@vortex_egg I think a lot of this weirdness is predominantly online, though?

Like, there's a looooong history of appropriation and occult stuff. You cannot learn in this space without reconciling that at least a little bit. There's been some really great content at local pagan events coming from speakers from various cultural backgrounds and helping to mend fences.

I think some of the heart of the issue is that online communities feel cohesive, but there's no real way to get a good feel for how respected someone is, only how many 'follows' they have, which is usually more related to activity than anything else. You get a bunch of relative newbies in the same place and a strange 'averaging out' happens. If a relative expert moves in, no one can tell, basically?

It feels like statements like 'its unethical to learn magic from a poc if you're white' come from a place of wanting to respect sacred secrets, but it's just wildly misguided. It's a 'compromise' kind of idea that let racists and well-intentioned liberals co-exist and I find that super troubling.

Thankfully, I haven't seen anything like that in our local community, but stuff like this just underscores the importance of *having* a local pagan community.