Bullied, attacked, isolated, stalked, and silenced on Stack Exchange, all because I tried to fight racial hate, bias and White ethnocentrism
TL;DR: Stack Exchange claims to support Black Lives Matter but in fact has enabled rampant racism against POC voices. I have been a target of bullying, stalking, and harassment on Stack Exchange because I defended a question about “cop” and wrote an answer discussing socioracial issues around the term, and because I have been critical of White ethnocentrism. The bullying and attacks, still ongoing, have lasted for months and only intensified. Despite my protest, racist and anti-BLM posts and posts of cultural appropriation and hate are allowed to exist and prosper on some users’ endorsement.
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I am a moderator on a Stack Exchange site, English Language Learners. Over three months ago, a question popped up on Stack Exchange’s ELL site which eventually led to waves of thinly veiled racist rants, pro-police attacks on opinions supporting people of color:
Is “cops” (= police) a slang/derogatory term?
The question came from a nonnative English speaker asking if “cop” is considered derogatory in English. The genesis of the question lies in OP’s own experience of waiting in line with a friend at Starbucks and being scolded by a white woman who butted in on their conversation and tried to educate them demanding they not use the term “cop” because “it’s disrespectful” and “profanity”. From prior communication it was clear enough that OP was a person of color.
So OP decided to ask on ELL this simple and well-intended question whether “cop” is really a derogatory term. They simply wanted to avoid offending other people and be as respectful as possible — I guess it’s because they come from a respectful culture. They posted a very carefully worded, well thought-out question backed up by dictionary definitions and real life usage examples.
The Stack Exchange community members reacted enthusiastically to the question. Within the first hours of the post, several trenchant comments came from the community assuring OP that it was okay to use the word without having to worry about being snapped at and also pointing out that it was very rude of the white woman to tell strangers what they can or cannot say. Two of these comments were very positively received by the Stack Exchange community, having amassed 46 and 18 likes respectively before they were removed, another one 19. Nothing compared to reddit vote counts but these numbers are considered very well-received by ELL SE standards.
I saw the question and decided to post an answer to it. To give a helpful, coherent, and contextualized response I explained that “cop” is in popular use and listed real life examples of people using this term, utterances ranging from public talks, to a speech given by former British Prime Minister David Cameron, to a cop yelling the term in public. These examples, I suggested, show that the term is widely accepted in speech and even in formal settings. I also suggested that “for a term to be considered derogatory, it has to indicate criticism or show disrespect” and since there are plenty of instances where cops themselves also use that term it is not derogatory. I also drew on sociolinguistics to explain why some people might make the argument that it is derogatory. Here is my answer.
Boy did I open a Pandora’s box!!! Boy did all hell break loose!!!
First a fusillade of flags targeting my answer, the question, and any comment that supports OP and points out the rude nature of the white woman’s behavior were launched by a handful of extremely combatant, hostile, and aggressively insistent users. When I declined some of those flags, those users would repeatedly raise flags and/or change their tactics, all aiming to censor and silence things they didn’t like. They hated the fact that community members pointed out such behavior is racially biased and they were doing everything they could trying to remove words and phrases such as: “Karen”, passive aggressive, racist, or even anything with a shred of criticism of the arrogant and condescending behavior of that white person. It was clear to me there was nothing they wouldn’t do, no low they wouldn’t stoop to to silence popular anti-racist sentiment in the community and dictate the speech of people of color.
Using tactics of intimidation and incendiary accusations, several users fired a salvo of disguised threats at OP, me, and any SE user who criticized white Karen behavior, attempting to police the language of people of color and ordering that any comment mentioned “Karen” be deleted immediately. Some of them allege that the question was off-topic and tried to purge the entire discussion. They flagged the question, answer and comments as “offensive”, “rude or abusive”, or even “harassment, bigotry, or abuse”. It seems that those people, knowing fully well these kinds of flags leave a permanent mark on the user profile, intentionally did so to hurt the profile of the OP who simply wanted to learn the cultural nuances of a word and avoid offending others as well as those of the commenters who did nothing but point out the rude and belligerent nature of a white person’s behavior and reassure Op of their use of the word.
One of the first flags claimed the supportive comments were “harassment, bigotry, or abuse”. It really puzzled me how much they would have to hate people criticizing white racial bias to call any criticism “harassment, bigotry, or abuse”. The same user also flagged as “rude or abusive” another answer under a different question explaining the historical context of male privilege and the use of gender exclusive “he”. Why am I not surprised?
Even more shocking is the way a handful of people attacked helpful comments and my answer. Some comments very helpfully linked to instances of “cop” used by police around the world, but a few pugnacious people decided they were entitled to use the N-word as they please to counter that. To me that argument was just hurtfully ignorant and ignorantly hurtful.
I tried very hard to bring the discussion to a more mutually understanding plane by sharing videos and articles of Black people talking about the N-word, including a very detailed online discussion contrasting opinions from Black and White people, but a lot of those users didn’t show a modicum of interest in reading and watching what I shared and continued to engage me in arguments where they repeated what White people say about the N word online. Only then did it dawn on me: these people were not interested in what Black people think about a term exclusively concerning the African American and non-American Black communities. They were receptive only to White people defining the term for Black people. They also dismissively and disparagingly talked about Black Lives Matter and accused me of saying inappropriate things because they were “fashionable”.
But more troubling and upsetting was the fact that a few other Stack Exchange moderators also wanted to censor the question, answer, and comments. I was under considerable pressure to remove certain comments and parts from the question and answer. Some fellow Se mods claimed that because “Karen” offends people and had offended a few SE users, it should be removed, pointing to assertions made by White people accusing the “Karen” slang of being “sexist and ageist.” Attempting to find a middle ground, I explained I had planned to purge the comments in a day or two but we needed to allow discussion of the nature of the word and the encounter which had evidently facilitated a wider and non-racially-biased understanding of a socially and culturally mediated word. “‘Karen’ is a word meaningful in certain circles,” I explained, pointing to the invocation of the word by an African American guy who was called cops on by a white couple for painting “Black Live Matter” in front of his own house. Urging in earnest that people not rely solely on White perspectives “of a racially loaded term that describes non-White people’s experience with White women,” I also cited in chat a Black woman’s article on this: The ‘Karen’ memes and jokes aren’t sexist or racist. Let a Karen explain. (May be behind a pay wall) Writing for the Washington Post, Karen Attiah, a Black girl with immigrant parents, says (emphasis added):
… Is “Karen” gendered? Yes, it’s a girl’s name. But sexist? Nah.
In America, white women are often believed and protected at all costs, even at the expense of black lives. In 1955, it was a white woman who falsely accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of whistling at her in Mississippi, which led to him being brutally beaten and killed.
Fast-forward to recent years and we still learn about black people being arrested or assaulted because a white woman called the police unnecessarily. Becky and Karen memes and jokes should be understood in this context, part of a long tradition to use humor to try to cope with the realities of white privilege and anti-blackness.
Dehumanizing slurs don’t gain their cruel power overnight. They are part and parcel of generations of violence, erasure and discrimination. Calling the Karen meme the new n-word or asserting that it is a sexist slur only trivializes actual violence and discrimination that destroy lives and communities.
And to invent oppression when none is happening to you? Well, as a Karen, I just have to say — that is peak Karen behavior.
As you might’ve guessed, these fell on deaf ears. Nobody showed a trace of interest in hearing and understanding what a Black woman has to say about a term that concerns the lived experience of Black people and other groups of color.
But the assault from a handful of bellicose users didn’t stop there. Far from it, as I have learned in the past months, the it was only the beginning of the vicious onslaughts. A particular unrelenting and shady user posted as an “answer” a collection of other people’s inflammatory comments. It was for all intents and purposes an attack ad targeting OP, the question, helpful commenters and my answer and directly violated Stack Exchange’s own answer policy which clearly states that “commentary on the question or other answers” should be deleted. When that non-answer was removed pursuant to SE policy that user had the brazenness to immediately scream in a flag “Question answerer is hiding competing answers” despite having been pointed to the relevant SE policy page.
He then went on to create another slightly modified answer with incorrect claims and condescending suggestions advising OP to appreciate the White woman who scolded OP. Funny enough that user tried to hide their first answer by modifying his deleted answer to make it appear the same as the new answer, seemingly unaware that high-rep users and moderators could see through right through his trick and see the post history. Under unthinkable pressure and earthshattering clamor I decided not to take any action on that new answer, although it was full of holes and didn’t meet SE quality standards either. But some other users also took deep exception to such condescending and aggressive behavior.
With a view to bringing the fracas to an end, I purged the comments and moved everything into chat, including all the vitriolic flak on my post. But that didn’t stop the few pugnacious users from continuing to falsely accuse me of using my “moderator powers to delete valid objective critical comments, suppress the legitimate flags”. They would never give it a rest. Even three months after the post, that user who posted a non-answer attack ad still comes back and tries to bicker.
And months later I am still getting persecuted on Stack Exchange for daring to defend the word “cop” and provide social context in my explanation. In another major campaign to discredit my answer and silence opinions like mine, a meta post came from the same user who had repeatedly decreed removal of “Karen” from the entire discussion and called my answer “disgraceful behavior”, and who seemed determined to disrupt the discussion unless his demands were satisfied. This time he tried a new angle: in addition to calling my answer “off topic, seemingly baseless, accusation” he claimed that my answer was inappropriate because it included information not in the original question. But he also cleverly said if the question did include that information it then should be closed as off-topic. If he had had his way the entire Q&A wouldn’t have been allowed. Greatly troubled by such aggressive behavior, OP said: “I don’t get what the problem is with some people … if the answer solves my problem then why is it hurting them”
That, woefully, wasn’t the end. Not even the most passive-aggressive malignant part. The real nightmare happened in the most insidious and sinister manner. Not long after this brouhaha a user unfamiliar to me popped in a chat room that I frequented and became a 24/7 shadow. That in itself was no strange thing. Most SE chatrooms are public and anyone can view its content and some chatrooms do have lurkers hanging around. But the ELL chatroom is a small room which only very occasionally sees non-regular visitors. I was happy to see new faces, but then strange things started to happen. Occasionally discussions lead to disagreements and since a certain point rude messages are always immediately starred as long as they are directed at me. The stars in SE chat are anonymous and nobody knows who starred a message and why except the user who starred it. I didn’t suspect malice in the beginning; I just found it highly unusual that swearing and cussing were starred. It doesn’t happen very often that trolls come to chatrooms and try to provoke hate and many dedicated SE users work really hard to rid the SE network of spam and abusive language, so at first I just thought the stars were from someone who wanted to be facetious and pull a prank. But it was very bizarre that even when I defended new SE members, a tenet from SE’s Code of Conduct that I hold dearly, abrasive and aggressive language from the other party used against new users and against me was starred and my repeated plea for people to help and value new community members were all left behind.
Little did I know that in short order things would escalate beyond reason. It so happened that shortly after I started hanging out on another Stack Exchange site, Literature, and contributing to Lit SE passionately. However, the sticky patterned followed me to the Lit chatroom with a vengeance. I tried to broach some complex issues and discuss academic ideas in the Lit chatroom, and the discussion was meaningful and productive initially. Soon it became clear that any message would be anonymously starred as long as it could be interpreted as doubting me or a challenge to my position. Punctuating the starred messages are abrasive, unfriendly, and unkind words and ad hominem attacks. When I complained to Lit SE mods, they removed a lot of the stars but not all. The anonymous stars follow abrasive, curt messages and ad hominem attacks that are usually confrontational in tone, and they, even those on messages without swearwords, created a sense of majority riling against one person, me, when I attempted to discuss racism and white ethnocentrism. I immediately felt backed into a corner by tremendous hostility and all because I tried to engage people in discussions about issues with cultural appropriation, ethnocentrism, and the nature of literature, basic things widely discussed by Black activists, Black scholars, and other scholars of color. I was tremendously puzzled why it was so excruciatingly difficult for me to even bring up ideas and suggestions accepted as common knowledge and points of departure in Black awareness discourse and cultural studies discourse on a site supposedly with a focus that’s been developed in abundance by non-white scholars of literature and cultural studies. Almost every discussion about non-white ideas, feminist ideas, and non-ethnocentric interpretations inevitably leads to an unfriendly atmosphere with every confrontation and opposition being cheered and egged on.
It appeared that some people were only interested in and receptive to books and ideas from White male scholars and White Euro-American perspectives. My initial response was “Whoa tough crowd,” but then I realized the crowd was tough because of the omnipresent and incessant provocation and because they were under the spell of a false sense of majority. Seeing stars on abrasive and abusive language against me leads them to think I must be alone and my suggestions must be wrong regardless of the books I cite or research I provide and encourages confrontation and hostility to non-White ideas to pile on. I realized some in the crowd were just duped into thinking only old traditional views are right without realizing those views mostly came from (dead) White men. So I started to try different approaches to engage people. But the aggression persists with a vengeance. When I brought up problematic posts with White Eurocentric views and cultural appropriation for discussion, within a matter of minutes those posts were upvoted. It happened several times so it was extremely unlikely a coincidence. Even comments with misspelled non-White names and words were upvoted and liked and my comments suggesting corrections to the poster were ignored and later removed. When I dared to criticize ethnocentric views in chat, one user challenged me to explain to him, “a white German dude”, what was wrong with those posts and then some users abused their SE mod power to flag my comments as “spam/offensive”, purposefully temporarily banning me from chat and leaving permanent damage on my SE chat profile. What did I say that was spam/offensive? I simply pointed out what I perceived as White ethnocentric behavior and suggested it was wrong. They just could not tolerate any criticism of White ethnocentrism that they had to silence and bully anyone who dared to talk about it.
Also public shaming and bullying commenced. Several messages cropped up in a chatroom assessible to all SE mods aimed to publicly attack and bully me into submission, some containing swearing and obscene language. But the users who posted such abusive messages, presumably the same users who applauded the problematic posts, were never flagged or banned. Some of the abusive messages were removed; some still stand, even with stars. It seemed clear more than one user have engaged in organized bulling and ever-existing provocation. Some of them expressly said me being a moderator was “part of the problem” for them, indicating their wish to get rid of me.
Throughout this entire thing I made my best effort to excise restraint. I could have flagged their abusive and clearly hostile messages; I didn’t. Besieged, I brought this up to Lit mods. They removed some egregiously aggressive stars but told me to go to SE staff because it was “an interpersonal issue between two moderators”. But when I suggested the stars be preserved as evidence they said I was the one that wanted “the situation to be bad, even to escalate” and told me “at least two people feel you’re being … disruptive”. And they also claimed to be a “neutral third party” and said it was “offensive” of me to denounce those upvotes and likes on misspellings of non-White names and non-English words and posts of cultural appropriation.
During my time hanging around Literature SE, the site has seen several anti-BLM and ethnocentric posts. A recent one of them tried to discredit Black Lives Matter by linking it to Hitler, from a user whose profile included a link to a video attacking BLM founder Alicia Garza. Some posts drew on alt-right views and websites to attack BLM or Marxism and some users actively keep those questions open and upvote them.
I tried to communicate my concerns to fellow SE moderators and a community manager. Most people just turned their back on it. (Only one fellow SE moderator shared a sympathetic view.) The Stack Exchange network, having started as a string of tech-focused sites, has more white men dominated views than other ideas, opinions, and viewpoints and the sites have an educated skew and a very obvious Euro-American-centric slant, and both translate into race and class disparity. I have stated repeatedly that it is a problem that the network is disproportionately white, male, and Euro-American centered. And I was told it is just the way it is, the way it should be, or my pleas were just plainly ignored.
Almost every time a question pops on ELL about African American vernacular English (AAVE) and Black slang some people have to assert it is “uneducated”, “wrong”. A recent answer critically assessing Trump’s grammar drew a new burst of attack from some of the same users who assaulted the “cop” Q&A. BLM has been dismissed as “fashionable” on SE, and condemnation of White ethnocentrism has been silenced. Stack Exchange is not doing anything to fight racial bigotry and ethnocentrism, despite a nicely worded public letter from their CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar. They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. Lip service doesn’t cut it. Enough is enough. This needs to stop.
