Why does the people of colour have way less presence in the community?
I am asking this question based on a Reddit post that I saw. Why do black people (and non united-statesians) have less presence in the community? It feels super rare to see a person of colour getting mentioned, as I mostly see people of no colour. Is this some lack of vision that I have? Or is it really this way?
For representation on this space (lemmy) in particular, it's hard to know what percentage of ppl here are poc. You rarely know what race, nationality, etc, the person behind a comment or post you see is.
Maybe we should make an anonymous demographics poll or smth to help ppl feel less alone.
idk what you mean by this. Perhaps I'm not paying attention?
As POC online I blend in since without irl shots you can't know what I look like. IRL I'm stealth as much as possible because I don't trust people
Stealth?
Trans people use the term "stealth" to mean passing as a cis person, e.g. a trans woman just appearing and passing as a cis woman - so they don't disclose or emphasize their transness, and people don't know they are trans.
Some people choose to go stealth for lots of reasons, but safety is one of the biggest ones.
Assuming we're talking specifically about platforms like Reddit and Lemmy here, and as far as non-US people go, in my country most people are still sharing forwards from Grandma on Facebook. When I first joined Reddit, I'd barely ever come across someone from the same country as me and it's only in recent years that more people have been joining. If I want to find people like me that actually live in the same borders as me, I have no choice but to use Facebook unfortunately.
Even with the fairly large South Africa community on Reddit, it was more people that want to talk about braais and post pictures of Table Mountain at sunset than anything else. Like everyone there is putting on a big show for the rest of Reddit and trying to attract tourists. Just more fuel to make me feel even more like an alien in my own country.
So this is just how it is. Platforms like this are just used more by Americans and Europeans than anyone else. And if a community for your country does start up, it'll be all the averages and normies first before there's any noticeable amount of a specific demographic.
Sorry if this is invasive to ask, but how does South African presence/internet usage works? You mentioned the great dominace of Facebook over there.
Not sure I completely understand the question but as far as infrastructure goes, it's probably half half old school telephone wires and fibre optic cables at this point. I think most cities have switched to fibre optics at this point but rural areas still have the old telephone poles. Some people on farms and in one horse towns will use satellite internet. There's also cellular networks but mobile data is unreasonably priced as far as I'm concerned and I'm not sure how people without wifi even manage to keep their apps up to date without breaking the bank. Although the majority of the country probably uses mobile data to access the net.
As far as social media goes, I get the impression that most South Africans prefer mingling with other South Africans. Which is kinda fair, there's 12 official languages here and quite a few distinct cultures, so I think a lot of people wouldn't get much value out of US and Euro dominated platforms like Reddit with walls of English text and Western references and in jokes. So places like Facebook and Twitter that try to keep you in your local bubble and circles make the most sense for a lot of people.
Racism, whiteness, a strict adherance to the 'western' gender binary, colonial mindsets by white trans people and cultural appropriation.
What do you mean on the last two?
By a colonial mindset we mean that white trans people and white queers in general often have an idea, based on the strict adherance to the western gender binary, what it means to be trans or queer and will police and/or punish anybody that steps outside of those lines or say that they are not really trans or queer etc. A lot of queerness and transness colonialism attempted to wipe out or erase which thankfully didn't entirely work, but sure as heck doesn't stop people from trying!
Cultural appropriation is taking something from another opressed culture someone or somemany were not raised in and have no familiarity with, nor explicit permission from and changing it to fit their own desires, or just having taken it in general. The most obvious example of this is AAVE (African American Vernacular English), also called Black English etc, most white queers (and white people in general) hear a word or saying, take it, remove its original context and then overuse it to the point of ridicule which is then what the original people, in this case black people, then face when using it correctly.
Other examples are things like aesthetics, for example white people attempting (we say attempting because it's impossible for certain types of hair to have the same styles etc due to texture, makeup etc) to have locs as a hair style, or wearing native american head dresses as a costume, especially for things like halloween, or wearing certain types of feather earings because they think it looks cool, having 'tribal' tattoos which do not belong to them and they likely do not understand the meaning of, etc.
That's not an exhaustive list and we hope that helps.
Just a note, not that we expect it, but just in case any feel like arguing about any of this we're not here to argue. This is what we have learned from listening to actual people of colour and anti-racist people raised in white culutres which we try to be ourselves. So if any try to argue we won't be doing that. If any wish to learn more we will give links etc 🙂.
I think that probably has a lot more to do with the demographics of reddit and other reddit like platforms. The predominant demographic seems to be white, college educated, american men. Most of the content reddit aggregates seems to appeal to that demographic and reddit's founders seem to be mostly part of that too.
Black, and other minority trans or LGBTQIA2S+ are much less likely to use this platform, or appear in the same physical spaces. There was a lot of work done in the US to try and insure that would happen. This country is very racist and discriminatory. Those practices extend to urban planning and most other things too.
What do you mean by "in the community", are you talking about IRL spaces or the internet, are you talking about support groups or pride organizations, are you talking about famous trans people that you know from TV and books?
Go watch the film Tangerine, there is plenty of trans people of color represented in that film, for example.
If there is a lack of representation, I would guess it's an issue of compounding oppression - the people who are most visible are also probably more likely to be privileged in various ways (economic class, racial privilege, able bodied, etc.). Privilege makes moving through the world easier and it makes it easier to take opportunities that come by. When you're poor you don't have time to focus on things outside of your immediate survival, you're a lot more likely to not go to that pride parade or go to support groups in between the work shifts you have and so on. You're certainly less likely to be a famous actor, or get a book published.
I notice the most influential voices in trans spaces are often middle class white people. The memoirs and books that become notable and recommended are often by people with some combination of privileges.
Despite this, some of the most famous trans women I can think of are POC, e.g. Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, so it's obviously not an absolute rule.