I found an interesting article today on race in cyberspace.
The article, "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet" by Lisa Nakamura can be found at

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/nakamura.html

Sorry, I still can't figure out how to make those blue clickies. I'm technology challenged..

"Race In/For Cyberspace" refers to a website called LambdaMOO as its core example,and primarily focuses upon Asians on the Internet.
Here are selected passages:

"The technology of the Internet offers its participants unprecedented possibilities for communicating with each other in real time, and for controlling the conditions of their own self-representations in ways impossible in face to face interaction...This utopian vision of cyberspace as a promoter of a radically democratic form of discourse should not be underestimated....

Players [on LambdaMOO]who elect to describe themselves in racial terms, as Asian, African American, Latino, or other members of oppressed and marginalized minorities, are often seen as engaging in a form of hostile performance, since they introduce what many consider a real life "divisive issue" into the phantasmatic world of cybernetic textual interaction....

Chesher concedes that "In spite of the claims that everyone is the same in virtual worlds, access to technology and necessary skills will effectively replicate class divisions of the rest of reality in the virtual spaces" (28) and "will tend to reinforce existing inequalities, and propagate already dominant ideologies" (29). Indeed, the cost of net access does contribute towards class divisions as well as racial ones; the vast majority of the Internet's users are white and middle-class...

One of the dangers of identity tourism is that it takes this restriction across the axes of race/class in the "real world" to an even more subtle and complex degree by reducing non-white identity positions to part of a costume or masquerade to be used by curious vacationers in cyberspace. Asianness is co-opted as a "passing" fancy, an identity-prosthesis which signifies sex, the exotic, passivity when female, and anachronistic dreams of combat in its male manifestation. "Passing" as a samurai or geisha is diverting, reversible, and a privilege mainly used by white men. The paradigm of Asian passing masquerades on LambdaMOO itself works to suppress racial difference by setting the tone of the discourse in racist contours, which inevitably discourage "real life" Asian men and women from textual performance in that space, effectively driving race underground . As a result, a default "whiteness" covers the entire social space of LambdaMOO. As a result, a default "whiteness" covers the entire social space of LambdaMOO race is "whited out" in the name of cybersocial hygiene..."

end of quote

Shambles,
You said "My point is that where ever we may be coming from - we can always just go ahead together and sing the song. Perhaps that way instead of approaching an argument - we can avoid arguments on the subject and perhaps on other subjects too....?"

My intent for starting this thread was to elicit comments on the subject. This is a discussion forum, and discussion does not have to mean argument. Thus I see no need to avoid raising a subject that you would prefer be avoided. Earlier in this thread, I quoted Rodney King's now often repeated question "Can't we all get along?" IMHO, "Getting along does not mean {always}avoiding topics that some other people may consider uncomfortable or even potentially divisive.

With regard to 'going ahead and singing the song', which songs do the groups sing and who chooses those songs? This may be a re-introduction of the thorny question "What is folk music?", but
I maintain that race & ethnicity may color this answer.

In the context of this Internet forum I have chosen to identify myself by my race, African American. This is only one descriptor for me, and I don't include it in every thread that I start or every post that I write. However, in this thread, I believed, and still believe that my race & knowledge of my race are pertinent to this discussion.