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I have to admit that the one tiny silver lining of our horrific current moment is that you just don’t see people shanking each other over stuff like “is it cultural appropriation for a white woman to sell coconut water” anymore

(I also couldn’t help but notice at the time that white *men* running restaurants and selling products from cultures they didn’t originate from usually got way more of a free pass than white women doing the same thing, but well, so it goes).

The other one i still think about frequently are the posters (inevitably white themselves) who were convinced white people saying “y’all”, because they are Southern, are Deeply Problematic

And yes, we of course should still call out white people who are being shitheads who refuse to acknowledge who they got their ideas from or who inspired them, but I still think deeming randos history’s greatest monsters over stuff like coconut water was not, perhaps, the best use of our energy

at least in my social world, I’m not seeing a retreat from social justice, but I am seeing a pretty encouraging degree of “perhaps we should focus less on being right on the internet as a way to fight bigots, and more on actually doing stuff”

I have been INCREDIBLY encouraged to watch the new generation of ravers tackle these same issues with so much more grace, compassion, patience, and thoughtfulness. There are still occasional excesses but it's just such a healthier approach - they learned from our mistakes.

i do miss the fact that it was widely accepted that "Italian" was not a protected class.

I do think part of it is that a lot of people just aged out of that kind of thing and got more perspective. So online fights about who is allowed to eat what food just puttered out because we’re not in our teens/early 20’s anymore.

People have worked out what's functional and what's performative more and more, which is good.

Woke 1 at its worse (nowhere as bad as conservative authoritarianism) "became a vehicle for social climbing and in-group recriminations. Want to declare someone persona non grata? Invent some social justice grievance. Want people to think you're a good person? Say slogans." bsky.app/profile/whst...