Diversity Issues

Steven Levy takes up the old issue of why the top blogs are overwhelmingly written by white males, and receives the obvious (and correct) answer:

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!"

Just so; the only thing I'll add is that if you aren't part of the club, it helps a lot if you're willing to reliably say what either the right or the left wants you to say, at which point you can serve as a mascot of diversity or something.

Moving on to other matters, it would appear that blacks aren't the only ones with issues about how they're portrayed on TV: take a look at this discussion on Koreans in "Lost" to see what I mean. It's piqued my interest enough that I'm definitely going to follow up Laurence Caromba's recommendation to give the show a look.

PS: Watch Jeff Jarvis do the "race and culture shouldn't matter" jig here; it's especially absurd in his case because he's gone to such lengths to promote Iraqi bloggers, all of whom have two personal qualifications that help bolster the plausibility of his foreign policy views - they're Arabs and they're Muslims. Does Jarvis really believe people would care half as much about what the chaps at Iraq the Model, Salam Pax or Healing Iraq have to say if they weren't perceived as having greater standing to speak about the country by virtue of their religion and nationality? No one is suggesting that the likes of Jeff Jarvis link to X number of women, blacks or Hispanics per day on pain of death, but it's self serving nonsense to spout the "colorblind" line that Jarvis does, as we don't live in a colorblind world.

PPS: Oh, and one final thing - let's have no more whining about the "Mainstream Media" (aka MSM) ignoring the diversity of opinions out there from people who get all defensive when their own aversion to diverse voices is pointed out to them. If the big name bloggers feel it to be their right to link only to people of similar demographic qualifications, why shouldn't the New York Times or CNN only provide a forum for latte-sipping, tree-hugging,  gay-marrying, war-protesting liberals? A lot of people seem to forget that these are private organizations, not public bodies with a mandate to reflect the views of everyone.

Comments

[Factory]

"why the top blogs are overwhelmingly written by white males, and receives the obvious (and correct) answer:"
Hmm I would have thought that a more correct answer is that the overwheming majority of anglosphere political blogs, and those that read them, are white and male.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Hmm I would have thought that a more correct answer is that the overwheming majority of anglosphere political blogs, and those that read them, are white and male."

An overwhelming majority of *readers* might be male, but how do you know they're overwhelmingly white? As for the *writers* of blogs, where are your statistics to support this? I've been at this for two years now without being asked *once* to participate in a blog-author survey, so I don't where you get that notion from - some guy asking all his (white, male) acquaintances to fill in a form?

In any case, even assuming that your claims about the nature of the blog-reading audience are accurate, the TTLB rankings are determined by *links*, not traffic, so what matters is who the top bloggers link to, and that definitely skews far more to a certain demographic than its true representation in the blogging world. Social psychologists have demonstrated repeatedly that a writer's perceived race and gender is a powerful determinant of how said author's writings are likely to be taken, and the speedy rise of faux-female bloggers like "Libertarian Girl" and "Hot Abercrombie Chick" are evidence that what determines visibility and/or popularity isn't knowledgeability or writing ability but the priorities of the top (white male) bloggers - said priority, in both of these cases, being their sex drives ... It's telling that even as blogs like those of Matthew Yglesias, the Marginal Revolution folks or Daniel Drezner are full of chatter about development in the Third World, none of them bother to look for individuals whose perspectives are informed by actual experience of living there.

[Jim]

It's narrower than that; the "top rung" is not only white and male; it also leans east by in large. They do all link to each other and seem not to look at anything else. Instapundit has never linked to Michael J. totten that I can remember - MJT is in Portland. Don't expect him to link to you either, and for a variety of reasons. Look at the Reader's Digest material he posts and judge for yourself what his readership wants. You don't play to that market. Thank you for that.

"Social psychologists have demonstrated repeatedly that a writer's perceived race and gender is a powerful determinant of how said author's writings are likely to be taken,..." This tendency has been pointed out repeatedly as the besetting sin of organizations such as the FBI. The FBI has to use contract linguists or else borrow them from second-tier (foster child) agencies because of the composition of their recruitng pool. The "top rung" is no different; it is just human nature. In fact this "top rung" is busy repeating all the mistakes they so decry in the "MSM". The playground tone of the writing and the comments sections just serve to lull them inot thinking they are more down to earth and "real".

[Chuckles]

On Lost, vis-a-vis The Marmot etc;

Why do I have very little sympathy for the Koreans? The Bubble Girls episode of yester years (http://wk.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2003/02/27/200302270007.asp) etc and absolute preoccupation of Koreans with themselves really makes it very difficult for one to be sympathetic. Koreans are not the most sensitive people. I mean they are polite and all, but I think that global savoir faire is missing to a large extent.
They complain about their portrayal in Die Another Day etc - but like one sees in this kind of reporting from Korean Media Outlets (http://www.hani.co.kr/section-001065000/2004/03/001065000200403151818616.html) the most unsophisticated forms of Stereotypes still beclouds the national psyche of Koreans. BTW - There was a nice discussion about that piece on Joi Ito's blog AWB - http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/03/17/racial_stereotypes_in_korean_newspaper.html

Suffice it to say that Blacks get the short end of the stick no matter where they are, or where they are referenced. It will take some time before all the deficits in social capital that Blacks have accumulated over the past 4 centuries to dissipate.

This again is perhaps why I am a bit suspicious of criticisms of Black insularity. Progressive, forward looking Caucasians have, as much as any of their conservative counterparts, groupish, collective tendencies. In such an atmosphere, where blacks are outnumbered, what can one expect them to do?
The age old in/out syntax prevails and the world is anything but colourblind - Because really, just how many Blacks does the average Korean know? Ah Ha! But they know enough to have a spear chucking blackie on the frontpage!

[Abiola Lapite]

The ignorance of some of the commenters on Joi Ito's blog really is something. It was precisely to correct ridiculous stereotypes about loincloth-wearing Africans that I made the following post some time back.

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2004/11/african_dress.html

The ignorance of most Koreans is at least partly understandable, as they at least have the excuse of insularity, but as for the supposedly cosmopolitan types writing on a Japanese guy's blog who see nothing wrong with depictions of Africans as semi-naked, uninformed savages ...

At any rate, this and the "Bubble Sisters" piece makes Korean gripes about "Lost" seem a tad-bit ill-placed. Not that two wrongs make a right, but Korea has miles to go to reach where America is if a presenter can say he's apologizing to "the 1%" who were offended by girls in blackface wearing huge rubber lips.

[Jim]

Chuckles,

"Progressive, forward looking Caucasians have,...." see the discussion on the thread about the top rung of blogs.
You point is well-taken; humans are clannish.

Korea was called th Hermit Kingsom for a reason. Sensitivity is not something they get accused of very often. Their attitude towards mixed-blood children in Korea is notorious, regardless of whether the father was white or black.

The stereotype with the spear you mention is unacceptable, but if it's any comfort, they come in for the same kind of thing themselves - Korean woman = prostitute is the common assumption in the US, for a number of completely valid historical reasons.

On the other hand here is real comfort. Here is a historical analogy - negative Irish stereotypes were a standard in as recently as 50 years ago - feckless, violent, incompetent, hard-drinking and so on. It came from centuries of colonial occupation and defeat. What changed was success, both for the American irish and then for Ireland. The stereotypes were not so funny anymore.

And this goes to your commnet about insularity. The key to Irish success in America was capture of local goovernment in places, with the patroange jobs that came with that, and then education to take advantage of that political power so that, and then sucess in business developing out of that. The key was education, and that occurred in a system of separate schools, in the Church. There's insularity for you. Irish kids didn't have to put up with Anglos' attitudes in their formative years. They had Jesuits for role-models, so they began to value education again after so many centuries. It did take a long time though.

[Chuckles]

True, although when you think of it, Korea was probably nowhere as hermitish as Japan. There was a fair amount of contact with China etc

I see your point about the Irish. The same could be said about Scots in a different century.

It really is very funny though. When Die Another Day came out, some Koreans boycotted the movie because they said the picture of a Cow tilling and grazing in the background in one of the scenes was designed to make the country look "primitive".

Look at this multicultural note on the movie:
http://www.colorq.org/PetSins
/article.asp?y=2003&m=9&x=dieand

See this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories
/2002/12/14/entertainment/main533056.shtml

This is what makes life so funny. Here you have some Koreans getting all huffy and puffy over less than 1% of the kind of shit Black people have been taking for 400 years. This is why it is hard to feel a great amount of sympathy, although as Abiola said, 2 wrongs dont make a right.

If these Koreans wanted "spearchuckers" or "bonescrapers" on the frontpage, why couldnt they have used pictures of, say, the Japanese Ainu/Utari for instance?

Funny isnt it, this kind of ooga-booga otherization. The West has indeed made great strides in this regard, and I think the relative openess (a given, after the TAST). Suffice it to say that Koreans, or Japanese for instance have absolutely no incentive to become as open minded as Westerners, since there is a very low chance of contact with "the others". This is probably why these kinds of stereotypes will endure and why Black/Korean tensions as referenced in the ff up discussions at The Marmot's will continue:

Courtesy, Mr. Ice T:
http://ourlyrics.host.sk/
lyrics/ice_cube/2-ice_cube-black_korea.php

There are some ESL teacher perspectives on this:

http://www.torgodevil.com
/archives/00000486.htm

http://www.allhiphop.com
/editorial/?ID=108 (This one is actually from a Nigerian/Canadian ESL Teacher in Korea on the Bubble Sisters episode).

P.S:

On another note; the infamous Little Black Sambo is making a grand re-entrance into the lives of Japanese kids. The Japanese have determined that the book is in no way denigrative of Blacks.

http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news
/mdn/search-news/925770/sambo-0-1.html

Hey! There are even artistic concerns about the thickness of our lips!

http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news
/mdn/search-news/925770/sambo-0-1.html

This world cracks me up! And they expect me to take them seriously when they complain about "Lost In Translation" stereotyping the Japanese?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment
/story/0,3604,1130137,00.html

http://www.lost-in-racism.org/

http://www.chanpon.org/archives
/2004/02/07/totally_lost_in_translation.html

[Jim]

Chuckles,

There is an American proverb - "The sh*t rolls downhill." If you were the Koreans, overrun and treated like livestock by the Japanese, which is nt just defeat but humiliating defeat, only to be rescued by the Americans, so that you have absolutely no self-respect left, what do you do? Why, you go look for someone to kick around. You may have no end of racist attitudes about whites, but it won't work as long as they are on top. Who does that leave? You guessed it. Two wrongs do indeed not make a right, and putting up with this is definitely wrong. Getting angry about it just feeds the trolls. So what do you do? I don't know, unless you are in a position to make it hurt.

Let them cry about how they are stereotyped. Music to my ears. They do it to whites too, like we care. If it really hurts half as much as they claim, they may change some of their own behavior.

Fun with stereotypes: It is typical for Korean prostitutes to try to charge American troops more because we are "bigger", so you smirk and say I'll pay you less because your mother was better.

If the West is any better on this score it is due to decades of someone rubbing our noses in our own mess, and God bless them for it, and also because you don't have to be very good to be better than the Japanese and Koreans.

The Japanese are getting better though. A few decades of success out among other people have done for their self-respect. And anyway individuals are always better than groups when it comes to acting in a mature manner, and all this crap is for the mass market.

Speaking of mass market, it was contact with "the Other" as customers, who after all is always right, that made them start accomodating to the rest of us.

Rereading your post, I ran across that reference to the cow in a field. Talk about supersensitive. Save your reasoning with them for when they are back on their meds.