IT’S A START…
May 12th, 2005[Update 1: Latha Poonamallee at NEOBEAN and Scholarmama.]
[Update 2: Anthony Parker at Urban Cleveland Magazine.]
Last Saturday in Baker’s Dozens, I concluded my hunt for gender balance in my blogroll and posted my addtions. In that same post I announced my new hunt for the non-European blog voices in the NEOsphere. This one is proving to be tougher. I only had one lead, so far, from my friend Cavana.
He pointed me to Jimi Izrael and one other blogger. I only have an email address for the second blogger and I’ve dropped him a note, but I’ve already added Jimi’s. Be sure to check out his Dealing With Crack.
This morning at Brewed Fresh Daily, in a continuing discussion on Race in Cleveland, George Nemeth answers the question, Are There Any Black Bloggers? with the three links I’ve added to the one for Izrael’s blog.
There has to be more than this. Is this a case, like the FBI’s bogus profiler list, where my European blinders are preventing me from looking in the right place for non-European bloggers? Help me out here.
Jimi Izrael
Liberal Portions
Diary Of A Mad Cleveland Filmaker
Trula Star
My Soundtrack: Symphonic Rock, American Classics by various.
Well, she’s not Black, but she’s definitely not European…
http://www.livejournal.com/users/scholarmama/
Hi Jeff..
I think the issue of minority bloggers as well as the status of women bloggers is going to be discussed at the BlogHerCon on 7/30 (http://www.blogher.org)…they’re out there, but, most of the time, the MSM turns to the Technorati 100 and other A-listers (mostly male and defined by Technorati) for interviews and such on blogging.
Minorities and women need to push out press releases by the ga-zillions and start promoting our own for spokespeople on blogging panels or for interviews on outlets like CNN.
But, part of the problem, too, is the dialogs that go on about blogging–as to whether it is journalism or something else. As long as the pundits are claiming that it’s all politics and it’s all journalism, those of us who are possibly *not* political all the time and *not* using our blogs to satisfy journalistic aspiarations will probably get overlooked…
Peace,
Tish
Shalom Tish,
You’re exactly right. And this is one of the reasons I’m making a concerted effort to diversify my blogroll. There is a great potential for creating an echo-chamber with blogs and I want to do my best to keep that from happening with HCWW.
Thanks for stopping by. You’re always most welcome.
B’shalom,
Jeff
There is a really simple, obvious reason there are, generally. not alot of black bloggers. Freedoom. There is a real fear among blacks, generally, when it comes to losing your job. Byron Crawford and I talked about this when I interveiwed him, which is posted on my blog. It isn’t that black people don’t want to blog, but there is a real fear that anything they write could be held against them in the real world—ie employment world. White folks get dooced and move on–black people getting fired for any reason can be an ordeal. Personally, I just do what I do, and say fuck it. Which brings another good reason why black bloggers are present but way under the radar—we communicate differently—we are speaking to a different audience. This joint is way too anticeptic for me—way too “white bread.” My blog is black, and so are most of my readers. When white stumble across it. . . . boy are they perplexed. Because it is so clearly and throughly encoded, by intention. So .. . I dunno . . . I guess I’m happy to be sought out . . .but I hope we avoid the “some of my best blogs are black” kinda scenario. Personally, I only blogroll my peeps. . .
ah holla.
Hi, I am scholarmama that was referred by Sandy. I took a long time before I began to post, because as an alien, I felt that it might be unsafe for me to air my political views.
There is quite a variety of blogs by people of Indian origin on different topics. Check out
http://www.sulekha.com/weblogs/
http://blogs.rediff.com/
http://techpolicy.typepad.com/anuplog/2005/02/indians_in_the_.html
Like most ex-pat communities, these are quite focused on issues related to India. I am not really active on any of them so I don’t know how many of them live in the area, but as Jimi says, these are more of community blogs, whose interests, concerns and obessions might have nothing in commong with the mainstream NEO.
Hi Jeff,
you might want to check out this guy, who commented on my livejournal: http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=d_emax714
Ah, a little more sleuthing… his name is Derek Arnold and he has two other blogs as well:
http://demax714.blogspot.com/
and
http://www.crouchingcrab.net/wordpress
Race and Regionalism
There have been bits and pieces of dialogue in the NEO blogosphere lately about race and regionalism. It all started when Bill Callahan asked for predictions from the blogosphere about the biggest issue in the race for Cleveland mayor. Tim Russo said r…
[...] 11 June 2005 IT’S A START, WRAPS UP… A month ago in It’s A Start… I entered into what I thought of as Phase II of diversifying my NEO Bl [...]
Here’s a one-stop-shopping kinda site for all your non-European/Black bloggin needs. http://www.niggerati.net/
Glad to see Jimi Izrael tops your current list. But really, was it that difficult to find locate non-white bloogers?
http://www.niggerati.net/aggregator/sources/59
faster link to list of Black blogs
Shalom Maura,
Sadly yes, it was very difficult to find non-white bloggers. At our monthly, local blogger meetups we have had only two African-Americans attend in the past year that I remember.
When I first started doing this, Jimi had suggested that People of Color were not blogging for various social-economic reasons, but that also they feared retribution for saying something publically that might be misunderstood or not appreciated by a boss or others in power.
That distrubed me. Yes, I know that many problems persist, but America isn’t suppossed to be like that
B’shalom,
Jeff
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