Comment policy

1.) Comments are moderated. If yours is snarky, mean-spirited, or hateful towards other members of our human race, I won't publish it.  Please don't waste your time or mine.

2.) If yours is a basic question about sexism, racism or white supremacy or anything else that I've answered a hundred times and which you can find out the answer for yourself if you do a little research, I might publish it, but I won't answer it.  Check my FAQs   or, for introductory information on white racism see whiteprivilege.com and check out the suggested reading list at allywork.

Hope that helps clarify things!  Welcome to Lucky White Girl!

Comments

[Jenny]

I think it's a great policy. I read most of what went down over at Hugo's and it just made me sad and tired.

I would love to do some research into the occurrence of depression/anxiety disorders in cultures typically more reserved (for lack of a better term) vs. cultures that are more open and expressive with their feelings. I think it could be very interesting, but I only have my personal experience to draw on at present (a WASP married to a North African Mediterranean), so I don't want to jump to any errant conclusions.

[Rachel S]

LOL!! I am definitely having that feeling over at my blog. I'm getting so many people wanting to defend these Duke guys.

[barb]

Oh great, now we have "Whitey Ford" here too. He's not outright insulting he's just someone I would consider a member of the Flat Earth Society.

So here's the question, we can let people like this comment here as long as they don't cross a certain line or I can ask them to leave. I lean more towards asking them to leave because even if they aren't outright hostile they do tend to co-opt the comment threads and steer the conversation off in different directions and we never get to explore new ideas or talk about the original topic of discussion. For example, on the post he just posted on, we're now talking about whether race is a biological or social construct. I don't mean to sound elitest here but I thought that idea went out in the 1940s! I want to talk about 21st century things.

That said, I would like some imput from my regular readers. Do y'all have any advice? Should I ask "Whitey Ford" to stick to Hugo's blog and leave us alone here or should I let him comment and we can just try to talk around him?

[Hugo]

Barb, just FYI: I deleted Whitey Ford's comments at my blog on the post in question -- and I'm sorry the trolls have come...

[Maureen (the older woman in Canada) Atkinson]

Hi Jen,

sorry you're being jammed and blogged by knot heads. So it goes with all us LWGs I still consider myself a girl despite I have kids who are in grade school. I have considered myself a feminist for 20 odd years, but still a gyrrl at heart.

Writing a paper on Gloria Anzaldua right now and if her "mestiza consciousness" can be applied to Canadian First Nations (including metis) any sights you or your bloggers would like to share?
big fan of Lee Maracle, Maria Campbell,Devon A. Mihesueah and Odille Morison (look it up).

best wishes, Maureen

[barb]

... kinda baffled by that comment there, Maureen. Last week someone left a comment that kinda confused me too but later she said it was because she meant to leave it on anther blog (thanks tabbed browsing!).

If it really is meant for me, the answer, of course, is I have no idea. Can anyone help her out?

And, by the way, this is the second time today someone's asked for academic-type advice from me. And neither question actually related to my field of study (I do IR -remember, that's international relations)! It's sort of a compliment I guess but geez, y'all... first of all, I'm a lowly grad student. Second of all, y'all can do the research as well as I can. I got papers to write myself! Plus Gray's Anatomy is on! lol

[Whitey Ford]

Well Barb, I have to give you credit because it appears you have bigger balls than the great Schwyzer. The spineless twirp not only deleted my comments, which were milder than the ones here as well as purely fact based, he banned me. LOL

So much for free discussions from the "Community College history professor".

Just so you know, I came upon your site first and stumbled onto his from the comments etc and not vice versa. I found yours looking up info for the Duke brouhaha.

Anyhoo I do not plan to linger about so no need to have a vote from the gallery. Good luck with your blog and your future endeavours. And again, I do commend you for being more tolerant than a supposed educator. Regardless if it was on his blog or not. It was well within the topics of discussion for his blog entry and its subsequent comments.

Later

[LM]

Just a quick note ...
you know what's more fun that deleting nasty comments? EDITING them and leaving them up -- with the commenters name and info still attached. :-)

[barb]

LM, I have never edited anyone's comments to make it look like they said something they didn't say. I would be completely opposed to such a thing.

[gonzalo portocarrero]

I have read mostly your spanish blog. I like your spanish. It makes me think that in other language you can not help being honest. The words there, are heavier, they take more of you. But, at the same time, elaboration is efortless, unpretending.

Simpatizo mucho con su manera de ver el mundo. Siento muchas afinidades. Siendo, desde luego, una persona muy mayor. La felicito por su libertad y búsqueda y me siento muy cercana a sus ideas.

saludos

Gonzalo Portocarrero

[Ernest Graham]

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there are bloggers (and trolls) on the right who actually get a stipend (or even a salary) for monitoring liberal blogs and adding a torrent of spam and or starting "flame wars." (How else could this practice have become so widespread?) I have watched troll comments pop-up during all times of the day and night and have occasionally wondered if they were created by a robot or by software alone. I am a blogger who has had problems with people clogging up the comment system on my blogs in the past. Fortunately for me, since I went back to school and stopped blogging for a while, I have not noticed any comment spam (or legitimate comments either) since my return to blogging. I wish there was another way around this, but in reality, whether the people on the right are being paid (by think tanks or rich partisan individuals) to write these irrational comments or whether they are doing this because they really, actually believe in what they are doing, bloggers have to do something to avoid becoming swamped by comments that are made to distract and contribute nothing to the debate. If we (our "side" is so diverse it's nearly impossible to retaliate in kind or even define "we") could organize ourselves somehow, I would be willing to moderate your comments (or the comments of any other blog I feel is worth doing that for) or even monitor an entire class of blogs and websites to help get our message out. The main problem we face is that, we (free thinking individuals sometimes characterized as progressives) are not capable of the kind of lock-step, though control and outright lies that the right has based its current strategy on, so in one sense we are at a major disadvantage. But there has got to be a better way. Smart people like you should not be wasting time moderating comment spam!

I am learning C++ programming in school right now (my goal is to make open source software for Linux OS only) and I would like to create a better system of managing comments; one that can somehow recognize, at least, the most egregious examples of comment spam and eliminate it autonomously so that the blogger never has to see it (think of it as email spam protection for blog comments). Feel free to drop me a comment if you have any ideas for eliminating comment spam.

Anyways, I hope you actually see this at some point; I try to read all of the comments I get at my blog too, but since your blog sees a lot more traffic than mine I can understand if you miss this post.

Lee

[staticbrain.com]

After the last few days I can see I need a comment policy myself. I have had a mean foul mouth troll hanging out. I came back here to look at your policy and get ideas while I craft my own. I agree with you 100 percent. We don't need mean snarky hateful trolls getting a boost from seeing their garbage in print.

[tina]

i just stumbled across your blog. it must be my lucky day. sometimes i wonder if i should kill my computer too. thanks for convincing me otherwise.

[ConnieK]

Fantastic Blog- I stumbled across it because I searched on cognitive dissodance. So while this blog had nothing to do with my search, it was well worth the visit!