What Color Is Your Blogger?

Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time after the big "where are the women bloggers?" debate has been waged 30 or more times that someone would question where the bloggers of color are (namely, why are all the bloggers white males?).

Steven Levy tackles this in Newsweek and Steve Gilliard comments on it here.

I agree with Steve that in every media venue I've worked in, white males dominate with maybe a couple of small "chick only" operations. And I've had the pleasure and the trial of being the first or token girl in several departments over the years.

But here's the deal about the Internet. There are FAR more "people of color" and non-white males than you ever might imagine. That's one of the nicer things about the 'net, in fact: you get to know the person for how he/she thinks and presents him/herself before you get to see them in person and start analyzing them for their tangle of visible nasal hair, the way they dress or eat, or how different they may be from you.

I've been working on the Internet (literally) since most people knew it existed. When I have the pleasure of meeting someone new online (and that only happens a hundred or so times a week now - used to be thousand or two), there aren't the superficial things to separate us. Many times, I discover later the generic name is female/Asian/African American/Hispanic/whatever. I suspect that's the case with many bloggers.

Hell, even I'm a non-white male blogger. I could claim "color" status, I suppose, because I'm part Native-American (but I'm too damned pale from my English side).

I'm less worried about why the female bloggers or the non-white bloggers aren't the "big names on the 'net" than I am about why more people of limited means aren't out here yet. We need more diversity.