There was this moment on DU about 8 years that removed all my beliefs that liberals were not racist

[La Lioness Priyanka]

or sexist or homophobic/biphobic.

It's a long story, and one that I don't want to rehash all of, but at the time I used to post in the DU lounge a lot. And a 'war' of sorts broke out between me and two other du'ers. In every internet battle people take sides and that was fine and dandy, but so many of the attacks against me were based in race, weight, gender, and sexuality. This happened on DU and several websites off DU. It was also remarkable how many people believed the white people over me, with no proof that i had said or done any of the things I was alleged to have done.

Anyway, prior to that I used to believe that liberals were better than conservatives on interpersonal racism and other ism's. Post that, i realized that fault lines can easily occur based on gender, race, etc and people protect their own.

I moved from India to NYC and while i had faced interpersonal sexism/homophobia, but maybe just one race related encounter. Till this happened on DU.

I'm sure everyone involved will tell you none of this had anything to do with race, but to me this will always be the moment I learnt how much race mattered even among liberals, even in very low stakes situations.

And the moment was brought to me not by conservatives, but by liberals.

(just wanted to say that i am not saying conservatives are better on race, just that a lot of liberals are not as post-race post-gender as they like to think they are)