Scribophile and Minorities…

I joined Scribophile some months back and I loved the way the system was run–the critiquing method was really well-designed. I even made some suggestions to improve the site to make it better. Those suggestions were respectfully sorted and some implemented.

There was one huge major flaw I picked up on right away…

That was that the majority of the website is white. When answering PoC questions, they mostly gave the white response. The moderators are mostly white male as well. This means when a PoC says something, they back the white privileged attitude. Also when someone says something about poor people being lazy–they didn’t moderate it.

So I started a Diversity group within Scribophile. There was no such group in scribophile before. There was no real group for women and there was no group for women’s fiction in the pull down. Trying to rectify the problem led to more issues.

This means that the mods will side with people who are white. This can be shown through several threads.

1. How do I describe my PoC character?

I say, “Don’t do it with food and don’t focus on looks only. Also look for the diversity.”

Someone white says, “I think food is fine.”

This devolves until the mod starts to delete everyone who is PoC at the end of the argument, siding with the people who are white because they agree with them. (We’ve had a few of these… I think it’s blind leading the blind)

Given this environment, it’s gotten to the point where it’s hostile towards the minority groups.

This is shown in the next example.

2. Someone said they were offended by a post about using the N word. (Spelled out, which I have no right to spell out either).

The mod *spelled out the n-word* while moderating the forum after being repeatedly told by several people that this was not a good idea.

The person who objected was told categorically to MOVE their discussion where it went on and then posts were deleted by PoCs only. And then it was locked.

A bunch of people frustrated by this ended up on my group…

So… Round three.

3. I asked for a site policy change. That thread also spanked of “censorship” and this is all wrong. So the mods DELETED the thread.

You can see where this is going.

Currently, the site owner seems to have a policy that categorically denies women and PoCs (I requested that he add a women’s fiction category to the pull down, he said make a group.). I can see why the gay group gave up posting on the main forums too. But I’m a tough cookie. I will smack someone in a room of people not like me.

This is to either ask you to help change the site’s policy–which is great otherwise, or to warn you that this site is not diversity friendly. I’m pretty adamant about civil rights. It’s about the only thing I really get political over. This frustrates me–a great site with a lousy policy towards minorities. Simple changes could make it so it was far more diverse.

Isn’t this what Race Fail 2009 exactly complained about? Writing being unfriendly to diversity? This has got to change.