I heard from a friend of mine that is a regular poster on the DailyKos site that there was a separate (but equal) adjunct to the site called Black Kos. I was a little taken aback but didn't immediately react (my friend is white). I thought I'd have a look for myself first. After having taken a look, my question is this: if a website or organization is so lacking in the area of antiracist practice or that a separate space is needed for nonwhite participants to feel free to speak or safe to freely express certain thoughts and ideas then why legitimize that kind of website or organization at all with the presence of Blacks and other nonwhites???
Why not just leave and let the organization be what it's white majority implicitly or explicitly expresses to want it to be?
The disclaimer to all of this is that I recognize a difference between a liberal and a revolutionary structure/organization. The revolutionary organization aims to completely transform a structure that cannot be repaired while the liberal aims to reform what it believes to be a fundamentally workable situation that has a particular or set of problems that can be remedied without doing away with the overall structure.
That said, the DailyKos, site, for all that I can see, doesn't claim to be a revolutionary space. Fine. But since it doesn't and therefore is not actively seeking that kind of broad and deep change and since the community itself has deep and extensive racial problems (which is why Black Kos is even necessary) why legitimize it by hanging around in an organized fashion?
On the one hand I can understand and relate to attempting to influence an organization from within. But not a liberal structure that doesn't even seek broad and deep transformation, only tweaks. Like the regulation of the financial industry liberals are calling for. The same regulation we've seen implemented in the past and then dismantled again and again. And often dismantled later by liberals even as in the case of Bill Clinton and Glass-Steagall. It's cyclical. Like a hamster wheel. Lots of movement. No real progress. So while it can appear to be helpful, it is debatable as to what role is actually played by Blacks hanging around inside racist structures like DailyKos that don't seem willing or capable of fixing dismantling its own white supremacy problem, no less reaching beyond its direct sphere and doing broader social work on the problem.
While developing a separate but equal adjunct to the main site does provide space and a platform for certain ideas, does it not do more to legitimize the unsafe space than it does to reform it? I'd like to hear it directly but I predict many on DailyKos probably think Black Kos to be a good thing. But didn't those in favor of separate but equal think that as well? That you could have a separate space for 'those people' that was just as good, just as fair? That wasn't the case then. It's never true actually. But now, as then, I'm betting it seems a reasonable solution to most whites. Maybe even to the nonwhites that populate it. I'd be interested in knowing the answer to that question as well.