February 9, 2007

The Segregated Blogosphere

I'm brand new to the blogosphere. I never realized how many blogs are created on a daily basis. I'm many years into being a person of color. I am always reminded of the reality of being a person of color in America. The two issues ... race and blogs ... were discussed quite candidly in a ColorLines article written by Celina De Leon. ColorLines is a national newsmagazine of race and politics.

Methinks that many Villagers will find this article of interest.

Chris Rabb's life as a blogger started with an e-mail. For four years, he sent out an e-newsletter to thousands of names in his address book. The newsletter eventually became his blog, Afro-Netizen, which provided Rabb's commentaries on politics and news, with a focus on Black communities. Since then, Rabb has become one of the most outspoken voices on the racial divide in the blogosphere.

"As bloggers of color, we are such a smaller number of people than our white counterparts. That makes reaching the volume of traffic much harder, and the lack of social and financial capital also makes this harder," Rabb said.


People of color make up 40 percent of bloggers, but only 26 percent of Internet users. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's "Blogger" report, which was based on findings from their February through April 2006 tracking surveys, 11 percent of bloggers are Black, 19 percent are English-speaking Hispanic and 10 percent are some other race or ethnicity.

3/17/07 Update - Our posting motivated Theo Johnson to create a feature on his blog that he calls "Black Bloggers Unite".

Click here to see the rest of the article ... Then come back and share your COMMENTS with us!

5 comments:

Brad Woods said...

This could be true or it could be false but does it really matter? I know from personal experience that there is alot of intolerance in the world - the internet is no different. Continue to encourage discussion amongst people that can talk with honesty and respect and those that can't ignore them and move on.

Paris David said...

Great piece you linked to there about Color Lines.

Too bad that site isn't free to subscribe to.

Sounds like a good issue to pursue, though -- blogging while black!

Anonymous said...

Wow, that is a powerful article. It's sad that people have to conceal their identities and receive hate mail all because of their opinion. Isn't this America?

The stats for black bloggers when compared to the total number of bloggers is low. I not only blog, I also have a podcast (I don't even know if the stats exist for that). My goal is to teach as many as I can about blogging and technology. We need to close that digital divide as much as possible.

Unknown said...

Theo --> Asante sana for sharing information about "The Segregated Blogosphere" posting with your readers on That's What I'm Talkin About! blog.

Hopefully, the Black bloggers of today can inspire others to join with us in this part of cyberspace.

At a minimum, I hope that we can each find ways to support one another as you've done with your 'Black Bloggers Unite' post.

peace, villager

JD said...

I enjoyed the post, we must continue to generate dialog by speaking out. race issues is something many whites are not comfortable discussing as Americans. I love to get comments on controversial topics, and use the comments for my own growth and learning and then my response to teach. Thank you for opening up this topic