Jules @afewbugs@librem.one

I know this, and I'm honestly much better at interacting with computers and insects and plants than I am with people. Someone whose job it is to be diplomatic at official functions has no excuse not to know it.

The point isn't my intentions, the point is that you don't ask people whose heritage might be used to other them or might be weaponised against them where they're from because whatever your intentions might be hundred of other people will have asked the same question with malicious intentions and they have no way of knowing which is which.

I had meant the question to mean "which station did you get on at?" But the fact that my intentions genuinely weren't racist is irrelevant here, she'd had that question from so many white people before and here was another one apparently demanding she prove her right to be here and after a difficult and exhausting journey to boot.

I still remember at the beginning of my Masters course, when I didn't know the other students very well yet, and I got in late because the trains weren't working properly and asked another student, who was Black and who I met at the station at the same time, where she'd come from. And her face just fell and she started explaining about her family being from Nigeria.

The way #MicroAgressions work is that while each individual instance may be minor (although the context in which this conversation doesn't make it minor, at an official function meant to honour her work), I bet Ngozi Fulani has had to deal with these same kinds of things quite literally thousands of time before

And to those people saying "She was only making conversation, people like talking about their heritage" - yes, people whose heritage isn't used to question or deny their rights to be in a space, whether that's a country or a prestigious function, like talking about their heritage. People don't like being repeatedly questioned about something that is none of the other person's business in a way that makes them feel unwelcome. It's not rocket science

This is appalling but not surprising, and I wonder how many more palace guests have been interrogated in this way but didn't feel able to speak out about it? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/30/buckingham-palace-aide-resigns-black-guest-traumatised-by-repeated-questioning

#UKRacism #InstitutionalRacism #MicroAgression

Which I guess is an illustration of just how effectively good branding can brainwash us

It's like when I heard of "gender critical feminism" and though "ah cool, I too am very critical of many gendered concepts" and then it turned out to be another name for terfs