On Sampling "the" African American Blogosphere

This morning I bumped into "the" Black blogosphere again.

(I should warn you now that the snarky tone you might pick up on is me making fun of my own apparently bottomless pit of blissful oblivion. Repeat: All snark herein contained is directed by moi at moi.)

I had not actually thought of "the" African American blogosphere as such until now. Why is that, you may ask? Because I live in a bottomless pit of blissful oblivion? Partly.

For instance, I've been so busy being wowed by Kos's unmatched blogofeat that it never dawned on me to consider that Daily Kos might be seriously skewed whiteward. Especially since the death of Steve Gilliard.

I can think of all kinds of things to say about that. The whole blogosphere is? Doubtful if by "whole" we mean "global." But we're here, not there. Or, the whole US blogosphere is? I guess. I don't know for sure, but that sounds right for all kinds of reasons. Or, that's one of those automatically self-replicating indictments: The more it is offered up, read, and taken seriously, the fewer the exceptions to the rule will be. Or, how many of us on the white side make a point of linking to blogs authored by black and brown people?

But to cut to the chase, what makes me want to kick myself in the rear, again, is that I rarely stop to evaluate a post or a blog from the perspective of the author's race or ethnicity unless (1) I know what it is, which I don't unless the author makes a point of defining his/her blog in those terms, or (2) race is the subject, and then I wonder, or (3) there's content there that I recognize as racist. And the operative word here is "recognize." That's the problem, for obvious reasons.

How many times do I have to learn this lesson about all the things I take for granted?

Oh, right: The reason I put "the" in quotes above is because the notion of "the Black blogosphere" strikes me as awfully ethnocentric on the part of us white folks. We don't speak of "the white blogosphere" any more than we speak of "the straight lifestyle." Put that way, we can see at once that the notion is absurd. Clearly there's no such thing as one straight lifestyle or one white blogosphere. So the notion that there's one black blogosphere is absurd, too. Unless all African American bloggers astral plane nightly to the Pleiades to plan the next day's agenda, there's no more a unifying perspective in African American-ness than there is in Galesbitrans-ness.

Except when there is.

As, for instance, on details such as, oh, the presidential debate, the perspective and content of the MSM, the YearlyKos conference, economics, healthcare, missing persons, and other stuff like that.

I don't mean that all African Americans reach the same conclusions, or that all galesbitrans people reach the same conclusions. Of course not. I mean that standing outside the big house, whether the big house of race or the big house of heterosexuality, is itself a distinct and different perspective from the governing point of view. After that, what we actually have to say depends on who we are as unique individuals. Anyway. . . .

So it is today that, for me, reading the opinions of some of the African American bloggers is once more climbing out of my pit. Doing so, I am reminded, still yet again one more time, that I live an insulated life owing to skin, class, biological sex, and gender. (Why do I STILL have to be reminded about that? Don't we all/yes/and some more than others/that would be you Trent Lott/Grover Norquist/George Bush.)

I'm also reminded that it's the rare white male who would think to write a sentence admitting that skin, sex, gender, and class actually do limit his viewpoint and experience.

I am reminded that the popular criticism of the Democratic Party--which I heard Tom Brokaw express as "fratricide"--namely, that it blew itself apart in the 60s by allowing too much emphasis on "identity" groups--is just another way of saying that we were all just stoopid. Stoopid to think that owning and discussing our differences openly might eventually lead to some kind of better way forward together than the rigid and violently enforced skin/class/sex/gender hierarchy had so far produced.

Oh, it's been messy over on the Left, all right, but I have to believe it has been worth it. This evaluation of course depends on point of view. Don't they all.

If the perspective is power and partisan primacy, then I guess the criticism is a reasonable strategic assessment, and whether our emphasis on "identity" been worth it is up for grabs. I'd say no if that emphasis has meant that while our attention was elsewhere, the GOP has been able to seize and hold power long enough to pull of a permanent coup d'etat. I'd also point out that the GOP's rise to power has been about a lot more than that, including voter fraud, caging, vote suppression, race baiting, flat-out lying. . . Maybe we should talk more about that?

But if the perspective is longer-term, if it's about a genuine attempt at authenticity, a genuine effort to lift up the rocks and see what's living there; if it was at all about learning how to climb out from under each others' power trips and mind fucks, as we used to say, then I guess the verdict is promising but still out. It depends what we as individuals and as discrete populations do with what we've learned. Forty years isn't long enough to decide that. The night is young and there's still a bit of mayhem abroad.

But I digress. I just wanted to say that I've discovered again for the billionth time that it's fun and important and informative and educational and challenging to venture outside my usual stomping ground.

I'm going back now to read more of "the" African American point of view. Join me at The Angry Black Woman, The Field Negro, African American Opinion, African American Political Pundit, Jack and Jill Politics. . . . and Electronic Village's list of the top ten Black bloggers, including Prometheus6