← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 17608 | Posts: 15 | Started: 2005-04-02
2005-04-02 09:58 | User Profile
[COLOR=Indigo]If it's "white", you see, it's almost inevitably - not just "bad" - but [I]cancerous [/I] and [I]vile[/I]. Let alone "white" [B]and [/B] "male", heaven forbid![/COLOR]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype][B]Blogging Beyond the Men's Club[/B]
[I]Since anyone can write a Weblog, why is the blogosphere dominated by white males?[/I] By Steven Levy Senior Editor Newsweek/ March 21 issue –
At a recent Harvard conference on bloggers and the media, the most pungent statement came from cyberspace. Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a response on the "comments" space of her blog from someone concerned that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media, "we will throw out some of the best ... journalism of the 21st century." The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of NEWSWEEK]. "It has taken 'mainstream media' a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."
After the comment was posted, a couple of the women at the conference bloggers MacKinnon and Halley Suitt looked around and saw that there weren't many other women in attendance. Nor were the faces yapping about the failings of Big Media representative of the human quiltwork one would see in the streets of Cambridge or New York City, let alone overseas. They were, however, representative of the top 100 blogs according to the Web site Technoratilist dominated by bigmouths of the white-male variety.
Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem?
Viewed one way, the issue seems a bit absurd. These self-generated personal Web sites are supposed to be the ultimate grass-roots phenomenon. The perks of alpha bloggers voluminous traffic, links from other bigfeet, conference invitations, White House press passes are, in theory, bequeathed by a market-driven merit system. The idea is that the smartest, the wittiest and the most industrious in finding good stuff will simply rise to the top, by virtue of a self-organizing selection process.
So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: "It's white people linking to other white people!" (A link from a popular blog is this medium's equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to "promote myself among those on the A list."
Coincidentally, this issue arises just as a related controversy is raising eyebrows in mainstream media. Law professor Susan Estrich has been hammering Michael Kinsley, the editorial-page editor of the Los Angeles Times, for not running a sufficient number of op-ed pieces by women and minorities. Though the e-mail exchange between the two deteriorated into a spitting match, both agreed that extra care is required to make sure public discussion reflects the actual population.
The top-down mainstream media have to some degree found the will and the means to administer such care. But is there a way to promote diversity online, given the built-in decentralization of the blog world? Jenkins, whose comment started the discussion, says that any approach is fine except inaction. "You can't wait for it to just happen," he says. Appropriately enough, the best ideas rely on individual choices. MacKinnon is involved in a project called Global Voices, to highlight bloggers from around the world. And at the Harvard conference, Suitt challenged people to each find 10 bloggers who weren't male, white or English-speaking - and link to them. "Don't you think," she says, "that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?" Definitely. Now let's see if the blogosphere can self-organize itself to find them.[/FONT] 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
2005-04-02 12:02 | User Profile
[font=Palatino Linotype]"we will throw out some of the best ... journalism of the 21st century." The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of NEWSWEEK]. "It has taken 'mainstream media' a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one." [/font]
Maybe if you learned to write, instead of just reprinting government press releases. Maybe if you learned how to ask a fing question. Maybe if you were even minimally* schooled in the Western canons instead of "Afro-American" studies.
Loser.
2005-04-02 13:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The perks of alpha bloggers voluminous traffic, links from other bigfeet, conference invitations, White House press passes are, in theory, bequeathed by a market-driven merit system. The idea is that the smartest, the wittiest and the most industrious in finding good stuff will simply rise to the top, by virtue of a self-organizing selection process.
So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved.[/QUOTE]
As per always, disproportionate achievement by whites is prima facie evidence of some kind of inherent discrimination. It's just unthinkable that white males might actually be good at anything. Without any centralised control of the "blogosphere" (hate that word, btw) it's not possible to blame its supposed whiteness on the usual white-sheeted bogeyman of "institutionalised racism", so the author has to fall back on some kind of invisible conspiracy amongst whites to look out for each other (y'know, the kind of thing that it would be utterly unthinkable to say about our hebraic brethren).
9 times out of 10 when I'm reading a "blog" I don't have a clue what the race (or sometimes even the gender) of the blogger is, so how could I be discriminatory in which ones I read? And in point of fact, there is quite a lot of diversity in the blog world, despite what this author says. I can think of several non-white bigshot bloggers:
Oliver Willis Markos Zuniga Iraq the Model (assuming this is written by an actual Iraqi like it claims and not some CIA psyops agent)
If you count columnists who have blogs, there's also Michelle Malkin
That's just off the top of my head.
Re-reading what I just wrote, I'm really just stating the obvious. But it feels good to do so every once in a while :)
2005-04-02 14:13 | User Profile
[font=Arial][QUOTE]"[font=Verdana]My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one.[/font]" [/font] Note the implication here is that white-ness and male-ness are somehow two problems to be solved, to overcome. The word "overwhelmingly," also used here, is a clue to the reader, assumed to be a liberal, that this is a crisis requiring a drastic, emergency remedy.
[font=Arial][QUOTE][font=Verdana]Suitt puts it more bluntly: "It's white people linking to other white people!".[font=Arial]" [/font][/font][/font] [font=Arial][font=Verdana]Again, white people communicating with one another is presented as a problem. Don't be surprised if [/font][/font]the government applies racial quotas to the Internet. In some ways, illustrated by the attitudes of these mainstream media workers, the US really is becoming a "soft totalitarian" regime.
2005-04-02 14:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]If it's "white", you see, it's almost inevitably - not just "bad" - but [I]cancerous [/I] and [I]vile[/I].[/QUOTE]
Well, yes, it is. When you look like this guy:
[IMG]http://is124.ce.psu.edu/News/magazine/Vol_2/images/levy.jpeg[/IMG]
[URL=http://www.outreach.psu.edu/News/magazine/Vol_2/counsel.html]Steven Levy[/URL]
2005-04-02 17:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Recluse]Well, yes, it is. When you look like this guy:
[IMG]http://is124.ce.psu.edu/News/magazine/Vol_2/images/levy.jpeg[/IMG]
[URL=http://www.outreach.psu.edu/News/magazine/Vol_2/counsel.html]Steven Levy[/URL][/QUOTE]
Somebody that's good at Photoshop or some other similar program should add a black hat, prayer scroll on forehead and the curly side-burn thingies to that picture. Gives one a better and more true representation of these guys.
2005-04-02 19:00 | User Profile
It can be too "white", however nothing can possibly be too "zhid".
All take an no give. A zhid is a zhid is a zhid.
2005-04-02 19:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]It can be too "white", however nothing can possibly be too "zhid".
All take and no give. A zhid is a zhid is a zhid.[/QUOTE]
To, ah, paraphrase Gertrude Stein... :)
The Tribe's sense of entitlement is indeed absolute.
2005-04-03 00:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE]So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: "It's white people linking to other white people!" [/QUOTE]
There's the false witness of racism. Bloggers are white because blogging is something you do yourself. There is no discrimination. There won't be diversity among bloggers until the racist goverment and companies in racist PR-mode start setting up and paying non-whites to be bloggers.
2005-04-03 03:04 | User Profile
By which point it'll be called [I]blizzogging[/I].
When telepathy becomes common in 2105, will whites be blamed because blacks have no thoughts to [I]read[/I]?
2005-04-04 01:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]By which point it'll be called [I]blizzogging[/I].
When telepathy becomes common in 2105, will whites be blamed because blacks have no thoughts to [I]read[/I]?[/QUOTE]
[img]http://resist.com/CARTOON%20GALLERY/NIGGERS/nig_image80.jpg[/img]
2005-04-04 04:27 | User Profile
ROFLAO ROFLAO ROFLAO
2005-04-04 07:49 | User Profile
Yes, this racially-unbalanced blog situation is clearly a dire one urgently in need of remedial legislation. It's nothing at all like the Social Justice-facilitating ewww stranglehold on t.v., film, newspapers, magazines, book publishing, advertising, banking, metals, diamonds, the rag trade, Ecstasy dealing, White sex slavery, dog grooming & the U.S. gummint.
2005-04-04 19:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=N.B. Forrest]Yes, this racially-unbalanced blog situation is clearly a dire one urgently in need of remedial legislation. It's nothing at all like the Social Justice-facilitating ewww stranglehold on t.v., film, newspapers, magazines, book publishing, advertising, banking, metals, diamonds, the rag trade, Ecstasy dealing, White sex slavery, dog grooming & the U.S. gummint.[/QUOTE] What? Now they've taken dog-grooming?!!
2005-04-04 20:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Somebody that's good at Photoshop or some other similar program should add a black hat, prayer scroll on forehead and the curly side-burn thingies to that picture. Gives one a better and more true representation of these guys.[/QUOTE]
A Hungarian friend of mine once told me that in her home country, those sidelocks were derisively referred to as "louse wings."