Carol,

I agree with your statement that I'm still describing the old paradigm.

And in so doing, let me say that while I agree that right now race and ethnicity don't have to play a role in determining where (meaning which forums/blogs) people chose to join or post to, in my opinion, race and ethnicity usually plays some role-significant or minor-in how people interact within many of those blogs (including what topics they raise, and how they respond to that topic and to topics that are raised by others. "How they respond" includes the dynamics of the group interaction.

Take for example, the dailykos blog- the most active progressive blog in existence. I've never joined that blog, but I've visited it 'daily' (if you'll excuse the pun) for three years now, and thus feel that I'm competent to provide an informed outsider description of that blog.

dailykos has periodic demographical surveys of its members. Those surveys glean information about the members' age, gender, race/ethniciity (with "ethnicity" here meaning Hispanic/Latino), religion, economic class, geographical region, residence outside of the USA, and political party (though the majority of its members are Democrats, all of its members aren't). I believe those demographical surveys also ask about sexual preference, but I'm not sure about that. If I recall correctly those surveys usually report that about 1/3 of dailykos' members are People of Color. Most of the PoC are African American. Latino/Hispanics can be of any race, but if I recall correctly, persons who indicate that ethnicity are usually listed as the second largest PoC population at dailykos.com.

From the perspective of a frequent lurker, it seems to me that dailykos members who are PoC are active posters on many diaries that they write or that other non-PoC write. Some of the diaries that are written by PoC and non-PoC focus on race/racism, and some don't. From my perspective, it appears that most White dailykos members are very supportive of multiculturalism, and most White dailykos members appear to "get" the issues that PoC members raise.

Yet, certain African American members felt that there was a need for a Black Kos diary and that diary which focuses on news from Black perspectives is posted every Friday and receives comments from any member of the dailykos community. I should also mention that it appears to me that most White dailykos members are supportive of this diary, which was proven last week when a "troll" wrote a "White Kos" diary that included some rather inflammatory language. That troll was given a two week suspension from posting on that site.

In addition to the once a week Black Kos diary, there is also a once a week or periodic lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans issues/perspective diary. I believe that there also a similar periodica diary on Latino issues/perspective.

I believe that those types of diaries are very similar to the racial/ethnicity or LGBT caucuses that usually are formed at various large conferences and conventions.

Are those types of caucuses/diaries still needed? I definitely believe so. Will they always be needed? I hope not.