there’s two kinds of racism. ( i wish i could repeat this every day on every topic. )
the first is the easiest to understand. it’s overt. a person who literally says: i hate black people. ( we can put stephen bannon and richard spencer into this category without much problem. )
the other category of racism is the kind that i have, that you have, that all of us have. it exists in the moments that we can’t see our own behavior. black guy in a hoodie at night, cross the street. white guy in a crisp suit, probably a republican banker who voted for trump.
what sounds like is happening is the second kind of racism, sexism, ism-ism. in fact, the shadow of the “cross the street” behavior. it’s when you notice someone of your own race or something from your own culture and you have no reaction.
so, you see a wikipedia article about beck - and you’re like, i know him, he’s great. this article makes sense. then you see an article about mc lyte, and you’re like who’s he? ( not even a he. )
things like “wikipedia notably” become a ban hammer, then, for minority interests. made worse because of the structural problems that result in white men predominating in the american tech fields.
it’s not “these people hate minorities”, it’s that people from minority groups sit outside of their view.
even more painful is that to succeed in majority culture, women and people of all different skin colors, religions, and cultures have to give up their heritage to become literate in the dominate culture. one example is when children of immigrants don’t know the language of their parents. but this happens on all sorts of levels. so, in practice, a given editor doesn’t even have to be “white”. they simply have to be a part of the white mainstream culture.
it would be interesting to see an analysis of the topics beset by wikipedia article deletion. it’s almost - by definition - guaranteed to be skewed towards keeping the topics white tech savvy men are interested in.
none of the editors need to be racist for the results to be racist in effect. that’s why we have things like affirmative action. and - in terms of wikipedia, or it’s successor - a similar explicit tipping of the balance might need to be undertaken to actually balance the scales.
