sheliesshattered:

bethagain:

kimbureh:

christel-thoughts:

his findings

1. white racists (like you “good” whites’ uncles, grandmas, neighbors, and friends) only change their behavior when they are confronted by other whites with more status. 

2. when Black people confront the racists attacking us, they just pile on harder because they get a kick out of knowing they’ve gotten to us.

tl;dr – just like Black people have been telling you for decades, it’s up to whites to end racism and you can’t do it by remaining friends with your cousin and grandma who voted Trump because “fuck political correctness”.

Overall, I had four types of bots: High Follower/White; Low Follower/White; High Follower/Black; and Low Follower/Black. My prediction
was that messages from the different types of bots would function
differently. I thought High Follower/White bots would have the largest
effect, while Low Follower/Black bots would have only a minimal effect.

I
expected the white bots to be more effective than the black bots
because all of my subjects were themselves white, and there is evidence
that messages about social norms from the “in-group” are more effective
than messages from the “out-group.” Race does not always define
in-group/out-group status, but because these subjects were engaged in
racist harassment, I thought that this was the most relevant group
identity.

The primary behavior I hoped to change with my
intervention was the subjects’ use of racist slurs. I tracked each
subject’s Twitter use for two months and calculated the change in the
use of a particular racial slur.

Only one of the four types of
bots caused a significant reduction in the subjects’ rate of tweeting
slurs: the white bots with 500 followers. The graph below shows that
this type of bot caused each subject to tweet the slur 0.3 fewer times
per day in the week after being sanctioned.

Roughly 35 percent of subjects provided some personal information on
their profile. The effects of my messages on this subset — that is, non
anonymous Twitter users — were strikingly different. Tweets from white
bots with 500 followers did not cause a significant change in these
users’ behavior, but tweets from black bots with few followers (the type
of bots that I thought would have a minimal effect) actually caused an increase in the use of racist slurs.

For those wondering “what more can I do?”

Here’s an idea for speaking up upside our echo chambers, that sounds like it might do some good. 

Based on the findings in the study – and I would be the first to tell you that people behave differently online than off, and anonymity adds another layer to that – I actually think this study supports the personal findings of many white millennials with racist family members: if the racist acquaintance doesn’t consider you higher status than themselves, anything you say to them is ignored or met with worse behavior.

People who regularly say this crap (online, with anonymity) apparently care about status, so now is the time to put your privilege to good work. 

So maybe racist grandma or uncle won’t change because you call them out, but your 10 year old cousin who is parroting your uncle might well take your opinion to heart. You’re unlikely to get your boss to stop being such a dick, but your coworkers and peers you may be able to herd into better language, or at least better language in public (which is still a small win). You might not be able to tell the coach that that isn’t okay, but you can get your teammates to not use that word anymore. 

My bet would be that this viewpoint on status and marginalized group membership extends to quite a few other categories, too. Those of us in the marginalized group – another ethnic subgroup, or queer, or disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, etc – speaking out against bigoted language are likely to be met with unchanged or worse behavior, but someone with status from outside the marginalized group can say hey, that’s not cool, let’s find better words here. 

Look to your peers, especially the older you are. We can’t put all of this on millennials when older generations perceive them as so low status. Look to your subordinates and followers, especially the more popular you are, the more people seem to value your opinion. This is the one instance where punching down seems to be the way to actually help.

This researcher programmed bots to fight racism on Twitter. It worked.