After living in Japan for two years and experiencing 'model minority' racism and also overt, legal (in Japan) discrimination such as No-Gai-Jin apartment and hotel ads, I then moved back to the US when the economy here improved a bit, and I ended up in rural, southern Indiana. Sure, only a 30 min drive from Louisville KY where I could meet and hang with SF fans, SCA people and other non-mundanes, but still...
One night in Indiana I saw a real cross-burning. I couldn't believe my eyes. I remember thinking "wait, this is filming for a documentary or something, right?" But no, there it was, burning in the night.
As one community response, in the town library, they put a blank book of lined pages on a pedestal. On the wall facing there was a large Confederate flag. For those who make a distinction, it was the design called (wiki, wiki, google, google, can't find it, never mind,) ... it was the type with the blue 'X' and stars over all-red, like the 'Dukes of Hazzard.' There is another Confederate design with two red bars and a circle of stars in a blue corner, but that's not the one. Anyways, it was the 'X' one. There was a curtain like in a voting booth, so you couldn't see if a visitor wrote in the book or not. And there was a sign between the book and the flag: "What does this symbol mean to YOU?" The book was in a plastic case so you could only write on the one open page at a time. You could not turn pages to flip through other peoples' comments, see who signed, or cross out other stuff.
Intriguing idea came to me: Let me write an analogy first, then propose an unusual idea.
When researchers endeavor to create a vaccine for a disease several things happen:
- You have to go get a LIVING SAMPLE.
- You take precautions, like wearing gloves when prepping a specimen, washing your hands, etc.
- You don't kill the specimen with bleach or sterilize it. You need to observe it in its natural habitat to understand how it lives or spreads.
- You wear a mask and a cap so you don't contaminate your own culture into the culture you are trying to observe.
- Lastly, you have to reach out kindly to those who have the disease in order for them to be interested in treatment. Leprosy was never eradicated by stoning them in public, or driving them off into remote colonies, or making them walk around in sack cloths and a bell saying "Unclean - keep away from me!" like in the Middle Ages.)
OK. So: People report that someone we'll call 'person A' observed acts of affection, or closeness, or whatever it was, which triggers in that person a feeling of having a lot less fun at Kumoricon, and SOMETHING caused person A to react in a manner so that on the whole, MORE people had a lot LESS fun in that time and place. Sound fair and complete? If not, please elaborate and comment. I am writing as generically and inclusively as possible. I wasn't there. Anyways, we all feel that this should NOT happen.
Now here's the odd-ball idea: Let's go get a SAMPLE and ANALYZE it. To do this, I was thinking of that blank book. Why not set up a temporary, anonymous blog where anyone can post what they feel and why they react like that? There would be no real identities, forum nicknames, logins or registrations required. Just type your feelings and experiences, and press 'Submit.'
OTOH, the blog wouldn't DISPLAY the texts - that would be like graffiti. You don't want to encourage people by leaving what might be called hate-speech up on display. (Just like painting over graffiti - you deny the twit with the spraycan his big public audience.) So just a place to collect comments and feelings.
We would have to keep our word that no one is gonna collect IP addresses, round up a lynch mob, witch hunt, or an 'outing' party. Otherwise the people we need to study won't post their true emotions and reactions, and we won't get an accurate picture of the problem. One other aspect of no-names is that this project is NOT about enabling individuals to identify and contact each other to coalesce into an underground skin-head club, or "safe-haven-for-racism" Internet community.
Anyways, then a diverse group of staff, or anti-discrimination team can analyze the comments, and plan countermeasures designed from an understanding of (at least some) of the root causes and attitudes.
Comments?
