Racial bias on Wikipedia

The English Wikipedia has been criticized for having a systemic racial bias in its coverage.

Anti-white bias

Wikipedia explaining that black pride is good, that gay pride and Asian pride are also good, and that white pride is bad (2016).

Especially in recent years, the site has been variously criticized for having a very strong anti-white bias. Its administrators are known for practicing race censorship, whereby they may de-emphasize instances of black on white violence practiced by urban youths who may be non-Asian minorities, or of some cases of Islamic terrorism.

Death of George Floyd

On June 3, 2020, in association with the death of George Floyd, Katherine Maher, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, called for a fundamental reduction of the power and role of white people, particularly white men, in the United States and other Western countries, and endorsed the view of ordering whites to cede their remaining social, political, and economic power to non-whites in order to "dismantle white supremacy".

On June 30, 2020, T.D. Adler, a former Wikipedia editor who had been banned from the site for reasons such as attempting to add dissenting viewpoints to its article on the Gamergate controversy, reported on Breitbart News Network that, in response to Floyd's death, Wikipedia administrators aligned with the Democratic Party had begun conducting an edit-a-thon started by a newly-established Black Lives Matter lobbying group on the site, creating large amounts of content on "racial justice" issues. Among their efforts, editors made numerous articles on white racism and police brutality appear on the front page with several articles having already been featured, including one attacking then-incumbent President Donald Trump and one promoting a book about white guilt and white privilege. Adler noted that many prominent members of the group have had a history of promoting extremist views on the site, with one administrator declaring that: "You can be one of three things: ally, enemy, or collaborator." Notably, administrators have pushed such changes to race-related articles, such as the articles on the George Floyd protests and Antifa.

Double standards

Wikipedia's article on Black pride describes the concept positively, and defines it as:

Black pride is a movement which encourages black people to celebrate black culture and embrace their African heritage. In the United States, it was a direct response to white racism especially during the Civil Rights Movement. Stemming from the idea of Black Power, this movement emphasizes racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions. Related movements include black power, black nationalism, Black Panthers and Afrocentrism.

Applying a double standard, the site's article on White pride describes the concept as inappropriate and outright unacceptable. It negatively defines it as:

White pride and white power are expressions primarily used by white separatist, white nationalist, fascist, neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations in order to signal racist or racialist viewpoints. It is also a slogan used by the prominent post-Ku Klux Klan group Stormfront and a term used to make racist/racialist viewpoints more palatable to the general public who may associate historical abuses with the terms white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist. Since the early 1980s, the white power movement has been committed to overthrowing the United States government and establishing a white ethnostate using paramilitary tactics.

Prohibited speech on the English Wikipedia

A form of prohibited speech on Wikipedia involves the scientific field of human biodiversity, which claims that different racial groups have different average cognitive strengths and traits. Such talk is considered politically unacceptable by leading Wikipedia editors, and race-based articles imply IQ differences are caused by past racial discrimination, oppression, and by economic or social hardships. These articles also tend to state that anyone who claims IQ does have a genetic basis is either a racist, a white supremacist, a conspiracy theorist, and/or a believer in pseudoscience. Notably, leading site administrators, as well as the Wikimedia Foundation itself, are openly in favor of non-white illegal immigration into the United States and other Western countries, either out of a genuine belief in human cognitive equality, out of one-world idealism, or allegedly to import future voters of left-wing political parties.

Claims of a pro-white bias in Wikipedia

A Wikipedia edit-a-thon for Black History Month held at Howard University, a historically-black university in Washington D.C.

Wikipedia denies that it has an anti-white bias. Its article "Racial bias on Wikipedia" actually claims that there is a pro-white bias in the site, due to a supposed under-representation of non-whites, specifically non-Asian minorities, within its editor base. This is despite the fact that, since 2018, the site's administrators have strictly forbidden pro-white editors from contributing towards race-based articles, considering it to be a form of bigotry.

In April 2015, the then-President of Wikimedia D.C., James Hare, stated that "a lot of black history is left out" of Wikipedia, due to articles at that time predominately being written by white editors. Articles that do exist on African topics were, according to some critics, largely edited by editors from Europe and North America and thus reflected their knowledge and consumption of media, which they claimed "tend to perpetuate a negative image" of Africa. Maira Liriano of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, argued that the lack of information regarding black history on Wikipedia "makes it seem like it's not important."

Different theories have been provided to explain these supposed racial discrepancies. Jay Cassano, writing for Fast Company magazine, argued that Wikipedia's small proportion of black editors was a result of the small black presence within the tech sector, and a relative lack of reliable access to the Internet. Katherine Maher, chief communications officer for the Wikimedia Foundation, has argued that focuses in Wikipedia's content are representative of those of society as a whole. She claimed that Wikipedia could only represent that which was referenced in secondary sources, which historically have been favourable towards white men.

Since 2015, attempts have been made to counteract past pro-white racial biases through edit-a-thons, organised events at which Wikipedia editors attempt to improve coverage of certain topics and train new editors. In February 2015, multiple edit-a-thons were organised to commemorate Black History Month in the United States of America. One such edit-a-thon was organized by the White House to create and improve articles on African Americans in STEM. The Schomburg Center, Howard University, and National Public Radio, also coordinated edit-a-thons to improve coverage of black history. And while Wikipedia supports these edit-a-thons, the organization has always stressed that adequate citation must always be present and neutrality always maintained.

See also

• Gender bias on Wikipedia
• Criticism of Wikipedia