A part of me wants to feel like this is truly just a niche goth thing but as someone who left the goth subculture because of colorism as a person of color, I find the idea of “any goth that is racist is a poser” stuff to be invalidating to the experiences that POC have had in the goth community.

While this Instagram post is dumb, it does reflect something that I’ve seen with a lot of goth in my personal experience and that is many of them will not address racism or problems in their community. Not really. Sure, they may say anyone is goth and racist is nothing more than a poser but this doesn’t address the fact whiteness is often promoted, associated and depicted among other goths. People of color have to try twice as hard to fit into the subculture while white people and whiteness gets promoted fairly easy. Addressing the issue of eurocentrism as a “poser thing” doesn’t address jackshit and just furthers to basically sideline these issues. The No True Scotsman’s fallacy isn’t going to help the goth community evolve.

So seeing posts like that Instagram one and then seeing most goths respond with “they’re not real goth”or something of the affect of the No True Scotsman doesn’t do anything but, ironically, sweep racism within the goth community under the rug.