Happy Hour Recap/Behind the Scenes at Racialicious.com
by Latoya Peterson
Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the Racialicious/Feministing Happy Hour on Tuesday. It was a pleasure to meet you all. Regular commenters Lunanoire and LisaJ made an appearance. And it was great to meet everyone else – all you fabulous lurkers who don’t comment. I appreciated your insights.
Ann, Miriam, and Adam Serwer (aka dnA of the Too Sense blog) were also there helping me hold it down.
I must say, I had to smile when I looked at the scattered table or two of Racialicious fans – y’all looked exactly like I thought you would. Multi-racial and multi-ethnic. I feel like next time, we should have a more intimate gathering, so we could all actually talk. (Most of the Racialicious readers grabbed a drink and then tried to find a quiet place to chat – makes me think we were all in search of conversation.)
At any rate, I got asked some interesting questions while I was there, and wanted to share them with the blog. Think of this as an FAQ.
Q: So, Racialicious is a full time thing for you guys now, right?
Ha! We wish. Most of us have day jobs. I remember reading the Jezebels talk about how their normal days go (basically chained to the computer until the evening) and going “hmm…that sounds nice.” Normally my day is spent working, sneaking peeks at the blog while doing something else, then going home at night and writing and editing posts.
Q: What’s Carmen been doing?
She’s grinding hard on New Demographic, planning some updates and a super big relaunch. She’s blogging over at CarmenVanKerckhove.com. We discuss this blog, but she doesn’t get involved unless I need her to step in when I’m sick or something.
Q: How do you find the time to blog?
Ha. I make time. Some weeks, I do a good job and have everything all scheduled and perfect with the ideal fifteen posts all set. And some weeks, it’s total chaos and I’m hiding in the copy room trying to bang out a post to put up late and deal with the comments later. Depends.
Q: How do you deal with negative comments?
Not well. Though, I’m apparently in good company. I can’t really complain about Racialicious. It’s about 90% active and engaged commenters, 5% people who like to hear themselves talk, and 5% racists/misogynists who get banned at some point. Some days it gets exhausting and feels kind of thankless, but then I get over it.
Q: Why is there so much Heroes coverage?
This one really made me laugh. I actually have never watched Heroes, but I vaguely remembered it being a thing on Racialicious where someone would do recaps. So, I’m off in my editrix bubble when my mailbox was suddenly deluged with requests before Season 3 started. After the sixth or seventh email, I was like “Whoa…this must be important.” After a little go round with past contribs and people who wanted to do it, the task basically fell to Arturo who provides two insightful updates a week. When he provides them, I post – simple as that. A lot of the content here is published as it is made available, so if something isn’t being covered, it is probably because it is not available to me.
(Example: A lot of y’all asked for racial analysis on Firefly – but no one on staff watched that show. I like Whedon’s stuff, so I’ll probably get it on DVD eventually…but looking at my Netflix queue, it could literally be a year before I watch it and post on it.)
So that’s it. West coasters, I heard your pleas, so I will work something out. And yes, I plan to schedule another DC meet up soon.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Arturo wrote:
Couple of things:
1. I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to the members of the Roundtable: Hexy, Erica, Mahsino, Clara and Robin. We’re working on our next piece, coming up soon. Promise. Meantime, stay tuned for our skewering of 24: Redemption. I suspect it’s gonna be like Shaft In Africa — but not.
2. Ooooh, a Firefly column? I’d be up for helping out with that, even if I’m not as
creepily fanaticaldevoted as your “typical” Browncoat.3. Pics from the D.C. event, pls?
Posted 21 Nov 2008 at 2:34 pm ¶
drispe wrote:
I can’t entirely be sure of where I’m perceived in that breakdown of commenters…
Posted 21 Nov 2008 at 4:28 pm ¶
red wrote:
Q: How do you deal with negative comments?
Not well.
Now you see I always thought you dealt with them really well.
I suppose you meant how you dealt with them personally… and I remember from the days when I had my own blog that bad comments can really stress you out. And you must get a lot, LOT more of the bad stuff than I did, I reckon.
But I was thinking about how you deal with them online here at Racialicious – and so I still think you deal with bad comments fantastically well. You keep things nice on here, while not shutting down those arguments that are heated but where people say their stuff in a more or less proper way.
Next time you think you’re dealing with it “not well”, I hope you remember that we all appreciate the way you run this site and that dealing with things well as perceived by other people is actually a big part of dealing with things well personally (even if it doesn’t always immediately feel like that).
Hope this makes sense. Big props, Latoya. That’s what I’m trying to say.
PS I’m unlikely to ever meet you in person, because I live in London. But I hereby offer you a virtual drink.
*raises glass*
Posted 21 Nov 2008 at 4:46 pm ¶
Lisa J wrote:
Thanks for the shout out! It was great meeting you Latoya and the other nice people I met. I hope we can do it again soon.
Posted 21 Nov 2008 at 4:50 pm ¶
jen* wrote:
I’m not sure why it’s been so important to have Heroes commentary this season, but it really has been. Maybe it’s partly cuz everything else in life has been so heavy…
Or maybe it’s cuz Heroes is one of those shows that captured our attention, well – my attention – as being this great multicultural affair of regular people becoming awesome. Now that it’s turned into something else, Racialicious is the only place I really have to discuss this… And I like the discussions.
ps – somehow I missed the whole Firefly thing – I don’t know how – but it’s on my queue as well. It’ll probably be January before I start receiving them, though.
Posted 21 Nov 2008 at 7:55 pm ¶
AV Flox wrote:
Thanks for the plug, Latoya! Nasty comments are a big topic with me. While there is life after commenter execution, I do wish more people on the web would try harder to have mature conversations. Alas!
Posted 21 Nov 2008 at 9:42 pm ¶
CG girl wrote:
Speaking of TV shows, I was wondering if any of you guys watch “Ugly Betty”, because they had an “affirmative action” storyline in the last episode that really bugged me.
Basically Betty, a Latina, was accused by Marc, a gay male, of being accepted into a training program only because of her latin heritage. So then her family tells her to take advantage of the special treatment because basically latinos have been treated badly in the past.
So what happens? Betty gives up her spot in the training program to Marc because she doesn’t want the special treatment, and to top it all off, Marc “apologizes” by saying, “I hope you don’t think I’m racist, just so you know some of the hottest guys I’ve dated have been Latino” then the episode ends with Betty & Marc giggling on the phone like BFFs.
WTF? Seriously? Did the Ugly Betty writers just use the “I’m not racist because some of my best friends are latino/black/asian argument”? Since when did that become acceptable.
I know you guys are busy but I wish someone would watch that ep. online. Maybe I’m overreacting but that seemed to be a crap way to treat a serious subject on the only “Latino” show on the air right now.
Posted 22 Nov 2008 at 6:56 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@Arturo -
Right – do you want me to amend the post?
@drispe –
Tsk tsk. I’m sure the answer is in your heart.
@red –
Thanks for the outside perspective. Yeah, in that case, it was really more about dealing *personally* with negative comments. If you see them here, I most likely feel like the person is a little off but worth engaging with. There’s a lot of people who I delete ban outright, normally because they’ve posted 6 comments in five minutes, all something like “Hey morons! Racism is over losers!” etc etc etc.
Cheers! *clinks virtual glass*
@jen* –
No worries, we aren’t going to discontinue them. Part of me wishes we had done this really intensive format all along, so we could print out and mail the trajectory of the show to the producers.
@AV Flox –
Thanks for coming by!
@CGGirl –
Did you send me the email? And yes, we will get on it.
Posted 22 Nov 2008 at 9:19 am ¶
mahsino wrote:
@ CG Girl- I thought I was the only one that caught that, I had my mouth hanging open the entire episode after that point.
Posted 23 Nov 2008 at 1:56 pm ¶
Yvette wrote:
Um….how ’bout a meet-up in Indianapolis, Indiana? We’re the “crossroads of America,” ya know. And we even went Blue this past presidential election!
Posted 23 Nov 2008 at 2:51 pm ¶
PureGracefulTree wrote:
Sounds like a great time was had by all. Thanks for sharing the Q&A too (I laughed about the Heroes question, as I’ve wondered the same myself—never watched the show). And I agree, negative comments suck and you do a great job of dealing with them. Thank you! (and hoping for a West Coast meetup in the future)
Posted 24 Nov 2008 at 4:23 am ¶
Philly Phil wrote:
@ latoya –
have you heard of or read the Luna Bros. graphic novel titled “GIRLS”? i’m not sure what you’ll think of it but i knew the moment i was reading it that the Luna Bros. were doing something crazy, controversial, and definitely something that would spark conversation.
the basic premise is this: small town in america is changed forever when a mysterious naked woman appears on the road. the town suddenly becomes sealed off in a bubble and the naked woman not only multiplies when she has sex but also starts attacking/killing all the other women in the town. not to mention the appearance of a GIANT sperm in the middle of a cornfield…
it’s a trippy read chock full of gender arguments: equality, patriarchies, feminism, etc… just curious to see your take on it.
also, have you ever thought of handling a WIRE retrospective, racialicious style? now that the entire run of the series has completed, doing an episode by episode breakdown of the 5 seasons analyzing class, race, and crime as depicted in the series would be a great weekly installment.
why? mainly, i think, because fuck HEROES. sorry. but that damn show sucked the moment i saw the season 1 finale of what i thought was going to be an awesome TV show. now it’s just trying to hard. HEROES getting a roundtable when something like the WIRE hasn’t seems… criminal to me.
thoughts?
Posted 24 Nov 2008 at 5:36 am ¶