When you post a comment to this blog, it is not automatically published. It is held in a queue until we approve or reject it. See the guidelines below, but with the understanding that these are suggestions, not absolutes.

All comments are approved at the sole discretion of the moderators.

What to do if your comment doesn’t show up
It could be trapped in our spam folder. We receive a ridiculous amount of comment spam, sometimes more than two hundred messages in an hour. If your comment is in bounds with the current comment policy, please email team@racialicious.com and we will try to find it, but we can’t guarantee it.

Also, we generally delete the comments that contain the following words without reading them: “get over it,” “you’re overreacting,” “whiners,” “nothing is ever going to change,” “why don’t you focus on real racism,” any variation on “playing the race card.” Be forewarned.

We also delete blatant self-promotion and comments where it is clear the source material was not carefully considered. If you aren’t going to bother to engage with the post, we aren’t going to bother posting your comment.

Guidelines for Commenting
Comments that violate the following guidelines may be deleted.

1. Don’t make threats of violence, ever.

2. Don’t address people using racial slurs. And yes, that includes anti-white racial slurs or even belittling/condescending remarks like “white boy.”

3. Don’t make personal attacks. If you’re not smart enough to win an argument without resorting to calling someone fat, stupid, crazy, or whatever, maybe you should work on your rhetorical skills.

4. Don’t respond to trolls. If someone is clearly posting a comment with the intention of starting a fight, or posting completely wrong, racist pseudoscientific crap like “all white people are albinos, science proved it”, just ignore them.

5. In general, let’s stay away from long, drawn-out arguments and fights. Once a thread descends into point-by-point refutations and denials, it has (not always, but a lot of the time) turned to crap.

6. Let’s avoid oppression olympics please. I’m not saying it’s never something to be discussed, but generally speaking, bickering over who has it worse off, or who’s more racist, is really kind of useless.

7. Try not to speak in generalizations. Don’t attribute characteristics to entire ethnic or racial groups. Adding modifiers like “some” or talking specifically about your personal experiences help reduce the likelihood that you’re stereotyping entire communities.

8. Don’t respond to a post or comment by saying “why don’t you focus on some real issues like the war/starving children in Africa/police brutality/etc.” Newsflash: this is a blog about race and pop culture. If you’re not interested in discussing the intersection of those two things, please go elsewhere.

9. Don’t respond to critiques about racism by telling the person making the critique that they’re just too sensitive, or they need to “get a life,” or that they need to stop playing the “race card.” We welcome disagreements here on Racialicious, but make an intelligent case for your point of view. Don’t just dismiss others’ views.

Coffeeandink said it best in the brilliant How to Suppress Discussions of Racism: “If you can accuse your opponent of “paranoia,” “white guilt,” “internalized racism,” “whining,” “overreacting,” “paternalism,” “condescension,” “being obsessed with race,” “bitching about racism at the drop of a hat,” or “taking things too personally,” you don’t need to bother addressing the content of their remarks.”

10. If all of your comments are variations on the same theme, we reserve the right to ban you. If every time you post a comment it is a variation of “that’s because white people hate black people” or “you need to stop generalizing white people,” it is generally not conducive to our discussion and only serves to stir up animosity.

11. Any comments using the phrase “the United States of Amerikkka” or “Amerikkka” will be deleted. It is not very original or entertaining at this point, especially not the 400th time someone has to read it. Ditto for comments trying to “explain” that that there really are differences in the behaviors of races. Ditto for comments complaining about the comments – if you take offense to an assumption in a comment, address the speaker directly and respectfully.

If your comment is deleted, please do not post a comment complaining that someone else just said the exact same thing and they got through. Someone putting together a well reasoned comment about how the legacy of slavery has influenced the perceptions of minorities in America is not the same as saying “white people suck.”

12. Any ridiculously off-topic comments will also be deleted. If we are talking about the sexualized images of the Asian American female, there is no need to bring up the best places to get Chinese food in your area.