To Virginia Tam and others,

I usually don't spend a great deal of time thinking about what I write on Mudcat threads during the actual act of writing. Though Mudcat has a "Preview" feature, I confess that I rarely use it. Usually I prefer to proof read my serious posts one time or a couple of times before I hit the submit button. Unfortunately, sometimes this had led to typos, grammatical errors, and even cut & paste gobblygook being left in my submitted posts. Sometimes if I catch them, I consider these errors of sufficient importance that I will post a correction. Other times, I don't post any corrections, but let my errors alone, as further testimony to my humanness.

However, the fact that I don't reflect a great deal on the serious comments that I write while I'm writing it, doesn't mean that these comments are written impulsively. On the contrary, I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about these "heavy duty" topics before I write my posts. I consider the topic of this discussion to be one of those "heavy duty"{important} topics.

I like to think of Mudcat as a community, and I like to comment on the public threads as though I'm engaged in conversations with a specific person or with specific people. While doing so, I'm aware that there are other people {lurkers} who are likely to read my comments immediately after I hit the submit button. In addition, because these public threads are archived, there are also people who may potentially read my comments and the comments in these threads that written by other people days, weeks, months, and years from now. Therefore writing on Mudcat is an opportunity, a challenge, and a responsibility.

I agree with Little Hawk's 03 Jan 09 - 11:16 PM comments that "There's also a sort of multicultural thing happening here... Each identifiable group seems to have its own particular foibles, issues, hangups, and ways of having fun. It's hard to figure out at first, and no one has provided a racing form or a program to explain it all...so you've got to sort of learn as you go along".

I know that I have been shaped by the experiences that I have had and continue to have as an African American woman growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in the New Jersey and living since the late 1960s in Western Pennsylvania. I mention my racial identity online in part because it adds context {and perhaps sometimes validity] to my comments about certain subjects such as race and African American culture/s. I also mention my race in some of my posts to this forum {and I encourage others to mention their race/nationality} as part of the demographical information that I {and I believe they should} document during the collection of cultural products such as children's playground rhymes and other folk songs. However, I do not mention my race when I am posting about topics when I consider that demographical information to be unneccesary {for example in the thread that I started on "Favorite Religious Songs" or humorous threads}. Of course, other reasonable people-including other African Americans-might disagree with me about whether mentioning race is important at all, or is necessary all of the times that I mention it.

That said, I believe that part of what Little Hawks referred to as Mudcat's multicultural mix has sometimes resulted in my misunderstanding other people's motivations, statements, and humor {humour}. And this multicultural mix has sometimes resulted in other people misunderstanding my motivations, statements, and humor.

One of the things that continues to surprise me and one of my deepest regrets about this Mudcat community is that there are so few people of color who post on this forum. Because of the cultural complexity that Little Hawk referenced, let me "break down" {define, provide clarifying information} about what I just wrote. By "people of color", I mean people who are of Black or Brown African descent, people who are Asian, people who are Latino/a, people who are Native American, people who are indigenous Australians, and other people who are non-White. And by "so few people of color on Mudcat", I mean people of those racial backgrounds/ethnicities who publicly acknowledge their racial/ethnic identity ["ethnic" is used here in the USA sense of "Latino/a"/"Hispanic"}. I know that there is at least one other African American who sometimes post on this forum because that person pmed me to share this information with me. In that private message, s/he indicated that s/he did not want to share any information about her/his racial identity in the public threads. I responded back that I regretted that decision, but to each his or her own.

I respect that confidential information just as I respect all confidential information that is shared through private messages. However, if there were more people of color who indicated their racial/ethnic identity in their public posts, and shared their perspectives on the racial topics that invariably are the focus of Mudcat threads {sometimes started by me, but often started by other Mudcatters and guests}, then-even if I didn't always agree with those posters-I think Mudcat would be a richer community.

All of this leads me, Virginia Tam, to the comment in your latest post to this thread that "[a Mudat member] who contacted me [in a private message] mentioned being stalked and felt racism was suspected". First of all, when you said that an individual pmed you and indicated that she or he felt that racism might be the reason why he or she was being stalked, my first reaction is to substitute the word "prejudice" for "racism" as I know that I didn't pm you to sat this, and as it would very much surprise me if the Mudcat member who pmed you was another person of color.

My reading of Mudcat threads leads me to believe that some people outside of the USA, or maybe also within the USA use the word "racism" when I {and perhaps most Black people} would use the word "prejudice". Or perhaps some people have a wider definition of "race" than I do, in that they may consider White ethnic groups such as Irish, Polish, and Italians as a race separate from English, and French people. If a person pre-judges another individual or groups of individuals because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, and/or sexual orientation, I would consider that to be "prejudice" and not "racism". [There are, of course, ethnicities within African American and other Diaspora African populations, but addressing that would provide too much detail to this already long winded post].

I hasten to say that I believe that prejudice is just as bad as racism. I also believe that no one should be stalked on this forum or anywhere else online or offline. But I know it happens. When it does, a person has to decide what to do herself and himself on a case by case basis. And hopefully that person will have clear support from other people who are aware by reading these public threads that stalking is occurring. And also that person will have clear intervention and support from Mudcat moderators.

I'll write more on the subject of Mudcat moderators and other related and unrelated matters in my next post to this thread.