Danah was asking the question, Is blogging a privilege. I tried to follow the leadup stories to this question, but there was way conversation flying around for my little mind to grasp. While I wouldn’t use the word privilege (or elite), I would agree that the perception is that majority of people online are straight white men. I say perception merely because I have no facts to back this up, but it sure feels to be true. But I don’t think it’s just bloggers — it is technology in general. This is nothing new to me. Being involved in technology is even now (almost 10 years after the doc com “boom”) still primarily for white men (I’m not entirely sure if sexual orientation is as big of a deal on the internet — at least, I’ve never thought, “I wonder if this guy is gay?” while visiting a website).
There has been talk of the “digital divide”, but that is nothing new either. Every new technology (phone, TV, car, fax machine) has always been accessible to the front runners of our society. I am a straight white man and I benefit from that greatly. I know I have a huge advantage. It’s pretty obvious in fact. Actually, it’s obvious for me. Apparently there are many people (usually the same people firmly against any form of affirmative action) that feel our society truly is equal.
Anyway, minorities will get to “blogging” someday. Five years ago minorities barely had email, and now it is much more common (though still not ubiquitous like it is with white society). The sad fact is that until much grander social norms change, white men will continue to dominate our world and will be the front runners on all new innovations (regardless of whether they actually did the innovation or just used it). This is why I am a believer in forms of affirmative action — I truly don’t believe that our current society is functioning in a way that will act as a “Great Equalizer”… at least not in the next 100 years anyway.
So just as blogging is a “privilege”, so is being a CEO, a lawyer, or a doctor. They are all tried together and I think when equality happens in one area (more black CEOs, for example), you’ll find that it will happen in all the other areas shortly afterwards (such as more bloggers)
on Jan 21st, 2004 at 6:30 pm
Is blogging a privelege? Definately not. I’m absolutely a “minority” by definition, being a Hispanic female, and I gotta say, there’s a different reason for it. I will admit, this doesn’t apply to everyone in my group over the age of 25. I’ve been online since the bbs era, have had a website (with a journalistic piece) since 1995 or 96, and have had a true-to-template “blog” since 2001. Maybe I’m just an exception, but observing how internet culture evolved in a population where the minority was the majority showed me that it wasn’t that they couldn’t get it, or weren’t granted it (isn’t that the definition of privelege?) but that they were really just.. not interested in it, didn’t feel like it was the best way to express themselves, or wanted their lives to be more private and not accessable to “just anyone” who knows how to use Google.
That being said, I write about way more flakier things on the net than you would – to me its a way to communicate with friends, but when I feel like ranting about Bushie or something, I rant. My husband however, uses his for a political outlet regularly.
Most other technology however, is definately a privelege. I’m not about to spend a mortgage payment on that hdtv I saw at Ultimate Electronics! That’s usually something we have to work and/or save for.