What is the Fairies Against Racism Web Ring?
Fairies Against Racism is primarily for people who have fantasy sites or who like fairies, fairy tales, elves, and other things like that. However, anyone who would like to take a stand against racism is welcome to apply to join. I would prefer it if you have some content, somewhere on your pages, which indicates your point of view on racism, but that isn't absolutely necessary. I hope that if enough people make it apparent that racism is not okay, it will make a difference in peoples' attitudes.

Although I do not seek to censor other peoples' pages or the content of the internet, pages that I would not want my kids looking at will not be accepted unless I feel that the merits of the content far outweigh any misgivings I might have. I just don't want my own pages associated in peoples' minds with stuff that I don't think is child-appropriate.

Why Fairies Against Racism?

A little over a year ago, I was doing a web search on fairies, and I ran across a page which purported to be about elves. Curious, I read it. I've never been able to figure out whether the author really believed what s/he said or not, but they used a made-up "science", the name of which I have now forgotten, to put together a thinly disguised white supremacist message. I was irritated by the racism, by the pseudo-science, and by their appropriation of elves for a bad cause. Shortly after that I put together my first "Fairies Against Racism" graphic, which can be found on the panel for the site ring. It was not until recently, when I joined the Site Fights as a spirit fairy, that I got the idea of a web ring for others to join up.

Your reasons don't have to be exactly the same as mine, but here are some of mine.

My Personal Beliefs About Racism

It is hard to know where to start with this one. Ever since my earliest childhood memories, I have thought it was wrong to treat people differently because of superficial things, even though I was not always set a good example in this. And sometimes, I am sure that I still have attitudes which are based in ignorance and are offensive to other people.

Effect on people being discriminated against

I refer to "minority" or "majority" cultures throughout instead of specific "races" because these things have historically happened everywhere that people of different ethnic backgrounds live together, and continue to happen all over the world. It is not any particular "race" which always discriminates against any other particular race, but most often the one in power or highest population in a particular area.

Unfortunately, racism can become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing. Minorities of any type within a society are often treated like their culture/way of doing things just isn't good enough. Many of them may try to blend in with the majority culture in order to be treated better, only to discover that they are still rejected. It is like the majority culture is saying to them "Your way of doing things isn't good enough for us, so you'd better change. But no matter how much you change, you still won't be one of us". This leaves them feeling like they belong to no one--they have rejected their old culture, but aren't accepted by the new one either. That can lead to many personal problems. Then, if they do show problems coping, the majority culture turns around and says "Look, we always knew they were no good. This just proves we were right." Such symptoms are observable anywhere this happens, and are not tied in to race or ethnicity; they are tied in to being treated poorly.

Those that continue to practise their own cultural traditions are also treated poorly, and in fact usually worse, by many people. Often people from the majority culture see different ideas and traditions as somehow wrong or threatening and lash out at anyone who is visibly different than themselves.

That doesn't show concrete examples, but it does give a small glimpse of how racist thinking can harm its targets. And it isn't true that this sort of thing doesn't still go on. I know people who have experienced racism directly in their own lives. A friend of mine has had people refuse to serve her in restaurants because she is Native American. Another friend of mine gets stopped by the police any time he goes anywhere (on foot or in a car!) after dark because of his skin colour. He is a great, well- educated young man but they assume that he is up to something bad. Can you imagine the effect it would have on your self-esteem if, like him, you were walking down the street and a young child looked at you and pointed, and said to their mother "look, Mommy, he's a bad guy!"

That's all for now; I will probably have a great deal more to say later.

Effect on Society at Large

One of the reasons that racism still exists is that it does benefit some people some of the time. In a racist society, people from the "elite" (usually majority) group will be more likely to get jobs, promotions, important and powerful positions, better schooling, and even (as seen above) better service in stores and restaurants, seats on the bus, etc. Many people are somewhat naturally reluctant to give these privileges up, even when they offer lip service to the idea of equality.

However, this also means that the society as a whole is losing out. Some of the results are:

• Not all children get good schooling, so society misses out on a great deal of potential they would have otherwise reached. There are several reasons for this. Their parents may not have as much money because they are not given the same job opportunities. They may be deliberately segregated by the government into certain schools which don't receive as much funding, or they may be unintentionally segregated because they are pushed into living in certain areas, where the schools don't receive sufficient funding. Who knows how many Da Vinci, Einstein, or Banting and Best types we have lost because a kid with enormous potential was sent to a school that was below standard. Or didn't get proper nutrition because their family was too poor, and therefore couldn't develop to full potential.
• Companies miss out on some very good employees when they don't hire the most qualified person because they have the wrong skin colour, wrong gender.
• The same for promotions; one person may be promoted over another because of the way they look. (The lines of course blur here; people may be discriminated against on the basis of race, gender, weight, and any number of other spurious reasons--none of which have to do with their ability.)
• Ethnic/religious conflicts. Well, most people are aware of the killing that goes on worldwide because of this sort of difference. I'd like to believe that my own "backyard" is clean on this one, but Canada practised genocide against the Native American population not so very long ago by handing out blankets deliberately infected with small pox. When it didn't completely work, they took peoples' children away from them and sent them to residential schools, where they were raped/tortured/punished for speaking their native tongue, among other things. The schools happened within my parents' generation. For some reason, much of the racism against aboriginal and Asian peoples seems to go unremarked within both the United States and Canada. (For instance, I never learned about the Canadian and American governments' Chinese Immigration Act and Chinese Exclusion Acts, or the forcible internment of everyone of Japanese ancestry within 200 miles of the Pacific coast in 1942 in high school history)

These are just the most obvious reasons I could think of. I know that a simple site ring won't change the whole world, but if it helps just a few people to either feel hope when they see a group of people make a statement that racism is wrong, or to re-think their own positions on the subject, then it is well worth the effort.

You can apply to join Fairies Against Racism here.