Reading assignments
You know that feeling when you walk in to the middle of a conversation and you can tell there’s something really important going on and you want to know more…but you can also tell it is not the moment to interrupt and ask someone to catch you up? Yeah. That’s been knitting instagram for the last week. A massive, important, heartfelt conversation about race in the knitting community has been happening on instagram (and spilling over into twitter and ravelry and facebook and probably other places I’m not seeing it). And It’s something we should all be paying attention to.
But…as nifty as instagram is, it can be a heck of a task to follow a conversation on the platform, especially if you don’t have an account or aren’t familiar with some of the finer details of the interface. So, since this isn’t really a conversation where I should be doing a lot of talking, maybe I can instead point folks to where they can find out more and do some reading and listening (pretty pretty please do a lot of reading and listening and reflecting before you start asking questions…this is one of those areas were you really do need to pay attention and do the background work before you jump in).
As background:
On January 7, Karen Templer, owner of Fringe Supply Co, wrote a post on her blog about an upcoming trip to India. The language she used and the sentiments she expressed in that post were problematic. Korina (who posts on instagram at the account thecolormustard) and Sukrita (who posts on instagram at the account su.krita) wrote about the blog post on instagram stories, and their comments led to an extensive conversation (about much more than the language used or sentiments expressed in a particular blog post) over on instagram.
Now we break for, a little primer on instagram stories, because I know not all you are on instagram, and not everyone on there uses stories:
Instagram stories are a special way to share something on instagram. They can be videos, still images, or text posts. Normally they disappear after 24 hours, but the person who posted them may decide to make them available longer by saving them. These saved stories can be grouped into collections called highlights.
The picture above is a screenshot of thecolormustard’s instagram page as it looks on my computer on January 13 (it may look a little different on a phone or at a later date). The screenshot is shared with her permission. The pink and orange circle around the profile picture in the corner means there is currently a story available. If you click on the profile picture (in instagram, not on the picture above), you’ll see the story. The circles below the profile text are highlights. If you click on of one them (again, in instagram, not on the picture above), it will start to play.
During any story or highlight, you can click and hold with your mouse (on a computer) or tap and hold with your finger (on your phone) to pause the story. This can be useful if there is a lot of text on the screen and you need to pause to read it. Many stories or highlights have more than one image or video, and if they do, you can click the forward or back arrows on the screen or on your keyboard (on a computer) or tap on the far right or left edges of your screen (on a phone) to move forward and back.
Also, while you can see the pictures and captions people create if you look at instagram on your computer without an account, you can’t watch stories or highlights without having an account. It’s worth setting up an account to learn more about this, even if you don’t generally want to be on instagram.
And finally, if people don’t have first and last names shown on their profiles or at the page linked in their profiles, I’ll use either the name they do list (if it’s just a first name), or their instagram user name to refer to them.
Now back to the conversation at hand:
I first became aware of this discussion because of information Kate O’Sullivan (on instagram as kateo_sullivan), Ysolda Teague (on instagram as ysolda), and Clara Parkes (on instagram as claraparkes) shared on their stories (hopefully by the time you’re done reading some of the things I’m recommending you go read, you’ll see why it’s lousy that they had to say it before I heard it). They were bringing attention to things that knitters of color were saying on their own instagram accounts. Things that are important. Things that it takes a lot of time and energy to share. Things that are hard and scary to say. Things that some people will be really horrible about. They did a huge amount of work sharing those things…and you should take some time out of your day and read them…even though some them will probably make you feel pretty crummy.
Start with thecolormustard’s highlights (first the one that has a little bullhorn icon next to the number 1, then the bullhorn icon next to the number 2). Then go read Sukrita’s (on instagram as su.krita) highlights (start with the one called Racist knitters for some first-hand account of the experiences people of color have had in yarn stores and other knitting spaces, and then read the one called KT stuff for some discussion of the Karen’s blog post and the larger issues at play).
Deep breath. Keep going. Head over to Grace Anna Farrow’s page (on instagram as astitchtowear) and read her words (start with the one called ATTN KNITTERS, then look at the ones called Privilege). Now go see what Ocean Rose has to say (on instagram as ocean_bythesea) (look at the highlight called Diversity). Now go read what Weichien (on instagram as the petiteknitter) has written (look at the highlight called bipoc, that’s an abbreviation for black, indigenous, and people of color, and you’ll see it a lot in the things I’m asking you to read). Read what Amiée (on instagram as labienamiee) wrote (start with the highlight called #diverseknitty). Now go see what Tina Tse (tina.say.knits on instagram) has shared (start with the highlight called Please Read).
Still with me? Good. Want to read more? Even better. Start clicking through to some of the other voices that are shared in the stories I linked to. This is an ongoing conversation and there will be more things written between when I post this and when you read it. There’s enough there to keep you reading for days. And if you want a little break here and there and just want to look at some yarn and knitting (because this is heavy stuff…you very well might) how about go check out Heidi Wang (on instagram as booksandcables) or Marceline (on instagram as heybrownberry) and their delightful and growing lists of dyers, designers, and other fiber folks of color.
What’s next:
Well next is more reading, more listening, more thinking. Down the road, maybe some talking. But take some time before you jump in. And maybe first consider a few suggestions…
First, someone is reading this and thinking ‘what? but Karen didn’t mean it that way!’ or ‘but I’ve said something like that and I didn’t mean anything by it!’ And that could very well be true! But the result of someone’s speech or actions matters too, not just the intent (something Karen herself points out in her reaction to her initial blog post). If I spill my drink all over you, you might care whether or not I intended to do it, but you definitely care that you’re standing there with hot tea on your pants. So if your first thought is that intentions are all that matter, keep thinking.
If your next thought is ‘don’t be so sensitive’ or ‘you’re imagining it’ or ‘that sucks but you don’t have to be so mean about it’ then go read some more of the first-hand accounts that people are taking time to share with you. They’re not imagining it. They’re dealing with it all the time, and it is exhausting and infuriating and they don’t have to express themselves in ways that make you comfortable for their complaints to be valid. Listen when they take time to tell you about what’s happening.
If you’re about to say ‘but knitting is my happy place, it’s where I go to get away from it all’ or ‘why does everything have to be so political’ then the same things applies. You need to hear what other people are saying. They’re telling you that your happy place isn’t a safe, welcoming, happy place for them. That’s lousy…and not something you should be ok with.
Finally, if you find yourself wanting to send messages to any of the folks I’ve linked to or the folks talking about this (especially if what you want to argue with them or ask them to somehow absolve you or make you feel better), take a moment and think about how many messages they’re getting and what those messages are saying and how much time they’ve spent dealing with this over the last week. If you’re going to ask someone to prove racism exists or to justify their feelings to you…don’t. Try doing some further exploration on your own (some books I’ve found very helpful are Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge and So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo). And if you want to say thanks that’s great…do that, but maybe also consider buying their patterns or yarn or sending them a donation through a service like ko-fi (lots of them have their ko-fi links in their instagram profiles). They’ve spent a lot of time doing hard work this week, and that’s a fine way to say thank you.
Final note:
Comments are being moderated on this post. That means you can leave one, but it won’t be made public until I have a chance to read it. I’ve seen a lot of really nasty things the last few days, and I’m going to do my best to make sure there’s not more of that here.
Editing to add:
This afternoon I saw that ravelry was opening up a space to talk about this on their site. If you’re not on instagram and can’t or won’t make an account to read more about this on ig, maybe some of the discussion happening on ravelry will be useful. Start reading here.
Is there any place to catch up on this besides Instagram stories? I’d love to know what’s going on, but those are only viewable if you have an Instagram account, which I don’t.
Not that I’m aware of. As far as I know, that’s the only place the folks writing these things have decided to make them available, and it wouldn’t be cool to post their work elsewhere unless they wanted it shared. But it’s not hard to sign up for an account (even if you decide not to use it forever).
Thank you so much fo this blog post! This is a very uncomfortable but very important conversation that we need to have! In my mind everyone should be welcome in the knitting community regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion (or anything else we could possibly discriminate against). We’re all people and I hope we can remember to treat each other with kindness and respect.
Thank you for your post and the time and energy to assemble all of the information. As a knitter who is a person of color and also a former resident of the city of Detroit, I understand how unintentional comments can offend. Instagram and other social media sites give us the impression that we have made and know “friends” when we only have access to snippets of an individual. It makes our words even more important because that is all most people have access to. Those and some photos. The up side is that we do, now, have access to many voices and perspectives and as you have pointed out, are responsible to those perspectives.
Wow! I have been following a bit and tried to keep up with all mostly by reading and just trying to understand people’spoin Of view but your recap and all your links are spot on. Great work.
Thank you for this.
Thank you so much for this distillation. I have been trying to make sense of the discussion, but finding it difficult to follow (not because the concepts are difficult but because following a conversation on Instagram is so difficult). So your post (and explanation of Stories) is extremely helpful.
May I link to this post in a discussion of the issue(s) I’m involved in on Ravelry?
I’m glad it was helpful! And yes, you’re welcome to link to it if you’d like, thanks for asking!
When I worked at a knitting store in ultra-white Utah we had a nicely-dressed black man come into the shop. Fifteen years ago a man in the shop was usually lost, so I asked if I could help him. He interpreted it to mean that he wasn’t welcome and that I thought he was going to steal something. He was angry and left the store, and I just stood there, embarrased and confused. My behavior was not meant to be racist, but it was definitely sexist. If a woman came in we gave them a brief tour of the shop. It was a painful lesson to me to not be any kind of “-ist.” Don’t make assumptions. Treat everyone equally. I’m so sorry, men. I think I do better now.
To be honest ‘ Can I help you?’ is what I would expect to hear if I walk into a shop. If I want to just browse then I would say so -In what way is this offensive?
In most customer service jobs clerks are trained to be extra attentive to people they suspect are attempting to steal. At a previous job of mine, my orientation included a video about how being “helpful” is the biggest theft deterrent the store has as people won’t steal when they know you are watching them.
My guess is that this gentleman had, over the course of his life, a large number of clerks ask him if he needed help before following him around the store to “help” show him anything he showed vague interest in- and he unfortunately assumed Tan was intending the same thing.
No need to post this, I just wanted to say thanks for collecting all the information. I’ve seen a lot of angry, and have been having a hard time figuring out what was going on. I’m really sad about how angry and ugly people have been to one another.
I appreciate your emphasis on learning and listening.
Thanks,
Margaret
Thank you. Just thank you. I needed that IG help. You constantly amaze me, btw. (Now don’t edit that out!)
Thank you for this discussion. I am not on Instagram, and have only heard through your blog and chicken ninja’s new podcast and a few other places. That said I think it relies on all of us to welcome anyone in a yarn store. I have met the most amazing people (yeah all knitters) by standing in lines at Stitches to get in, waiting for the bathroom, author signing, etc. When I started going to knit at a knitting store, I realized how cliquish it was and I made an effort to smile and talk to everyone who came in–not just the ones who knitted complicated patterns from yarns I rarely can afford. The pleasure I get from knitting is something I want everyone to have.
Since I can’t read the Instagram messages I will follow up on one more thing Several men in my area have mentioned that in yarn stores it is assumed that they are knitting husbands and not knitters.
Thank you so much for this post and clarity around the development of the issue. This is a tremendously important conversation and not only in the knitting community. I am reading, learning, listening, and supporting BIPOC knitters in our community. Thank you again.
Thank you for this, because I am one of those people who walked into the middle of the conversation and didn’t know how to find the beginning of it. I really appreciate the time you took to gather all of those together and link them in a sensical order. I know what I’ll be reading over the next few days.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. It is informative, and states very clearly that we have to change. I am so tired of explaining to people about racism, overt or systematic or un-intentional, that I often just turn away. I am getting much satisfaction in seeing this education going on in the IG Knitting Community .
Thank you for putting this in one place to be read, pondered, digested. I am 59 years old and you’ve taught me how to use IG stories today. I’ve followed some new-to-me fiberistas today. I have been enlightened through your words today, and again, I thank you.
Thanks Hunter for this post. I take regular breaks from social media. I missed the beginning of the conversation so when I dipped back in I was uncertain how this important conversation began. Your post and links were so helpful. I have shared your post with others who were asking questions and initially confused what was going on.
Thank you for your great recap and detailed explanations of how to track through Instagram. I have been following reconciliation work in my social work life, and not a big knit blog or gram follower these days, so was technology challenged to read the stories part. It is good something cracked the door open in the knitting community so that work can happen to improve the situation for BIPOC.
This is so excellently written. Thank you for providing the resources people are putting together. And especially thank you for providing the “…but knitting is my happy place….” type of people. I am seeing the same ugliness you are and it’s shocking, upsetting, and infuriating. I am hopeful that these discussions will get us to a place were everyone’s happy place is the knitting community (and going beyond that, of course, to all places in life). Thanks again.
So I was interested in this subject and have tried reading the posts but they move as I look at them -am I too old to understand how it all works ? I need a dictionary to understand all the acronyms and feel excluded from the conversation but suspect that’s also because of age and unfamiliarity with the medium. When I follow someone on Instagram I am following their work, rather than the person. I don’t usually know the ethnicity of the maker/artist. Would be grateful for more explanation. Thanks.
In stories, if you’re on a computer, you can click on the image and hold your mouse button down and it will pause until you stop holding the button. If you’re on a phone, you can touch the screen with one finger and keep your finger held down and it will pause until you pick your finger up.
The most common acronyms I’m seeing are poc (which means people of color) and bipoc (which means black and indigenous people of color). Often, if you see an acronym you don’t know, you can google it and find more explanation.
You are so very kind and thoughtful (and thorough!) to write this whole summary giving people the background of recent events! A great opportunity for people to get off on the right foot toward learning more and doing better.
Thanks for bringing this conversation to my attention! I’m not on Instagram so I had no idea any of this was happening. I’m going to spend my weekend going through the conversation on ravelry.
Thanks so much for this! I found this from Knitty and I’m so glad this long-needed revealing is happening for white knitters. I’d also like to put in a plug to *spend your money* at yarn shops that make a point of being open and welcoming to all – especially people of color owned shops.
I totally agree that the fibre community was long overdue for a overhaul for its lack of visible diversity – yes, way too many white faces in my various feeds – but I have been dismayed by some of the worst vitriol I have ever seen online, and have finally understood what people mean by the ‘call out culture’ that has poisoned much of social media and made it a very ‘unsafe’ space for many. I am not comfortable with seeing a woman torn apart for saying she was excited about going on a big trip. There is an astonishing level of hypocrisy going on amongst people who have bandwaggoned onto the criticism of her – I recently went to Canada (from the UK). Was I apprehensive? Did it feel like going all the way to Mars? Hell, yeah! Ditto when I went to Australia, and if I’d said so in a blog, no one would have batted an eyelid.
I do not agree that intent means nothing. In the eyes of the law, intent is everything – it’s the difference between murder and manslaughter. If we go down the slippery slope of insisting that what someone meant doesn’t matter, that their words should only be judged by someone else’s level of offence, we will all be in a very bad place indeed. Yes, white privilege is a thing. Yes, white fragility exists. But to say white people have no right to an opinion on this and other diversity issues, to call them out as racist if anyone dares to disagree with anything that’s happening here, is not something I can get behind.
I’ve been following some of Sukrita’s IG stories. In one recent one – now removed – she effectively called Maria Tusken a Nazi. In another IG post she has attacked Kristy Glass for her ‘racist’ video where she joined other BIPOC knitters to discuss the issue in a less divisive and destructive way. There are horrible parallels with McCarthyism here, where anyone could be denounced for almost anything, and I don’t think it’s a culture we should be encouraging or endorsing.
So I want to try and respond to this, but I also want to be careful because these are always hard conversations to have in writing (because a lot of tone and context gets stripped away…so I’m going to be extra cautious).
About the intent thing. Sure intent can matter, but it’s not the only thing that matters. And insisting that intent is the only thing that matters after you realize people are taking your words or actions differently than you intended…that’s where we really get into trouble.
If I say something, and then I hear from a whole bunch of folks that they heard what I said as racist (or homophobic, or in some other way lousy), then the thing to do is to say some version of ‘Oh wow, thanks for telling me it came across that way. That wasn’t my intent at all, but it seems I missed the mark, and I’m sorry. I will try hard to avoid that in the future.’ And then, you know, actually try hard to be aware of what happened and how you can avoid it in the future.
That’s much much much different than saying ‘well I didn’t intend it that way, so you should stop being so sensitive,’ or ‘I didn’t intend it that way, so if it hurt you that’s your problem,’ or ‘I didn’t intend it that way, and I’ll never change.’
Because no one is expecting folks to get everything right all the time. We have all said dumb things in the past (and will pretty much certainly say many more dumb things in the future). But if your response to finding out you did a dumb thing, even if it was unintentional, is to double down and insist there’s no problem (or worse yet that the problem is other people being mean to you)? That’s not cool.
Also, about language choice or style, it’s really important not to say some version of ‘well of course I don’t want people to be racist…but let’s not be so mean/loud/profane/strident about it…there’s no need to be unpleasant or make anyone feel bad.’ Because if people politely and quietly asking to be treated fairly worked, we’d have a very very different world right now. But asking nicely for equality and then waiting patiently does’t work. Making a scene does. And this is important enough that any discomfort I may feel about someone making a scene doesn’t matter.
I completely see where you’re coming from, Hunter, and I totally agree that this issue needed highlighting. I just wish it had started from something that came across as deliberately twisting someone’s words. I don’t believe for a second Karen was implying India was like Mars in her original blog post – she was using metaphor to describe what felt like a momentous journey. And yet she was further vilified and called racist for even pointing this out, and so were many of the other people who defended her. The problem with making such a reach is everyone ends up completely confused about what the ‘rules’ are. Is it okay to say we’re excited to go and explore the culture of, say, Brazil? Or Britain? God knows enough people come here with some pretty stereotypical and patronising ideas of how us Brits live our lives but I’m not about to be offended by it. Everyone finds cultures different to their own exotic – that’s the whole point of travel, surely?
In the YA fiction world there has been a similar, but not so vicious, debate about BIPOC (or BAME as we say here in the UK) characters. Many white writers have been trying to include more in their novels, in the interests of diversity, but a big debate broke out about #ownvoices, saying only people in BAME writers should write BAME characters. White writers were left wondering what on earth to do – make their novels all white, or try and have them reflect the society around you.
I guess what concerns me most is the potential kickback when ‘progressive’ movements are hijacked by people who believe that public denunciations and an absolute refusal to give someone the benefit of the doubt is the right way to move forward. Here in the UK, for many years any attempt to have a conversation about the economic and social effects of immigration was immediately shut down and labelled as racist. Brexit was in part a rebellion against what many saw as an oppressive level of political correctness, and now the pendulum has swung in the other direction and something awful has been unleashed. And in the US, you have similar issues. We need to be able to have a civilised conversation – and that includes a diversity of opinion from everyone, regardless of skin colour – without fear of being mobbed on social media.
I agree we need to learn and improve. Even after decades of staunch feminism, I still picture a man when someone mentions an airline pilot. Unconscious bias is a very difficult thing to eradicate, but you certainly don’t get rid of it by demonising people. To be honest, I’m not sure making a scene like we’ve witnessed is the best way to effect change – sure, you’ll wake some people up and motivate them to do better, but you’ll also alienate and polarise many others who’ll now be afraid to reach other to people outside their ‘group’ for fear of causing offence or even being attacked. White fragility, or just human nature? Also making a scene can also take many other forms – it doesn’t have to be a devastating personal attack.
Anyway, thank you for publishing my comment, and for your considered blog post and response. Lots of food for thought!
I don’t actually think where it started matters as much as what the conversation has turned into. Put another way, one poorly considered blog post wouldn’t have started this discussion if there weren’t substantial underlying issues.
That may be what started this iteration of this conversation. But this is absolutely not ‘let’s all be mean to someone because they wrote a bad blog post.’ It’s ‘let’s talk about how knitting mirrors the larger problems in society in general…and hey maybe let’s be pissed about it because it sucks…and let’s insist people do better…even though hearing that they need to be better is going to make a lot of people upset.’
And that is absolutely a good thing, and something we need more of in the world.