Time to say thank you… to everyone who read, commented or participated, as well as to Jill for the invitation to blog here for this week. I did enjoy it, no matter how much I whined.
I was going to have a few parting thoughts about the blogosphere, race, bloggers of color and so on but I am a bit headeachey today, and so am not thinking many thoughts at all! but that’s okay, because instead I will just say… go read brownfemipower, who is somehow guest blogging at Kai’s. Here is a taste:
Where are all the bloggers of color?
This question makes the rounds in blogland oh, every three or four months. Invariably, a white blogger is the one doing the asking and a whole slew of white folks are speculating about the answer.
I don’t usually make a point of paying attention to those conversations. Knowing that I’m a blogger and I’m right here, makes it really hard for me to pay attention to all the garbage that usually gets spewed out (i.e. they’re too poor to blog, they don’t care about blogging, they aren’t educated enough to blog, they don’t have the time to blog etc). But this time I read such interesting commentary from different bloggers of color, I was inspired to try to unravel some of my own thoughts about the “where are they” conversations.
For those of you who don’t know, this recent round of “Where are they now” was brought on by the Yearly Kos conference that just took place in Chicago. Apparently, despite attempts to do otherwise, the conference was notable in its lack of “diversity” and “inclusion”. Because there was a concerted effort to reach out to the “diverse” crowd (i.e. men of color and white women), organizers and attendees alike walked away feeling pretty baffled and upset.
The thing is, I’m not exactly sure why they were baffled and upset. Why do these bloggers care if there’s no diversity in their ranks?
Lots more there… go read. Seriously. You’ll be glad you did 🙂
Thanks again, and bye now.