Yeah, so I'm not one of your big, well-known Daily Kos diarists or anything. In Firefly speak, "I'm known by some."
So I'm just one more voice, not the loudest, not the quietest, adding to the one-week boycott. Others have said it all much better than I could, so I'll be brief. The initial call came from Robinswing, a Kossack I respect far too much to leave the call unheeded. bubbanomics said it funniest. Brit said it the most analytically, and spoke for many of us on many aspects of this: we don't think Markos is a racist. We do think there's a stark disparity of impact in the bannings and NRs, and that this has not been addressed at all, let alone adequately. Julie Gulden gave the best single, short, pithy reason for it: "You do what you can't not do." And Empty Vessel said it with numbers, in particular 3% and 30%.
Disparate and disproportionate impact. Mull that over for a sec and join me below the squiggle.
In Constitutional law, certain "suspect classifications," race among them, are subject to strict judicial scrutiny of infringing impacts. An action or policy needn't be explicitly racist in intent or implementation to run afoul of strict scrutiny, because civil rights jurisprudence has evolved such that even an unintentional disparate impact to one of those protected classes counts as a violation.
Now, Daily Kos isn't a government (nor is it a public lunch counter, say), so that sort of thinking, at least all the law and strict scrutiny and suspect classifications stuff, doesn't strictly apply here. But as a community that clearly intends to come down on the side of such civil rights struggles, it should bother us, it should at a bare minimum give us pause, when disparate impact toward people of color--and in particular one diary community addressing issues of color, Black Kos--such as Empty Vessel lays out in the link above presents itself in the application of moderation policy. Or for that matter, moderation whim--it's Kos's sandbox, he's entitled to both policy and whim. But when some of us notice a pattern--doubtless unintentional in terms of racial intent--of such disparate impact, we'd be remiss not to speak out.
There's many I love here--you know who you are--in several communities, and like most else in this action, I intend to be back in a week's time.
Until then, peace and love. Be excellent to each other.