If you’re tired of the “white male hegemony” that is the blogosphere, sit your butt down in the chair and write. Otherwise, stop whining!
"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 Technorati—a list dominated by bigmouths of the white-male variety.I can see it now. “New, Fast, Free Blog Software For White Men Only. Never Be Bothered By Those Pesky Broads and Negroes Again!”
Is there going to be a “Lift Every Keyboard and Blog” Conference? “Why Johnny Won’t Blog?” “Take Back the Blog?”
People will engage in the activities that hold their interest, including writing and reading blogs of choice. There are plenty of black blogging voices out there, including Negrophile and our own Conservative Brotherhood and a gazillion female bloggers. Is there going to be a push for a TTLB or Technorati Affirmative Action? A token top 100 spot for each selected group?
Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem?No, but the people worried about this nonsense do.
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!"Oooo! And we know what happens when white people link to each other! Blogcest! Blogs born with deformed blogrolls and cleft trackback options!
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?"It is an Affirmative Action proposal. Whatever. I can picture my blogroll and think of far more than ten without being totally awake (I’ve given up caffeine for a bit). And thanks Miss (Mr.?) Suitt, but I'll get by on my own merits.
Sure, folks, I’ll accept your links--most of you--and be happy for them. However, I hope you’re linking to me because I say something that interests you, not because you think you “should.”
Harvard sure has a lot of money to waste spend.
(Thanks to La Shawn who's guest-blogging at Vodkapundit)
UPDATE: Cobb, tongue-in-cheek, has an offer for the A-List bloggers,
I hereby submit Cobb for the consideration of all A-List Bloggers as the Head Negro in Blogs. Send me your poor, huddled vanillified readers yearning to breathe diversity. I lift my banner beside the olive greed sidebar!within a longer, more serious and interesting post on the subject. For my money, Cobb should be on that A-List through sheer quality.
