Carol, I'd like to address this topic one more time, just to clarify what I have attempted to say and not as an attempt to change your position.

I believe that since the inception of the Internet, race/ethnicity has been and remains a significant factor in interactions on the Internet (who, what, where, how).

I believe that it is not necessarily a racist act to self-identify your race/ethnicity (with ethnicity here meaning the American definition of Latino/Hispanic) but also perhaps any other ethnicity. Instead, I believe that self-identifying your race/ethncity provides demographical information that sometimes can add context to a person's comments, and sometimes can help provide a more accurate interpretation of what the person is trying to say. The same can be said for knowing a person's gender, and nationality, and age. Sometimes it might mean nothing, and sometimes it is of tremendous help in arriving at an accurate, fuller understanding of what a person is saying.

For instance, if a person wrote that they threw the fag out the window, it would be very helpful to know that the person was British because in British English "fag" is a colloquial term for cigarettes while in American English, that same word is a colloquial term for a homosexual male.

With regard to this discussion, I think it is relevant to note that I am seeing things from my perspective as an African American woman, and you are seeing things from your perspective as an Anglo-American woman. Obviously we are both speaking for ourselves and not for some monolithic group (since no race is monolithic anyway). And obviously, neither your racial identity nor my racial identity makes either of these statements/perspectives more valid than the other. But it could add context to what we are saying.

However, I believe that sometimes a person's racial/ethnic identity does add validity to her or his statements or conclusions about a particular subject. But I don't think that's necessarily true with regard to this subject.

To further clarify my position, I believe that "White male" is the default position on the Internet, and has been since the beginning of the general public's use of the Internet. One of the main reasons why this is so is because (as research has continually documented) White males are the largest demographical population on the Internet.

There are some Internet sites that "cater" to women rather than men-say for the sake of this commentary-sites on fashion or childcare. In contrast to the general statement about the Internet's default position, on those sites, the default position is "White females". And to further delineate the focus population of those sites-the default position for those sites is usually "American White females". Given those default positions, unless they are an international forum, the unstated built in assumption is that the information posted on that site is pertinent to "American White females", and that everyone (or most everyone) posting to that site, will be an "American White female". If it is a site that was created for persons from multiple nations, (given the documentation about which nations have free Internet access and who in those nations have free Internet access and how much free Internet access they have), it's likely that the most if not all of the readers and posters to those sites will be White females.

Now if the site is about childcare, some-if not much-of the information will be race/etnnicity neutral. But other information about childcare should not be race neutral (for instance, information about "hair care" and information about helping children deal with teasing). With regard to those subjects, it would be helpful for some self-identified People of Color to share information that is pertinent to them and their children of color, and information that they have learned through direct experiences.

**

Carol, you listed these topics that Internet sites might focus on (that would be race neutral)- "diabetes, weight loss, car repair, gardening, favorite tv shows, favorite musicians, favorite movies, favorite recipes". I think that car repair and gardening are the only topics in your list that are really race neutral (meaning the same information would pertain to any person regardless of that person's race/ethnicity ...although with "car repair", a person's race could (illegally) result in him or her being charged more for repairs.

But research has shown that race/ethnicity is now and has long been a factor in many health care conditions. And research has consistently shown that race/ethnicity is a factor in how well in how the health care system in the USA provides services to People of Color (within the USA).

Research has also consistently documented that African Americans (to name one racial group) have different "favorite tv shows, favorite musicians, and favorite movies" than Anglo-Americans. And I dare say the same may be true for "favorite recipes".

That does not mean that one population is right and the other is wrong. It just means that there are cultural differences.

**

With regard to African Americans and other People of Color being active participants on Internet forums that focus on general topics such as "television shows" or "movies", I think that there has to be some critical mass of self-identified African Americans (and other People of Color) before we (PoC) are comfortable participating in those forums, and because we are comfortable we then actively participate in those forums. Perhaps that critical mass is the 1/3 of the total number of members that I believe a blog like dailykos has.

Why is "comfort" important? I believe that one of the main reasons why People of Color [like other people] come to the Internet is to relax, and enjoy ourselves. And we don't want our relaxation polluted with issues of race/racism. (It's bad enough that we have to deal with it in our working life).

Furthermore, I believe that there are differences in colloquialisms, language phrasing, and cultural references (to name a few things) that most African Americans use without thinking. And I believe that many Anglo-Americans are not familiar with most of these cultural forms, and that means that in settings that aren't all Black or majority Black or settings that don't have that critical mass I mentioned before, we (Black people) often choose to refrain from using the colloquialisms, language phrasing, cultural references we would otherwise use.

That explains (for me) why there are hardly any People of Color who are members of Mudcat. I believe that there are other Black people besides myself who are interested in subjects such as children's playground rhymes and other types of folk music/folkloric study that are presented and discussed here. And certainly, the BS section of Mudcat lends itself to the discussion of just about any topic. But most People of Color don't want to be bothered talking about race to Anglo people-unless there is that critical mass of People of Color who post on that particular forum. And, obviously, on Mudcat, there has never been that critical mass.

Again, this is my sense of the current paradigm. How this paradigm changes to a better one (where race/ethnicity is just a descriptor without positive or negative connotations) is a whole 'nuther subject.


-Azizi Powell