Normative White Internet Practices: Performances at the Edge of a Digital Black Community

Abstract

Following the murder of George Floyd, more than 2,000 White-identifying Reddit users applied to the subreddit, r/BlackPeopleTwitter, in hopes of becoming verified allies. Prior research has argued that White people may seek out digital contexts to learn about and practice race. However, few studies examine why, and none problematize the relationship between normative internet practices and Whiteness—normative White internet practices. In collaboration with r/BlackPeopleTwitter moderators and rooted in a theoretical orientation of race as doings, this ethnographic and qualitative case study aimed to document examples of normative White internet practices through a focus on the performances of White users seeking allyship at the edge of a digital Black community. The study analysis focuses on 3,219 White ally applications sent in the year surrounding George Floyd’s murder—when and where normative Whiteness was actively and openly contested. The findings begin to articulate a repertoire of normative White internet practices as White-identifying users engaged in information seeking, self-differentiation, impression management, and spatial negotiation to center individualistic projects rooted in Whiteness even when obscured as care for others. These unsolicited and normative practices took on distinct capacities for harm when sent to r/BlackPeopleTwitter moderators. Online racism may persist due to more subtle and normalized forms of racialized harm that do not trigger platformed or moderator interventions. As scholars continue to study racism on social media, there remains a need to partner with online communities to name and organize against digital harms enacted through normative White internet practices.

What we see now is a translation of Black suffering into White pedagogy. In this extreme moment, the casual violence that can result in a loss of life—a police officer literally killing a Black man with the weight of his knees on the other’s neck—becomes a flash point for a certain kind of White liberal conscience, like “Oh my god! We’re living in a racist order! How can I find out more about this?” That question is a symptom of the structure that produced Floyd’s death. Then, there’s the other set of demands: “Educate me about the order in which we live.” And it’s like: “Oh, but you’ve been living in this order. Your security, your wealth, your good life, has depended on it.”

—Saidiya Hartman (Damman, 2020)

Following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, posts sharing information and critical perspectives from a subreddit, r/BlackPeopleTwitter (BPT), were promoted to the front page of Reddit. As users poured into the community spewing hate and racism, BPT made the decision to go into a 6-week lockdown to protect their Black users. During this time, thousands of users also hoped to become White allies through the community’s racial verification system, sending messages to moderators like this one,

I came to this subreddit to ask a couple questions about what I can do as a white person to help the movement. I saw that the subreddit is on “lockdown” so to speak which I understand given the climate . . . I would like some advice on the best ways I can give my support for the black community. (User #870, May 31, 2020)

BPT implemented its racial verification system a year earlier, intending to limit overwhelming amounts of White participation in the subreddit, which caused Black users to feel unwelcome and silenced. The verification system did limit disruptive participation, but it did not prevent White users from trying. BPT received more than 2,000 verification applications from White users in the days following George Floyd’s murder (Figure 1). While prior research has argued that White people may seek out digital contexts to learn about and practice race (Frey et al., 2022), there are few empirical studies that examine the reasons why, and none that begin to problematize these often well-meaning digital practices as typifying normative Whiteness.

Figure 1.

Total number of White ally applications.

White participation in BPT illustrates an often empirically unobserved case and moment: white people being openly and voluntarily white. I examined this unique context during what Hartman called a “flashpoint for white liberal conscience” (Damman, 2020). Whiteness is often framed as a toggle between nothingness and racism with little empirical focus on the connections between the two—how racism may be enacted by disappearing Whiteness (Painter, 2015). Few studies attend to the normative production and maintenance of Whiteness online overlooking its rearticulation in ordinary digital practices, especially well-intended participation like allyship (Brock, 2020; Frey & Matias, 2024). Platform terms of service and traditional community governance strategies may not account for more subtle and normalized forms of racialized harm and Whiteness, leading to a persistence of online racism. There remains a need for broader and comprehensive understandings of online harm, even and especially through well-meaning and good-faith digital practices.

I analyzed 3,219 racial verification applications, examining how self-identifying White users approached engagement with a Black digital community in the name of allyship. This qualitative and ethnographic case study attempts to identify examples of normative White internet practices through a focus on the motivations and justifications of White users seeking allyship. I asked the following questions: (1) What reasons do self-identifying White Reddit users give for wanting to participate in BPT as White allies? and (2) What ally qualifications do self-identifying White Reddit users mention when applying to BPT as White allies?

I begin by theoretically grounding this study in an understanding of race as doings or practices. Through a review of scholarship on Whiteness and the internet, I define and describe normative White internet practices and present White allyship as a useful performative site. Next, I introduce BPT as a unique context for examining normative White internet practices. I discuss the research methods, including my community collaboration with BPT moderators, ethnographic community observations, and data collection and analysis. I describe my positionality as a researcher and outline the ethical considerations of this study. Then, I present and discuss the findings, and end with study limitations and conclusions.

Race as Doings

A doings framing is a theoretical device used to reorient the empirical study of race toward practices connected to the maintenance and disruption of racism, and away from race as an essential biological trait, demographic characteristic, and identity (Chun, 2009; Frey et al., 2022). Race is a social construction enacted through practices, actions, and behaviors—doings (Frey et al., 2022; Omi & Winant, 1994). It is created to do things in the world; or more accurately, race is created to justify how things are done, often through racism (Fields & Fields, 2012). Social media provides unique environments for practicing and examining race (Frey et al., 2022), which relates to what people do offline (Boulianne, 2015). A theoretical reorientation of race is useful for understanding how racism persists through social media—spaces once theorized as race-neutral—shifting empirical focus away from racial identification of users and toward user practices. This is necessary when examining how normative internet practices may relate to the maintenance of racism through Whiteness.

Normative White Internet Practices

The internet is an enactment of and constituted by Whiteness (Brock, 2020; Daniels, 2013; Gray, 2020). It consists of platforms, interfaces, and norms that prioritize and protect users and practices in compliance with Whiteness, while treating practices and users outside the norms of Whiteness as other (Florini, 2019; Hall, 1997; Nakamura, 1995, 2008). Users are assumed to be White unless otherwise specified (Florini, 2019; Milner, 2013; Nakamura, 1995), and this normalization is evident in the everyday social interactions of the internet—as White people “do not have to change who they are, how they talk, or how they behave” (R. L. Jackson et al., 2000, p. 82). Whiteness functions as a default and is defined by its “invisibility, rather than its presence” (Nakamura, 2002, p. 105), and this remains true on Reddit.

Reddit continues to host racist, sexist, and xenophobic content and subreddits (Gaudette et al., 2021; Gilbert, 2020; Todd, 2013; Wu et al., 2024), despite more recent changes to harassment and hate-speech policies (Dubois & Reepschlager, 2024; Wickham & Öhman, 2022). Even though content displaying overt racism is taken down by many moderators, more nuanced forms of harm, such as racial microaggressions and hostility toward marginalized groups, are rarely removed (Chandrasekharan et al., 2018). The platform’s design, algorithm, and politics have been shown to prioritize the norms and desires of young, White, cisgender, heterosexual males, while ignoring and marginalizing others (Massanari, 2017, p. 330). Reddit users even utilize ubiquitous platform features to perpetuate racism like post awards and default messages (Hagerty, 2020; Harris, 2020b). The everydayness of White ideologies, practices, and values across the platform creates a normative hostility faced by users and communities who fall outside the default. This normative Whiteness may even define and impact seemingly innocuous and well-intended user participation and practice.

This case study begins to articulate a repertoire of normative white internet practices, digital doings that preserve and reify White normativity while obfuscating their role in upholding racism online. It examines how everyday practices maintain racial hierarchies through seemingly neutral enactments like user interactions, use of specific digital affordances, and the design of social media platforms (Frey et al., 2022; Hagerty, 2020). For instance, research on which social media platforms people use and how usage might differ between various groups is quite commonplace (Gottfried & Park, 2025). However, even the ordinary practice of choosing a social media platform reflects broader narratives and ideologies of race in society (boyd, 2012; Watkins, 2009). This study examines normative user behaviors on Reddit as also reflecting broader racial ideologies and hierarchies, even and especially when the practices may seem well-intended and in good faith.

Empirical research examining Whiteness often overlooks its normative production and maintenance, focusing on its extreme forms instead, like White nationalism and violence. However, focusing only on extreme forms may act as a distraction (Dyer, 1997) from what Benjamin (2019) calls “the ‘reasonableness of racism” (p. 39)—disregarding the rearticulation of Whiteness in ordinary digital participation. Although normative White internet practices are more challenging to recognize—though not invisible—they become noticeable during moments of contestation (Daniels, 2013; Shome, 2000). One of these moments happened in June 2020 as users shared posts of black squares captioned with #BlackLivesMatter across their social media feeds in attempts to show their support for the movement. The massive number of these posts unintentionally disrupted the sharing of valuable information by organizers and protestors (Wellman, 2022). The present case study focuses on another one of these contestation moments, which also came in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Normative internet practices became visible as Reddit users attempted to engage in allyship by joining BPT, a Black subreddit—a practice that may be more in line with normative Whiteness than these users considered.

White Allyship as a Normative Practice

Ideally, white allyship is a practice of individuals categorized, raised, and socialized as White publicly and politically uniting with people marginalized by racism and colorism to forward liberatory projects (S. J. Jackson et al., 2020). These practices are meant to disrupt the normative maintenance of Whiteness and reification of racism. However, White allyship is often motivated by self-interest, personal need, being liked, and to avoid appearing racist (Bergsieker et al., 2010; Brown, 2015; Burns & Granz, 2023; Frey et al., 2021; Radke et al., 2020). Many consider actions motivated by self-centered factors to be performative allyship—actions that are easy, visible, and costless, leading to no change in existing conditions and norms (Kutlaca & Radke, 2023). Digital allyship efforts can be perceived as suspicious and convenient (Desnoyers-Colas, 2019; Hadley, 2019), as there are often personal and ulterior motives which do not (seek to) further projects of anti-racism and liberation, harming them instead (Ekpe & Toutant, 2022; Frey, 2023; Hadley, 2019; Nuru & Arendt, 2019; Wellman, 2022).

Social media have raised novel questions about allyship online (Clark, 2019). People can use various platform affordances to advance racial justice movements, such as sharing posts by Black activists, bringing attention to injustices, and holding White people accountable for racism (Roden et al., 2023). White people have also created unique hashtags to spread awareness about racialized inequities, such as #CrimingWhileWhite. While these examples may be rooted in genuine concern for improving the status of marginalized people, many of these public stances lead to little tangible action and material change and can function instead as confessions for personal catharsis (Frey, 2023; S. J. Jackson et al., 2020). Rather than framing allyship as a departure from Whiteness, this case study examines it as a racialized practice used to negotiate entrance into a digital Black community, a performative site, and as indication of a repertoire of normative White internet practices.

The Case of r/BlackPeopleTwitter

r/BlackPeopleTwitter (BPT) is a subreddit for sharing funny and insightful screenshots of social media posts authored by Black people with more than 6.2 million subscribers (at the time of publication) and governed by a Black moderator team. BPT users share memes, jokes, and critical social commentary centering Blackness and Black culture, with Black Twitter (Brock, 2012; Clark, 2025; Florini, 2014) being the main source of the subreddit’s focus and content. Humor often plays a large role in the community (Smith et al., 2024) especially among the moderators, as demonstrated in their 2024 April Fools’ Day post, titled: “White People Verification (DEI Initiative),” in which they asked White users to “give an opinion that only a White person would hold” like “Mayonnaise is spicy” and “I don’t wash my legs in the shower” (BPTeehee, 2024). Many studies have inaccurately characterized BPT, failing to articulate the important duality of the subreddit: the brilliant humor coinciding with critical socio-political discussions (e.g., Nithyanand et al., 2017).

BPT represents a counternormative Reddit community, or counterpublic (Squires, 2002; Steele, 2018), evidenced through its purpose, rules, and governing systems (Gilbert, 2020; Massanari, 2017; Wu et al., 2024). It exists for the stated purpose of protecting and prioritizing Black perspectives and culture, which are often met with harassment and hate elsewhere (Chow, 2022; Harris, 2020a). BPT implements rules about respecting Black community voices and opinions (Rule #10) and forbids users from complaining about the use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and slang (Rule #9). This rule about language acts in opposition to Reddiquette (Reddit, 2023), which encourages “proper” English (Lanehart, 2015). Finally, BPT employs unique governing systems not found anywhere else on the internet: protected threads only for verified users (country club (CC) threads) and a user racial verification system.

BPT provides a particularly unique and useful case for examining normative White internet practices. The subreddit is the largest and most popular Black community run by Black moderators that prioritizes and centers Blackness on Reddit—a platform that normalizes and hegemonizes Whiteness (Massanari, 2017). It is an observable digital space where moderators built interventions based on the experiences of Black users to counteract racism that goes unacknowledged elsewhere. In BPT, Whiteness is often and abundantly challenged, placing it under constant contestation. This allows for the examination of practices that may be harder to observe in contexts where Whiteness and White users are the norm. On a platform where Whiteness is usually studied as overt hatred and racism, this study explores racialized performances of good intentions and allyship by analyzing how White-identifying users negotiated a shift in racialized norms and expectations at the edge of a digital Black community.

Method

In collaboration with BPT moderators, this study aimed to empirically examine attempts at and motivations for White allyship within a unique community, during a moment when Whiteness was under contestation. In December 2020, I connected with a BPT moderator, Jefferson Kelley ¹ . In January 2022, I received permission from Kelley and BPT’s head moderator to passively observe the subreddit for 8 weeks. In March 2022, I sent a community collaboration agreement to BPT, which included becoming a temporary moderator to access verification applications through modmail—a message system through which users can send messages to the moderation team. The moderators agreed to collaborate in April 2022, and I became a temporary moderator. Over the past 6 years, I have been in consistent communication with my collaborator and other BPT moderators, from study conceptualization through revisions of this article. I shared my findings and a version of this article with the community for feedback before submission and obtained multiple rounds of informed community consent throughout the study (Fiesler et al., 2024; Proferes et al., 2021), including during article revisions to address reviewer feedback and concerns.

Community Observations

Between January and March 2022, I passively observed BPT for 8 weeks to learn about users, community norms, and the content of what is shared in the subreddit. I also learned about the community’s history by retroactively examining what occurred in the subreddit during major societal events (e.g., protests and elections). BPT is widely known for its decision to limit user participation based on race. On April 1, 2019, moderators made an announcement: “r/BlackPeopleTwitter is now for Black People Only,” due to “overwhelming amounts of white people and white opinions” and instituted a user racial verification system. In a follow-up post, moderators explained,

It was shared loudly and clearly by the black members of this community that many felt uncomfortable by how black voices were often drowned out of discussion in this subreddit . . . Reddit is full of mostly white subreddits. We have blackpeopletwitter. (BPTMods, 2019)

Members shared that White users were interfering with a Black digital safe space, causing them to feel unwelcome, out of place, and subject to the White gaze (Hall, 1997; Massanari, 2015). Moderators limited White access to BPT due to participation that disrupted conversations between Black members and created harm, not due to overt racism only. This is important to note because moderators recognized harm caused by normative, mundane White participation, which often goes unacknowledged as potentially problematic and harmful.

User Racial Verification System and Country Club Threads

Moderators implemented a racial verification system and protected threads only accessible to verified users to manage user participation. Posts labeled CC threads limit participation to only users who have received racial verification (top left of Figure 2). Users either voluntarily seek out racial verification or are sent automated instructions after having their comment deleted when attempting to comment in a CC thread before receiving verification. Users select from one of three categories when applying through BPT’s racial verification system: Black, non-White Person of Color (POC), or White ally (Figure 2). If verified, all users are afforded the ability to post in CC threads, no matter their category. However, only verified Black users receive a piece of public flair next to their username when they post and comment (a checkmark, ). Users applying for verification as Black are required to submit a photograph of their forearm beside a handwritten note with their username, date, and time, and any racially codified items to “prove their Blackness”(Harmon, 2019b). Users applying as non-White POC must also submit a photograph of their forearm, but do not receive a public flair. Applying as a White ally requires no photographs and involves multiple user checks instead (i.e., an account older than 6 months, meaningful participation in the subreddit, and answering two application questions). Verified White allies also receive no public flair.

Figure 2.

Post by BPT moderators explaining Country Club Threads and how to get verified.

The implementation of these unique community governance systems had impacts. After the first 2 days, BPT had a backlog of more than 1,600 verification applications (DubTeeDub, 2019b). In the following months, pageviews of BPT doubled to over 30 million a month (DubTeeDub, 2019a). News of the verification system spread across Reddit, making its way into The New York Times (Harmon, 2019a, 2019b). It was also contentiously debated in many subreddits, including a now archived post made in r/TrueOffMyChest on August 9, 2020: “r/blackpeopletwitter is the most racist sub on Reddit and we shouldn’t be allowing it to operate the way it does,” with many Redditors claiming that BPT engages in reverse racism—a popular yet inaccurate understanding of racism and history (Petray & Collin, 2017). I even received a direct message as a temporary moderator in October 2022 from a user accusing me of discriminating against people based on race, and “keeping racism alive and well.” When moderators announced ending the 6-week-long subreddit-wide lockdown on July 10, 2020 precipitated by the murder of George Floyd, Black users expressed their hesitation regarding the community being open again and an appreciation for the protected space (BPTMods, 2020).

Observing White participation in BPT involved noticing nuances, with few signals of overt racism—if any at all. Black users often and openly expressed that White people were “taking over” the community through microaggressions and voyeurism, while treating the community “like a zoo” and a window into Blackness. Black users also reflected on seeing increased demonstrations of performativity by White users, which would receive praise in the form of upvotes and post awards. Furthermore, users named seeing more “guilt manifestos” and noticed that White users would often post comments attempting to distance themselves from other White people who they deemed problematic. For example, this comment specified which White people were responsible for the 2024 presidential election polls being close: “Are you under the impression that White people are universally supporting Trump? Because it seems like racist and conservative White people are the reason the race is close” (3720-To-One, 2024). These observations set a helpful foundation for how normative White practices may arise within White ally applications.

Data Collection

More than 10,000 White ally applications have been submitted since the verification system’s initiation on April 1, 2019 (Figure 3). Applications were collected manually through Reddit’s modmail search engine and organized into a data set using Excel. I chose the search keyword ally to select applications from users seeking verification as White allies, after finding that white ally missed some applications—as users would identify themselves without using the word “white” (e.g., “I am very pasty” or “my arm looks like a cast”). During data collection, I also found that many applications were submitted in the month following the murder of George Floyd (Figure 1), and I decided to focus on applications surrounding this unique moment. Here are the study’s inclusion criteria: (1) applications submitted between November 1, 2019, and November 30, 2020, and (2) applications from users that did not follow moderator directions. BPT moderators directed users to send a message stating their interest in being verified as a White ally. However, many users offered information not requested by moderators (i.e., they did not follow directions). I also decided to only analyze the initial user message sent to moderators to focus on what arose before moderator intervention.

Figure 3.

A visual of the data included in this study.

I analyzed 3,219 White ally applications submitted between November 1, 2019, and November 30, 2020. Around 80% (2578) were submitted after George Floyd’s murder. Again, moderators did not request any of the information found in these data. BPT’s public White ally application instructions said nothing about assessing the complexities of Whiteness and allyship. Yet, at no one’s request, most White applicants engaged in a voluntary performance of Whiteness. These volitional acts become important sites for examining normative Whiteness: how self-identifying White users choose to explain their reasons and actions as they encountered a Black counternormative community—demonstrating normative Whiteness in contention.

Data Analysis

I utilized qualitative content analysis (QCA) to identify reasons for applying as verified White allies and self-divulged ally qualifications (Schreier, 2012). QCA allows for abstraction throughout the coding process to focus on information relevant to the research questions, works well with data that requires interpretation (e.g., unstructured social media data), and is a method used to analyze latent meaning (Schreier, 2012). Analyzing latency is critical when studying normative practices of race in social media contexts. I built an initial coding frame through open coding and tested it on a subset of the data set and adjusted—adding, removing, and merging codes. Next, I proceeded to code all 3,219 initial messages using the finalized coding frame. To maximize coding consis-tency as the only researcher with access to these data, I waited 14 days and re-coded a subset of the data (Schreier, 2012). After this consistency check, I did a deep read of each code. The findings are organized along the final coding scheme, through which messages can be organized into more than one code.

Researcher Positionality and Ethics ²

Examining Whiteness and how it operates is a key component of disrupting and dismantling racism; without it, there are inevitable gaps in how we understand inequitable systems justified by race. Critically studying Whiteness requires commitments to ethical research practices, attention to researcher positionality, and partnerships to better name and center erased perspectives, unacknowledged and unaddressed power, and account for potentially nuanced harms of research. As a person who has been raised and is actively categorized and socialized as a cisgender White man, these commitments inform my theoretical groundings, research questions, methods, and my collaborations with Black moderators and communities.

I drew from two frameworks when making ethical decisions throughout this study: ethics of care (franzke et al., 2020; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2012) and principles of data feminism (e.g., examining and challenging power, considering context, and making labor visible; D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020/2023). Several contextual factors also informed how I conceptualized risk, harm, and benefit to users and the BPT community. This study looked at the messages of White users sent to Black moderators on a platform that normalizes Whiteness during the time surrounding yet another example of state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Drawing on the ethnographic lineage of studying up (Nader, 1972; Shilton et al., 2021), I focused my analysis on the racialized performances and practices of White users in their unaltered and original digital context with attention to power (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Fuchs, 2018; Shilton et al., 2021).

BPT moderators face daily hate and vitriol from White users on Reddit, especially for deciding to proactively protect Black users and their community. They are experts at understanding the risks involved with moderating a digital Black community and hold the responsibilities around any community-level harms (Fiesler et al., 2024; Lenhart, 2025). Because of this—community expertise and vulnerability to harm—I developed a collaborative relationship with BPT moderators and sought iterative community informed consent (Dym & Fiesler, 2020; franzke et al., 2020; Markham & Buchanan, 2012). Similar community consent practices have been used in other research studies on Reddit (Gilbert, 2020; Matias, 2019a).

Engaging in a process of iterative consent with moderators allowed for ongoing conversations about the norms of the community related to publicness and privacy, as well as the potential benefits, harms, and risks introduced by our research collaboration (Fiesler et al., 2024; Proferes et al., 2021). For example, I met with my collaborator after receiving reviewer feedback on this manuscript, which included genuine concerns regarding backlash the community may face after publishing these data. I asked him about these concerns—whether making this study publicly available would put the community at further risk—and he responded,

This isn’t going to be what does it. The entire reason we are having this discussion is because a subreddit of Black people had the audacity to tell some white people that they couldn’t say whatever the hell they wanted, wherever they wanted. We have already crossed that bridge, and this isn’t going to be another one. (Personal communication, 2026)

While I considered altering and fabricating the quotes used throughout this article (Markham, 2012), I decided to present the messages verbatim to accurately represent what people say and how they say it, and to clearly depict what BPT moderators have to manage—even from well-intended users. White users are not at risk of being identified because the messages are not publicly available or searchable beyond the moderation team. I have also removed usernames and other potentially identifiable information from the content of the messages to further mitigate any risk of re-identification and, just as important, any future harm directed at BPT moderators (franzke et al., 2020). To be clear, there are added ethical risks when prioritizing the potential (internal) discomfort of White Reddit users over the community benefits for a Black subreddit and its moderators (Lenhart, 2025). This research prioritized and aimed to document the nuanced harms that BPT and its moderators face on Reddit and legitimize the often thankless racialized labor that goes into building a digital community and counterpublic.

Findings

Research question 1 (RQ1): What Reasons Do Self-Identifying White Reddit Users Give for Wanting to Participate in r/BlackPeopleTwitter as White Allies?

White user motivations provided insights into intended internet practices, including normative ones. This question focused on the unprompted intentions of White users attempting to gain access to a digital Black community. The following motivational themes arose from the data—commenting, personal learning/growth, and helping/supporting—often representing individual focuses on self-improvement and unsolicited offers of help. While these individual focuses may greatly benefit White users, they demonstrated seemingly no material or tangible benefits for BPT and its moderators.

Commenting

The most frequent reason was receiving the ability to comment in CC threads (n = 1394, 43.3%). Users mentioned wanting to join specific conversations, make funny remarks, and contribute something unique, and their frustrations with having their comments removed. These applications were often brief and to the point: “applying as a white ally. I just want to be able to comment” (User #2017, July 11, 2020). Even self-described lurkers—users who are silent most of the time and not likely to comment (Gong et al., 2015)—mentioned wanting to comment: “Hello! I’m white and mostly lurk on BPT, but would love to be able to participate in the country club posts when I have something to contribute . . .” (User #210, January 17, 2020). This may indicate that verification is serving a purpose beyond the ability to comment (Bergsieker et al., 2010; Burns & Granz, 2023).

Other users applied because they had a comment removed by the automated moderator (automod) and were sent verification instructions. Removed comments varied greatly, from one-off comments while browsing the front page of Reddit to being actively in the middle of conversations when a post became CC. Applications in this theme were far removed from any expressed ideals of White allyship, mostly driven by personal desires to post on the internet. While some users apologized for attempting to post on CC threads without verification, others exuded an air of entitlement, acting as if they were the ones being inconvenienced: “I’m trying to comment to a guy on the subreddit and all of a sudden I can’t . . . what do y’all want from me?” (User #2999, November 4, 2020).

Personal Learning and Growth

Users referenced the role BPT played in their personal growth and learning as motivating their ally applications (n = 336, 10.4%). For instance, White users utilized BPT to access information unavailable elsewhere,

Through the jokes, humor, praise, and contention of the content here I have been able to better understand a culture that I don’t have a lot of overlap with. It has also opened my eyes to a lot of issues that I would never have seen and viewpoints I would not have been exposed to and allowed me to step outside the echo chamber that is my spot in society. (User #57, November 18, 2019)

BPT offered Black perspectives on current events and pop culture, and critical views of race and racism. White users placed great value in these perspectives as they reflected on and questioned their everyday life experiences, especially regarding race in society. While prior research has examined how people use Reddit to stay informed (Moore & Chuang, 2017), these users uniquely sought out perspectives different from their own to expand their worldview. Other users admitted how little they knew about the experiences of Black people and came to BPT to change that,

My wife is biracial (black/white). Our baby is 4 mo old and currently looks like a white baby but who knows how that’ll shake out. I like to tune into subs like this for a different perspective, to help me understand my wife’s experience a bit better, and to get familiar with what our son may live through. (User #484, April 24, 2020)

BPT played an important role in helping users who sought to better understand the experiences of Black people in their own lives. Similar to lurkers with no stated intent to comment, users can access content without verification as a White ally, which again suggests that verification may mean something more than just information seeking.

Users occasionally shared about the absence of Black people in their racially segregated and isolated lives, and reflected that BPT offered the opportunity to interact with Black people online,

I am a white man from [state name] who unfortunately through the demographics of my area am not exposed to many people from different cultures. I have been able to use the internet as a vehicle to interact with black and brown people and learnes [sic] a great deal. I would love to be approved on this board in order to continue those conversations here and become a better ally. (User #1298, June 7, 2020)

White users saw BPT as a gateway to Black cultural exposure, something users valued enough to intentionally and voluntarily seek out. These applications followed a pattern: utilizing BPT as a resource for personal needs and self-interests, a common motivation among people hoping to be White allies (Radke et al., 2020). Users can take information and experiences from the community and use them for their own growth, betterment, and improvement. Digital affordances (e.g., anonymity and asynchronicity) may make it easier for people to act on these motivations, even though there may be similar opportunities offline.

Helping and Supporting

In the weeks following George Floyd’s murder, helping and supporting became commonly expressed motivations (n = 362, 11.2%). Users offered to lend their voice, call out racists, and support Black users by elevating their voices. For example, “I know places for black discussion are rare on the internet, and I recognize that my white voice is not needed, but I would love to help as an ally” (User #829, May 30, 2020). As with most applications in this theme, it remained unclear how users would help and why ally verification is necessary.

While users recognized that their voices were not needed due to BPT prioritizing Black discussion, they often practiced the opposite with their insistent desires to help—acting as if community priorities might not apply to them. Many users engaged in similar performative signaling for moderators, hoping to influence the evaluation of their applications (i.e., ‘If I acknowledge I am not needed here, but I really want to help, they may let me in anyways’). The often vague and unclear aspirational helping illustrated in this theme adds to a warranted skepticism of White allyship. Users may say and acknowledge whatever is needed to get what they want, in this case, the ability to participate in a Black community.

Several users indicated that they wanted to help but did not know how: “I want this world to change for the better. I wanna do my part. What can I do to help?” (User #1898, July 1, 2020). Similarly,

How can I help, or be a more active voice in this community? I’m a walking poster for white privilege, and I can’t fucking stand this anymore. I want to be part of more platforms to lift up POC voices and just end centuries of systemic, horrible racism. (User #1170, June 4, 2020)

Users’ unsolicited helping aspirations were sometimes embedded in requests that moderators engage in labor to support their racial learning and growth, like this message, sent 3 days after George Floyd’s murder,

I’m a non-POC who wants to be considered an ally on the sub. I’m not really sure what to say aside from I want to do the best I can in helping out POCs in any way I can. Whether that puts me as an ally in your eyes or not is up to you, but I want to help. Tell me how. (User #666, May 28, 2020)

Many messages in this code were from users who found themselves unprepared to help, asking moderators for “resources or suggestions to guide [them] in that direction?” (User #1403, June 10, 2020). From the perspective of White users, it may seem thoughtful to send messages of support rather than hate and racism. For moderators, however, these offers placed them into situations where they must do unseen and incalculable amounts of emotional labor (Dosono & Semaan, 2019; S. Gilbert, 2020; S. A. Gilbert, 2023; Matias, 2016, 2019b; Menking & Erickson, 2015). This is especially true for moderators of color, as White users gain new awareness about the racist order in which they live (Frey & Matias, 2024; Williams et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2024). As Hartman explains in the epigraph, these user appeals to help represent broader patterns regarding a lack of accountability for their role in maintaining the current racist order and a lack of responsibility for their own learning and growth (Damman, 2020).

Research question 2 (RQ2): What Ally Qualifications Do Self-Identifying White Reddit Users Mention When Applying to r/BlackPeopleTwitter as White Allies?

Focusing on how users justified themselves as White allies to BPT moderators allowed for an examination of White allyship as a normative internet practice, rather than a counternormative disruption of Whiteness. Users outlined various White ally qualifications. Some were intended to be humorous like being able to handle spicy foods, and others were quite ostentatious, like bragging about having sex with a famous rapper’s cousin. The following themes arose from the data—Reddit participation, (racial) proximities, internal abstractions, and external actions—allowing for a look into how users qualified and justified being White allies, often relying on ways to absolve themselves of responsibility for and connections to racism.

Reddit Participation

Users referenced prior Reddit participation as a reason they qualified as a White ally (n = 403, 12.5%). These users framed allyship as something that can be lost rather than earned. They tended to describe allyship practices as being respectful and following the rules. For example,

I have generally good karma on the sub, do my best to always be respectful and mindful of others [sic] views, and have a verified 0 n-words from u/nwordcountbot:). (User #184, January 4, 2020)

Other users also framed allyship through a certain kind of respectability and politeness, far from forwarding any liberatory projects (S. J. Jackson et al., 2020). Stated plainly, many believed that if they are not using hate language, they are an ally. While numerous users focused on their general participation on Reddit, others reflected on their love for and extensive participation in BPT,

BPT has been my absolute favorite sub on reddit. I have been an avid poster to the subreddit and have occassionally [sic] made the front page due to a post on BPT . . . I only mention my history of posting to the sub to show that I am an active member and love to contribute . . . (User #1312, June 8, 2020)

Moderators often focused on users’ prior and recent BPT participation when evaluating applications. Users without significant recent participation were told to continue participating and try applying again later. Moderators prioritized users who demonstrated a dedication to being a committed and responsible community member, which aligned with the underlying priorities of providing a safe community space with trusted users.

(Racial) Proximities

Users mentioned ally qualifications that relied on racial proximities (n = 615, 19.1%). Racial proximities refer to the closeness to or distance from something that is racialized (e.g., people, objects, institutions, and systems). Messages in this code followed a specific logic: whether a user is considered racist depends on their closeness to or distance from other things that might be considered racist. Users discursively brought attention to racial proximities that they thought would convince moderators of their allyship—they distanced themselves from connections that called into question their White allyship and foregrounded close connections that might enhance their trustworthiness. Users in this code attempted to carefully manage how others saw them, often following a consistent pattern and organized into two main subcategories: closeness to Blackness and Black People and distance from Whiteness and racism.

Closeness to Blackness and Black People

Users relied on their proximity to Blackness (e.g., Black culture) and Black people (n = 304, 9.4%): “If it matters, my fiancé is black and we’ve been together for more than 4 years. I have invested so much in hair supplies over the years that I’m hoping to be considered an ally. ” (User #1461, June 12, 2020). The use of relationships with Black friends, family members, children, partners and spouses, neighborhoods, work relationships, and knowledge of and familiarity with Black culture (e.g., cultural objects) were common strategies deployed in this theme. For example,

I’m white. an Irish boy grown up in the projects. By most measures I’ve had a black kid’s upbringing and really only relate to black american culture. Hoping to be verified as an ally just in case there’s ever country club posts I can add something of value on. (User #197, January 12, 2020)

Even when users were aware of the potentially problematic nature of drawing attention to their proximity to Blackness, they used it to strategically position themselves as different and unique,

I have black family and a black god daughter, I don’t bring this up as a “look! I’m friends with a black guy,” but rather to say it pains me as a white person to see the society my god daughter and my nephews have to grow up in . . . (User #929, June 1, 2020)

Messages like this one demonstrate multiple layers of racialized proximities. These users draw moderator attention to their Black familial connections, while also acknowledging that doing so is a common practice for White people—seemingly hoping that their racialized self-recognition demonstrated that they could not possibility be doing that.

Other users attempted to demonstrate their familiarity with Black cultural items and references,

I know how to shake hands. I wore FUBU in the 6th grade. I stole the first rap album I ever owned and it was wutang’s enter the 36 chambers. I’ve quoted Tupac during an argument before. I cried when Biggie died. (User #1464, June 12, 2020)

This user and others relied on reductive representations of Black culture (e.g., hip hop, hair, and pain), laying claim to some expertise or familiarity with Blackness. One interpretation is that users may understand allyship in a literal sense—being in relationship with Black people and being familiar with Blackness equates to a form of allying and an absence of culpability for racism. This reflects more traditional understandings of intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954).

Distance from Whiteness and Racism

Some utilized racial proximities by distancing themselves from Whiteness and racism (n = 311, 9.7%), what Delfino (2021) calls white virtuing. Distancing took a variety of forms: cultural, interpersonal/relational, temporal, and claims of not being racist. When engaging in cultural distancing, users mentioned that they do not take part in cultural practices and artifacts associated with Whiteness, like unseasoned food, Eminem, Fox News, and supporting Trump. Interpersonal and relational distancing often involved drawing narrative separation between themselves and the people and places they deemed racist,

I am as white, but I do my best to not be racist despite being raised a priveledged white male. I do my best to be an ally to POC and the advancement of civil rights, while trying to keep the narrative not about me. My parents are Trump supporting assholes that moved from [Northern state] to [Southern state], but I talk with them every week and try to get them to understand a point of view that isn’t framed by Fox. (User #697, May 29, 2020)

Users portrayed others as racist based on a variety of factors, like political affiliation and where they lived. By positioning others in this way, users were able to frame themselves as not possibly racist because they did not have the same political affiliation or they did not live in that same place. Redditors also used time to distance themselves from racism and Whiteness, exemplified by this user describing their experiences growing up,

I grew up in a small white preppy suburb in [state name] in a very politically red area. The casual racism I saw and became accustomed to in my teenage years is fairly astounding. I’m late 20s now and I have set myself to be different than my bigotted [sic] family and friends. My “great evil” that I wanted to overcome were prejudices that I built from other influences in my early years. (User #763, May 29, 2020)

Reflecting on past racist selves, or the ways they may have participated in the past, users were now able to claim that they choose to be different. This strategically positions racism in the past, away from their current beliefs, behaviors, and sense of self.

Whether distance from Whiteness or closeness to Blackness (two sides of the same coin), the use of racial proximities as evidence for being a White ally can be understood as a form of position evasion (Frey, 2023). White users attempt to maintain their innocence and describe racism as somewhere else (Leonardo & Zembylas, 2013), evading their positioning in systems of racialized inequity. Many users prioritized position evasion as a necessary and critical qualification of their White allyship, as justifying why they are close to Blackness and distant from Whiteness is often much easier than engaging in the actual practices of alliance building and liberatory projects.

Internal Abstractions

Users referenced qualifications that were internal and abstract (n = 384, 11.9%). Internal abstractions refer to qualifications that exist as ideas and non-actions, like beliefs, reflections, awareness, and emotions. Many applications were lengthy dramatic essays against the realities of racism,

I’m a father. And I’m absolutely disgusted by the injustices that I have seen online for what seems to be every fucking day. I’ve been in tears, realizing that people I trusted and thought of as friends have come out of the woodwork and think that these murders on individuals in the black community are somehow justified. My inner circle has shrunk. I don’t know who to trust anymore . . . NOTHING ABOUT THIS YEAR IS NORMAL! MURDERS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE BY INDIVIDUALS SWORN TO PROTECT SHOULD NOT BE NORMAL! (User #823, May 30, 2020)

Quite a few messages in the days following George Floyd’s murder contained strong emotions like this one—perhaps emotions that users were experiencing for the first time. Like the helping and supporting code, many users transferred responsibility for their own emotional regulation and received emotional catharsis in return, while Black moderators were left holding the White emotional baggage. This warrants the question: if users were just beginning to process these emotions and new to understanding the realities of racism, were they equipped for effective allyship? If these users did not intend to be effective allies, what function does BPT hold for them? Different from external actions like going to protests, internal abstractions were often immaterial and more complicated for moderators to assess. For example, many White people expressed that they believed in equality and equal rights for Black people, but this often does not translate to tangible acts of allyship (Frey, 2023; S. J. Jackson et al., 2020).

External Actions

Some users mentioned external actions they took against racism, including participation in protests, making donations, and actions taken at work (n = 306, 9.5%). For example,

I’ve protested, I donate what little extra money I have to various justice charities and I care deeply about my brothers and sisters of color. I appreciate this sub because I get the perspective that the media never shows . . . (User #1088, June 3, 2020)

While this user is somewhat vague, other users were quite specific—sharing photographs, intimate details of being arrested and injuries they sustained, and donation receipts. For example: “I’m a [age] white woman who was beaten up and arrested in [city name] on [date] during a protest for Breonna Taylor. I was an ally before that night and I will be til the day I die” (User #1887, June 30, 2020). To be clear, many of the external actions that users shared—mutual aid and financial redistribution, putting one’s body on the line, protesting, and other forms of direct action—are often considered in line with many liberation movements throughout history. When considering these as justifications for entrance into a digital Black community, these unsolicited narratives start to flatten and lose transformative capacity.

Not all external actions mentioned by users were tangible; some were abstract: “As a white person, I understand my privilege. I seek to prioritize black voices in spaces I share with them and to use my privilege to amplify them when possible” (User #1013, June 2, 2020). Like the internal abstractions earlier, it is unclear what seeking to “prioritize black voices” and using their “privilege to amplify them when possible” mean in practice. How does someone prioritize or amplify Black voices and in what circumstances? Similar to many other applicants throughout this study, there remain questions regarding the occurrence of any tangible or material social change based on White users seeking unsolicited allyship with BPT.

Discussion

Saidiya Hartman argues that “possessive investment in whiteness can’t be rectified by learning ‘how to be more antiracist.’ It requires a radical divestment in the project of whiteness and a redistribution of wealth and resources” (Damman, 2020). Starkly, divestment and redistribution are almost nonexistent in these data. Rather than uniting with a Black community and its users—practices one might hope from allies—this study finds that White users utilized a variety of normative internet practices (e.g., information seeking, self-differentiation, impression management, and spatial negotiation) to center their own individualistic projects rooted in Whiteness even when obscured as care for others. Just hours after George Floyd’s murder, moderators fielded applications from White users wanting to be educated about racism, on how to help, and receive a symbolic pardon for their Whiteness. Few users took meaningful steps to become a part of the community, and most had no history of participation in BPT at all, further signaling the superficial and performative nature of their “allyship.”

As White users submitted applications, they exhibited subtle forms of doing race, engaging in a maintenance of Whiteness rather than a disruption of racism. Under a cloak of good intentions, they sought to participate in BPT as they normally would on Reddit—through extraction. White users often expressed plans and desires to take and consume experiences, culture, and suffering from Black users and the community. Centering how they would benefit from these extractions, White users participated and were complicit in the maintenance of digital circumstances that position Black users, communities, and knowledge as out of place, out of the ordinary, and in danger. Although users repeatedly indicated they had something to offer the community, these aspirational motivations strikingly resembled benevolent attitudes that underpin White saviorism. They preserved harmful narratives and hierarchies between the “helpers” and the “helped,” while positioning BPT as a backdrop for White heroism (Cole, 2012). At their core, White user motivations demonstrated a fascination with otherness and commitment to consumptive practices of building a White self out of expropriated Black experiences. Furthermore, White users located racism as a Black problem and framed their involvement as a choice—something they have control over—which is a symptom of the racist structures to which Hartman refers.

This case study offers evidence and language to begin to name and describe a repertoire of normative racialized harms online. Normative White internet practices, like ones seen through performative allyship, are examples of how people often practice race online, especially through seemingly innocuous behaviors. White normative practices took on distinct capacities for harm when enacted on moderators at the edge of a digital Black community. Practices of information seeking, self-differentiation, sharing experiences, and prioritizing self-desires and needs are unquestionably widespread practices on social media. However, when enacted by thousands of White users after George Floyd was murdered, they take on a different dominating form. White users hurriedly sought to make meaning of their own Whiteness, disregarding the verification instructions and BPT’s protective purpose.

These acts of disregard—and perhaps seeking verification at all—embody Hartman’s point about the relationship between anti-Black violence and a subsequent centering of White learning. Instead of confronting how they may be complicit in the racist order that produced George Floyd’s death, White users overwhelmingly chose to grasp for reasons as to how they could not possibly be—even using allyship verification as proof. White users also demonstrated a normative expectation: Black people (moderators) should exhaust labor, time, and energy sifting through and processing their (White) emotions, desires, demands, and aspirations (Dosono & Semaan, 2019; Williams et al., 2019)—even and especially in the wake of Black death.

Studies of harm online often focus on ill-intentioned users and hateful content (Keipi et al., 2016; Marwick, 2021). However, this study offers empirical evidence of racialized harm caused by normative internet practices, like having one’s suffering used as a learning tool. Harms caused by mundane collective user practices (e.g., White saviorism, Frey & Matias, 2024)—an “imagined community” constituted by Whiteness (Daniels, 2013)—are undertheorized in digital and media studies and have inevitable psychosocial and health implications for Black people and other marginalized internet users and communities.

Limitations

While this ethnographic, community collaborative case study presents novel empirical findings on normative White internet practices, it does have limitations. First, it relies on data from a brief moment, depending on self-volunteered information in a unique racial verification process. Because normative internet practices occur in everyday communication and participation within BPT and across Reddit, this study likely missed ways that users maintain and disrupt normative Whiteness online by not including posts and comments in the analysis. Second, this study focuses on one subreddit, which limits its explanatory capacity to make claims beyond this community, as context matters when considering racial doings and imaginaries (Lipsitz, 2007). Future studies should focus on multiple communities to comparatively examine the phenomenon of normative White internet practices across a variety of sites, especially how these practices broadly reify and maintain racism online. Third, I passively observed how Black users feel about White participation, likely capturing a limited range of perspectives. Future studies should consider utilizing a variety of methods (e.g., interviews and focus groups) to better understand how Black users feel and experience White participation in digital Black communities.

Conclusion

Although progress has been made to deplatform some extreme examples of racist and White supremacist content and communities (e.g., r/Coontown), online racism persists partially due to more subtle and normalized forms of racialized harm, which often go unaccounted for, unscrutinized, and unlabeled on social media—spaces once theorized as race-neutral. Out of necessity, subreddits like BPT make intentional decisions to protect their community members and maintain the boundaries of their online space through counternormative community purposes, rules, and governance systems. These community-level mechanisms (e.g., the ability to “lockdown” the community) serve to protect users who are marginalized while contesting normative White participation that is commonplace across the platform. While BPT’s racial verification system seems to focus on racially identifying users on the surface, this study details how this community mechanism operationalized race as practices. It successfully curtails normative White user participation that has created an unsafe and unwelcoming digital environment for Black users in the past. This collaborative study demonstrates how research can support communities in documenting and articulating a wide array of nuanced harms they face and protect their communities against—especially through ordinary, everyday user participation.

As scholars continue to study racism and inequity on social media, there remains a need to partner with online communities to develop nuanced and networked understandings of racialized and normalized online harm. Future research should (1) continue to shift empirical attention away from racially identifying users online and toward the maintenance and disruption of racism through racial doings, (2) empirically document and name normative digital harms beyond content and individual user behavior that do not trigger platformed or moderator intervention (e.g., technical features, collective and networked user behaviors, sociocultural incentives, and recommendation algorithms; Frey & Matias, 2024), and (3) investigate other forms of normative White internet practices with a focus on their role in maintaining digital inequity through comparative and multi-sited research across digital communities. Expanding our understandings of racially codified digital harms and how normative Whiteness can be socio-relationally and technologically enacted online can lead to more effective strategies for resistance and disruption, while prioritizing pathways to counternormative digital practices truly in line with liberatory projects—and supporting communities leading the way, like r/BlackPeopleTwitter.