Written by [For that title, I must give props to Scott McLeod (who references Milan Kundera, the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being). More on Scott in a bit...]
I was reading the Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere (2008) report and didn’t get very far before I noticed a glaring omission. In the first of the five parts of the report, the authors go to great lengths to describe the population of bloggers and to tout the diversity of the blogosphere (“We are highlighting bloggers…so you can see how diverse the blogosphere really is”). Yet, they also tell us that “[a]s a group, they [bloggers] are educated, affluent, and influential.” They report the variation in age, income, employment, etc. Curiously, though, NOWHERE do we get any information about the racial composition of the bloggers in their sample (certainly not of the U.S. sample).
In his report of his survey of the “edublogosphere,” Scott McLeod states that 6% (of the 419 respondents to his survey) identify themselves as “non-Caucasian.” 94% of edubloggers are white!!!
I don’t know if the Technorati folks collected data on the racial identification of the bloggers they surveyed. If not, shame on them. If so, shame on them for not reporting those data.
Why do I say “shame on them?” Simple. While individual motivations for blogging vary, I would venture to guess that a large majority of bloggers care about the “influence” of their blog. Furthermore, in the second part of the Technorati report, the two most frequently reported reasons for blogging are: “to speak my mind…” and “to share my expertise and experience…” If that’s the case, then, we MUST consider which voices are being heard (or minds spoken) and just how representative the experiences that are being shared actually are.
Additionally, I know that those of us who publish blogs (myself included) are quick to claim the credibility, validity, legitimacy, etc. of the blogosphere. I believe that if we are not willing to fess up to our overwhelming whiteness and to critically discuss the impact of that phenomenon, we will lose credibility, legitimacy, etc. This is particularly a challenge for the edublogosphere, IMHO.
So, discuss away…
So, Matthew K. Tabor replied, via Twitter, to the Twitterfeed announcement of this blog post. He first wrote: “perhaps Technorati was more concerned with the intellectual diversity of the blogosphere than melanin levels.” To that, I replied, “maybe, but then why are they concerned with age or income or geography?” Then, he wrote, in turn:
“*”Why [is Technorati] concerned with age or income or geography?” instead of skin color? … Really? About 50,000 reasons
*if 28% of the blogosphere is 50 year olds in the Southern US, a site might avoid advertising deals with Brazilian futbol teams
*if the blogosphere has avg income around $30k, partnerships with discount electronics sites make more sense than luxury sites
*if you’ve got a single, irrefutable, valid reason why skin color matters in Technorati’s survey, I’d like to hear it.”
So, then, you’ll hear it. First of all, following Matthew’s line of reasoning, if the blogosphere is 96% white, then partnerships and/or advertising deals with BET make no sense. I suppose I could stop there, but I don’t think that’s the best reason why skin color matters.
More importantly, IMHO, skin color matters because the blogosphere is pitched/sold as important and relevant because it is a publishing space that’s accessible to ALL. With respect to who gets published, there is no meritocracy in the blogosphere. ANYONE can publish a blog, right? One might assume, then, that anyone and everyone is publishing a blog and/or that those who do publish blogs are representative of society. But, that’s not the case with respect to race.
So, whey does race, specifically, matter? In legal terms, race is STILL considered a “suspect classification.” According to Wikipedia, “[t]o be considered a suspect classification in the U.S. a group must meet all of the following criteria:
1. The groups’ characteristics are immutable. (Race, national origin)
2. The group shares a history of discrimination.
3. The group is politically impotent.
4. The group is a discrete and insular minority. (see U.S. v. Carolene Products”
State action that impacts suspect classifications are analyzed differently than other state actions. In other words, legally, race matters!
Relatedly, then, I believe race matters because the blogosphere is a space where viewpoint diversity especially matters and where experiences and ideas are shared. To imagine that our views and our experiences are not shaped by race is simply folly.
Mind if I challenge you a bit? Yes, race is a suspect classification, but so is religion. Why not ask which religion the blogger belongs to? Can we not make the same arguments for religion? Increasing a diversity of viewpoints. Assuring non-Christian perspectives are broadcast. Letting the Catholic Church or Focus on the Family know which sites to advertise on. And, “to imagine that our views and experiences are not shaped by ‘religion’ is simply folly.”
I’m in between on this one. The lack of non-white bloggers does concern me, especially in the edublogosphere as you said. On the other hand, I am reluctant to bring our general societal concerns to the Internet as a standing rule if at all possible. I mean, what is the racial construct Technorati would use? African-Americans? The Internet doesn’t care who is in America and who is not. So, defining an acceptable percentage of African American bloggers is an artificial construct. Instructive, yes, but artificial nonetheless because the Internet doesn’t care whether you are black in America, Jamaica, or South Africa — in fact, it doesn’t even care if you are black at all. While eduwonkette’s identity was a secret, no one cared whether she was black, white, Latino, or whatever. Her ideas were judged on their merit and she either succeeded or failed on her ideas. It is only when we introduce our own race into the equation that it even becomes a factor. And, by continually introducing race as a factor we run the risk of it taking on some new importance that it did not have to begin with. I certainly don’t want every blogger out there telling me up front what their race is because I just don’t care.
But, on the other hand, it is a glaring omission in a report touting diversity.
Good topic.
Mind if you challenge me a bit? Silly man!
Religion IS a suspect class, and I’m reminded of that nearly every second this time of year. For our “holiday” party this year, the Dean announced that she’s providing…ham. Ham! Way to “include” me and the two other Jewish faculty members. So, yes, I would be pleased to know that there is diversity of religiosity in the blogosphere. But, I’m not AS concerned about it as I am with race. If we could distinguish levels of “suspectness,” I would say that race trumps religion.
I don’t want bloggers to let me know how they identify themselves racially. I do, however, want to know that when Technorati (or anyone else, for that matter) gives me a “state of the blogosphere” survey, I can get a sense of the diversity of experiences that are represented in the ‘sphere. I want to know that the so-called “marketplace of ideas” includes ideas from those who experience the world in qualitatively different ways than I do because I am a white man.
Amen to the original post. (No pun intended.)
I would add one thing. Where, in all the breathless reporting over “the nations’s first Black President” is that other bit of reporting: the lack of African-American Doctors, Engineers, mathematicians, financial analysts, accountants, proteomic biologists, network technicians, geographers, video game designers?
It’s nice to see others coming to the same conclusions that I made last year. Ours is a largely homogeneous population.
You want diversity? I’m afraid our little egos aren’t quite ready for it.
http://drapestakes.blogspot.com/2007/07/edublogger-community-not-extremely.html
Darren, is it so wrong to giggle at the thought of a guy from Utah writing about diversity? (-:
Thanks for the link to your post; that was written before my full entrance into the blogosphere. But, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “our little egos aren’t quite ready for it.” Susplain?
I guess my question is “why is the edublogger community so white?” Is it because the education community is so white? Or is there some special something thing that is keeping people of color from blogging? The blogging community is self selecting. It seems to have more people from private schools, education related jobs (people like me), and high erducation than from “the trenches.” I don’t know that for sure but it feels that way. Could it be that the nature of the world is such that people who are working at the hardest schools (who we could learn a lot from) are just so over worked that they don’t have the spare energy to blog?
I’ll be one of the first to admit that a healthy dose of diversity would be great for us Utahrds so your giggles are certainly justified.
As for my comment regarding our “little egos”, the word “little” was written in sarcasm. Even if we did have more diversity in our little sphere, I think many among us would not welcome the dissenting voices – guaranteed to surface because of differences in cultural, ethnic, or other backgrounds – as much as we hope or might suppose.
The truth is that we like those that think like we do and gravitate toward those that are telling the story the way we want to hear it.
@Alfred, I don’t have any definitive answers to your questions. Per the blogosphere generally, I wonder how it compares demographically to “mainstream” media or “mainstream” journalists. The edublogosphere is dominated by ed. tech. folks. There are plenty of classroom teachers, but the vast majority of edubloggers are in some tech.-related, tech.-specific position. And, the ed. tech. world is racially homogenous; I made that point with respect to the attendees at NECC.
@Darren – I think you’re probably right. I don’t sense a great interest in discussing issues of diversity, equity, etc. among the other nodes on the network. Also, I’m going to recommend to Scott that for the next edublogger survey, he add a couple of items about the populations with whom the respondents work. I would bet that the vast majority of those who responded to Scott’s survey work in happy little suburbs and/or relatively affluent areas.
Good for you!
The only thing whiter than the blogosphere is the audience at an edtech conference.
EdTech pioneer and one of CUE’s founders, Leroy Finkel became interested in an effort led by a few of us to bring some diversity to California CUE (computer-using educators) more than fifteen years ago. When Leroy died in 1993, a group of his friends honored his concern about diversity and created a fellowship in his honor. The purpose was to celebrate, nurture and include the contributions of computer-using educators of color.
In a state that is or soon will be minority majority (CA), the past four recipients of the Finkel Fellowship have been caucasian. The CUE web site has scrubbed any mention of diversity from the award.
It’s all quite tragic.
http://www.cue.org/leroyfinkel
That is tragic, Gary. And, I suppose a nice coincidence that the application deadline for the fellowship is…today!
I blogged earlier about the lack of diversity at NECC (http://edinsanity.com/2008/06/30/reflections-from-necc-day-equity/) and I also got into a little tiff with ISTE about their Digital Equity Summit (http://edinsanity.com/2008/06/05/necc-and-the-digital-equity-summit-the-epilogue/).
Any thoughts on how we can get the ed. tech. “industry” to think more like you, your colleagues and Leroy Finkel? How can we bring issues of diversity to the attention of the ed. tech. power brokers?
The question I keep coming back to is why are these events so white? In a typical year I make it to TCEA (Texas has a large minority population), SIGCSE, and NECC which are all largely white. I have also attended the Microsoft Research summit a couple of times and there has been a huge effort to make sure that these events are a) not always all the same people and b) more inclusive of women and other under represented minorities in CS. Now this is easier when you are inviting people and paying the bills so this will not work for your average conference.
The people I see at most teacher conferences tend to be either senior people or people who have the money to pay their own way. People who pay their own way tend to have spouses with middle to upper middle class incomes. Districts that only send senior people are often leaving home the most resent hires who have benefitied from more recent efforts to be more inclusive of minorities. And then there is the matter of many minority teachers are teaching at poorer districts who have less money to send teachers for training. What is the solution? Who is going to pay?
Perhaps the answer for both minority participation and the other problems with conferences is more local unconferences? Maybe if we can reduce the costs and increase the networking and peer to peer sharing with can help everyone out.
As for getting more educators into blogging that is a harder problem because I think many administrators are activily discouraging the practice. Blocking blog sites from schools makes the problem worse because it means teachers cannot blog or read blogs from school. For teachers who can not afford or cost justify broadback from home this can be a serious problem.