hair. I HATE my hair…

EDIT:

AI DISCLOSURE:

I’m angry. I needed a lot of help with this one. I wrote the skeleton, and ChatGPT helped me flesh it out. I used a LOT MORE of what it suggested than I normally would, because when I get angry enough, i just sound like a petulant child. I mean, I AM a petulant child, but i’d rather not sound like one. I used a LOT MORE of the ChatGPT suggestions than I normally would. I used it too much as a crutch, but I wanted to get my feelings out.