Racism in online Toki Pona communities (Blaugust #7)

We talk a lot about the conlang Toki Pona because we think it is delightful. We haven't talked a lot about our experience with the online Toki Pona community, once we moved beyond watching jan Misali videos and talking to friends of friends.

It was bad. It was real bad.

( In no particular order: ... )

Now, this is a blog post written in mid-2023 about events occuring mid-2023. You, dear reader, might find the Toki Pona communities you encounter to be different. Our experience with tokiponists around our side of fedi (which actually bans people who adopt white supremacist memes, like functional antiracist communities do) has been positive. Toki Pona, the language, has not been hostile to us.

But ... listen, if you recommend people read Sonja Lang's book about Toki Pona without mentioning that there's a strong theme of jan Sonja's religion through it, then that's a big thing to leave out but not a big deal - there are a lot of atheists, including us, speaking Toki Pona, and jan Sonja seems like a nice person and explicitly queer-positive. But a history of racism is a big deal. And it's a big deal that Toki Pona communities are going to have to deal with, and keep dealing with for so long they get sick of having to keep dealing with it. That's how wrestling with a racist history works.

And if you're just learning Toki Pona in 2023? Stars, I'm sorry to have to tell you this. But stay safe. jan sin o, o awen e kon sina.