Kinja reply list

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MonteRioMichael Harriot
3/16/17 12:03pm
“To be black is to live in America’s comment section.”
This is a perfect example of why I come here: information, brilliantly expressed.
Again, thank you. You guys are a public service.
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  MatisyahuSeriousMonteRio
  3/16/17 1:42pm
  “To be black is to live in America’s comment section.”
  that was full stop record scratch, it was.
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  Tomi MarchantMonteRio
  3/16/17 4:07pm
  Mr. Harriot is a linguistic savant.
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prodiGalMichael Harriot
3/16/17 12:24pm
I don’t think you can attribute the godawful comment section from Raquel’s Monday article to trolls. I love reading the Root because as a white trans woman I’ve found myself agreeing so hard with all the black feminist/womanist critiques of White Feminism, but seeing how many “I’m not ~~racist~~ transphobic but...” comments were being let out of the greys and promoted on that article gave me a lot of pause.
(not to mention Chimamanda’s shitty beliefs about trans women, and how many regular commenters treated her with kid gloves because ‘my fav is problematic’)
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  YeshaprodiGal
  3/16/17 12:34pm
  Blame other commenters for letting people “out of the greys” by up’ing their posts. Most of the staff here at The Root are rarely in the comment section approving/following commenters (besides myself). I try to be cognizant as to what goes on in the comments & which trolls to block. But after 300+ comments, you’re pretty much left to your own devices. Basically a bunch of trolls/bigots/idiots start ‘high fiving’ each other by clicking the stars.
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  neuroradicalnewprodiGal
  3/16/17 12:46pm
  Oof. Those comments were a painful reminder of how far behind the curve even we the “liberal” bulk of kinja commenters are. So many people claiming to support the rights of trans people but also claiming that trans women aren’t women. I agree it wasn’t just the trolls. Seemed like Adichie’s comments were taken by a lot of folks as a go ahead to express how they really feel
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OMG!PONIES!Michael Harriot
3/16/17 1:40pm
The trollification of America keeps getting more and more real for me.
I’m a live in Montgomery County, MD. For those who don’t know, MoCo (as we like to call it) is an affluent, well-educated, liberal leaning county immediately north of Washington, DC. Over the past quarter century, it has rapidly diversified and now has a large Latino population. A lot of the Latinos are Salvadorians who came here in the 80s (I know this because my mother represented a goodly number of them in immigration hearings). Many others are Guatemalan or Mexican. Most came fleeing political oppression or economic depression. My parents’ dining room still has a handmade liquor cabinet in it - a gift from a Haitian client of my mother who fled to America from the Tonton Macoute.
Regardless, like anyone, they’re pretty decent hardworking folk who, like me, want nothing more than to have a steady job that keeps a roof over their heads and food on their tables. If you ask me, that’s liberty right there.
The freedom to be left the hell alone. To go out, make a living, and a raise a family in peace and quiet.
When my wife and I bought our home, we made sure to look at schools. We found the perfect house with a perfect yard and a grade school right down the road. When we looked up the review for the high school, the “top comment” referred to it as a “gang factory.” Why?
Because there was a terrible WaPo article that erroneously said that there were kids being recruited by MS-13 out of the school.
And sure enough, the comments were loaded with both covert and overt racism about the demographics. Even after WaPo retracted the story. Comments like “those people don’t care enough about their kids’ education.” Now this was a nasty little eye-opener for me. And this was before 11/9.
Even nastier came this year.
We’re Jewish. Our JCC has been evacuated three times because of bomb threats, several local synagogues have been vandalized, and my wife and I now regularly get emails from our daughter’s preschool about security measures (she was raised Catholic and was quite shocked when she went to temple for the first time and had to be buzzed in; yes, synagogues often have to keep their doors locked for safety).
And then, on Tuesday, a white supremacist group posted pamphlets on the U.Md campus (pictured above). This is the school that I plan to send my kids to. This is the school that I, and all of my classmates growing up, applied to. Sure, it was a safety school. But it was a safety school that offers up a damn fine education. There’s no shame in have a degree from U.Md.
And overtly fascist white supremacists who, in their manifesto, call for the abolition of democracy in America and the installation of a fascist dictator (“a new Caesar”) are emboldened enough to post their hate-filled bills.
My daughter is going to go to a high school where she is the minority. It will be majority Latino and, more than likely, there will be more African Americans than non-Latino whites. And I’m okay with this. Because I’m pretty damned sure that the Latino, African American, Asian and Southeast Asian, and any other POC students are the ones calling in bomb threats to Jewish community centers and desecrating Jewish cemeteries.
That shit is being done by white supremacists.
This wasn’t the America I grew up in.
It scares me and saddens me.
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  Cardi B's Other ShoeOMG!PONIES!
  3/16/17 2:04pm
  This isn’t a beef with you and I’m not being snarky because I’ve seen you post before and you seem sane; however...this is the America you grew up in. You’re either sheltered from it or ignorant to it, but it’s always been here. Many of us lived in it and have said it exists only to our fears and sadness shouted down or ignored. Not unlike TV shining a light on the truths of Jim Crow during the Civil Rights Movement we have social media leaving white folks stunned. “Ehrmehrgehr whert is this?!?!” This is America. Thank you for joining us.
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  JustPassingThroughOMG!PONIES!
  3/16/17 3:52pm
  I grew up in MoCo and this is definitely the America I grew up in. My mostly white schooling in the county had a lot of racism - and nope, I didn’t go to school in Damascus or Poolesville
  I’m just saying. Not trying to put you down or anything.
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Manitos, The Tiny Hands of TrumpMichael Harriot
3/16/17 12:53pm
What’s funny is that the worst trolls come in days after an article is published. You’ll just get a notification out of the blue and it says “I hope you die, chimp” or “yOUR A fucking Retard”.
Then there’s Tomato...
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  Where are my keys?Manitos, The Tiny Hands of Trump
  3/16/17 2:24pm
  Yep. I get replies from trolls on articles I commented on DAZE ago, telling me that they hope I’m shot by police or some other such shit. It’s always the same assholes thirsty for attention.
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  Tomi MarchantManitos, The Tiny Hands of Trump
  3/16/17 4:12pm
  Every account I follow is Justin, aka TomatoFace.
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TrumpsTinyHandsMichael Harriot
3/16/17 12:55pm
Something something you’re just mad because you lost, something something free speech, something liberal special snowflake, something something you just got exposed as a reverse racist, something something cuck loser.
(I thought a post about trolls deserved a boilerplate troll comment.)
Almost forgot: something something you’ll only be happy when we are overrun by <insert name of feared minority group here> something something you don’t love your kids.
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  det-devil-ailsTrumpsTinyHands
  3/16/17 1:10pm
  I’ll just leave this here. Someone might need it.
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  "Hachi"TrumpsTinyHands
  3/16/17 1:21pm
  You forgot something about enjoying your echo chamber and then something something about Stephen boxing out of his weight class. I was reading the greys once and in one of Stephen’s posts a troll was like legit mad about Stephen’s blurb (you know how his says he boxes outside of his weight class). I was flabbergasted at how mad the troll was.
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BrwnskngurlMichael Harriot
3/16/17 1:45pm
I am routinely harassed here and on Jezebel when my comments defend the rights of the oppressed. I guess my handle gives me away as someone to be fucked with, but they don’t matter to me. What does trouble me though is the large constituency that votes year after year for that asshole King.... Bigots are all around us and they simply do not share the same affection for this nation’s diversity that the majority of Americans share, but they still have power, so they cannot be ignored. Let them eat cake under Trumpelstilskin. They are about to see why President Obama was the best thing they ever had in a modern President. They will soon feel the effects of losing their healthcare, farm subsidies, clean water and air, protections for worker safety, their labor rights, reproductive rights, access to basic healthcare given at Planned Parenthoods, etc. Because Dump is about to sock it to ‘em, and I will watch with glee. They threw blacks and people of color under the bus to elect this man, knowing he would come for us first... Well, it looks like they’ll be the first stop the derailed Dump train will hit, and I look forward to seeing them all burn.... And by “they and them all”, I mean the white people who voted for this asshole and assholes like King.
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  Cardi B's Other ShoeBrwnskngurl
  3/16/17 2:12pm
  I think my favorite part of watching this all go down is knowing black folks have been through worse and we’re still here, so we’ll still be here with the smoke clears.
  
  There will be so many luscious tears, not just from the ones who voted for him, but the ones who kept their heads buried in the sand. I think I await their demise more than the former. I’m not doing shit. Not donating. Not marching. Not signing a petition. Not forwarding an email. Not calling a politician. Not nothing.
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  "Hachi"Brwnskngurl
  3/16/17 2:44pm
  Jez banned me once and greyed me twice, yet known trolls can create accounts with the greatest of ease #butok
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ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable)Michael Harriot
3/16/17 12:10pm
I keep trying to post something intelligent and get approved as another non-troll. Has yet to happen. And honestly, that’s okay. I’m not black, hispanic, a woman, or anything described as ‘Other.’ I have zero clue how those that are lumped together under that infuriating and dehumanizing moniker deal with it; I probably never will either. The thought saddens me. All I can do is listen, and when asked, act to help those who may not look like me, but are valuable just the same.
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  ThirdAmendmentManADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable)
  3/16/17 12:13pm
  I wouldn’t worry about getting approved. Generally speaking if you post intelligent stuff it will get found and brought out of the grays. I’m not approved on any site and I’ve been around for quite a while and it’s not a big deal.
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  ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable)ThirdAmendmentMan
  3/16/17 12:15pm
  Oh I agree. It doesn’t bother me, as I would rather have other voices to read anyway.
  I have merely been trying to be one more voice against the trolls.
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decgeekMichael Harriot
3/16/17 12:20pm
Question. Why do I see trolls who are not in the “greys”? Personally, I think since they are so pro-white we should give them a them their own style; white text on a white background.
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  Edfonzo Algardodecgeek
  3/16/17 1:05pm
  Sometimes otherwise good commenters can’t stop themselves from responding to a troll, either it hits them somewhere that rankles or they want to counter-troll. And actually, counter-trolling can be fun if you do it right, so that the troll ends up being the frustrated one. But you’ve got to be careful with that, pick a troll who’s trying to pretend to be a legitimate commenter. In that case, your counter-trolling (assuming you’ve made a proper identification) can also serve to protect other unsuspecting folks from accidentally falling for the troll’s shtick.
  I like the white-on-white text idea, problem is, as soon as you squash one troll they make a new burner.
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  Cardi B's Other Shoedecgeek
  3/16/17 1:53pm
  I let one out yesterday. It caught me on a day I’d had e-fucking-nough of the bullshit. Sorry.
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Edfonzo AlgardoMichael Harriot
3/16/17 12:10pm
Trump was just another idiot asshole pretend businessman until he realized that trolls would mobilize on his behalf if he would only give them a sign that he was one of them. He’s not one of them, he’s a whole different kind of cretinous dipshit, but because they believe that he is, they were willing to operate as the ground game that he so famously failed to organize during the campaign.
In this ecosystem, any number of craven amoralists could’ve taken advantage of this toxic wave to ride it to the top. He just happened to be the one who was in the right place at the right time.
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  Noblesse OublietteEdfonzo Algardo
  3/16/17 1:54pm
  I’m curious about whether or not he actually has them fooled. Certainly there are huge swaths of idiots who find it plausible that Trump holds the same opinions as them. But Bannon’s no dope. I have a feeling he’s fooling Trump more than Trump’s fooling him.
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  FateStayNiteEdfonzo Algardo
  3/16/17 2:39pm
  Gamergate mobilized them and Trump gave them someone to rally around.
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ThirdAmendmentManMichael Harriot
3/16/17 12:19pm
I guess I draw a distinction between trolling and bigotry. Which isn’t to say that trolling doesn’t include bigotry, but to me trolling is about drawing an emotional response from people whereas bigots like King really want to kick non-white people out. And how they should be engaged is very different. Trolls shouldn’t be engaged. Or if they are it should never be done in a serious manner. Make fun of trolls, but just remember they’re just trying to make you angry or upset. Bigots need to be engaged much more seriously (but also mocked for their dumbass beliefs).
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  neuroradicalnewThirdAmendmentMan
  3/16/17 12:38pm
  to me trolling is about drawing an emotional response from people whereas bigots like King really want to kick non-white people out. And how they should be engaged is very different
  ??
  
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  ThirdAmendmentManneuroradicalnew
  3/16/17 12:46pm
  I’m ok with Nazi-punching.
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