(from the archives July, 1998)
Posted without comment
Boohabian Q&A |
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Perhaps the supreme irony of black American existence
is how broadly black people debate the question of cultural identity among themselves
while getting branded as a cultural monolith by those who would deny us the complexity and
complexion of a community, let alone a nation. If Afro Americans have never settled for
the racist reductions imposed upon them -- from chattel slaves to cinematic stereotype to
sociological myth -- it's because the black collective conscious not only knew better but
also knew more than enough ethnic diversity to subsume those fictions. |
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| Edited by M.D.C.Bowen last updated July 11, 1998 |
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Boo Who? - Who or what is a Boohab?
Well properly speaking, a boohabian is a prophet of phlow, but I borrowed the term from lyrics by a group called the Broun Fellinis, whom I estimate have created the greatest leap forward in the hiphop/acid jazz genre with thier album Afrokubist Improvisations. Their music represents to me, a post-racial ethics which is thoroughly and intelligently suffused with the best of American soulful traditions. I appropriated the name 'boohab' and called him an 'organic hiphop metaphysician'.
In cyberspace, I am known as boohab to hundreds of folks who act and react in webchat. There are several major fora, Cafe Utne, Slate Fray, Salon Table Talk, Electric Minds, SF Chronicle's Gate & Gravity. In these areas and others I have taken it upon myself to serve as a catalyst and facilitator of discussions of race. I've been doing so pretty much since their inception (with the exception of the Gate), and before them at The Well, Compuserv, Delphi and Usenet's S.C.A.A. Boohab is sort of the thinking person's Kibo of Race.
Here's something I wrote in 1994 it's probably the best way to describe what my orginal goals were with regard to black cultural production in cyberspace.
everything i do in cmc is an experiment in blackness as a post-modern concept. i am futzing with identity in cyberspace and trying to figure out what happens to your race when people cannot see you, hear you or smell you. (hee haw). everybody knows that you have some freedom in computer mediated communications (cmc) to choose who you be. if i choose to be black, how would i express it? if i choose to be white, how? why? what can i say in cmc that i would never say face to face? what silences are overcome w/ respect to racial issues, which are created?
i am extending the hiphop aesthetic to cmc and i propose bSpace as a black cultural exponent and concept in cmc. i am working with a few folks to create that space over time. some of that will happen in the cool zone. i have been reading all of the major literature (or so i think) about cmc and cyberspace and i must say that socially destructive white punk kids get about 3 orders of magnitude more press and critical attention than black folks. likely the best book on the subject is by howard rheingold, 'the virtual community - homesteading the electronic frontier' and we exist as blacks soley on page 144, in the same paragraph as ufo fanatics. also 'the metaphysics of virtual reality' by michael hiem inscribes the very ideas of *why* cyberspace in a 'eurocentric' framework.
as an organic intellectual, i challenge these as they relate to the possibilities of black identity in cmc. we all know who created it and we generally know why and what they had in mind when they did so. now that the i-way is opening up to the general yuppy public, what happens? what changes? when people bring their desires to cmc, it will be transformed but i investigate empirically what it is now and how that changes as black folks join up. i remain primarily focused here in usenet because it is open to the public, whereas i would find it much more enjoyable to hang out in more private areas. what do black folks say in private areas that they don't say here? what do they say here that they dont say privately? why are black people in cmc at all? what motivates them to use the technology? these are very important questions to me because i have been making a living doing computer work for many years and clocking big dollars in a culture that hardly expects me to...
The Man Behind the Boohabian Curtain - How old are you? What is your educational background?
A: I was born in southern California in 1961. I was a bright but bored student one year ahead of all my peers through Jesuit prep school. I dropped out of college twice, once from the electrical engineering program at USC because I couldn't afford it, and once from the computer science program at Cal State because I wanted to get rich, and I trusted the wrong kind of people to help me.
Thumbnail sketch:
Why Race?- Did you get into it with the goal of using the
internet to further racial progress, or did that come later? or does your perspective as a
black man in the us and your socio-political views mean that all of your activities are
engaged in with that as an ultimate goal?
A: I was never really interested in race-relations, per se. as far as I was concerned, blacks and whites who wanted to get along would do so with no further assistance from me. my original artistic motivation was to 'save hiphop'. At the outset, I imagined that CMC would provide a new media which would extend the hiphop aesthetic to sampling multimedia, especially historical texts. I was very excited by the possibility of hyperlinking very dense lyrics a la public enemy to a kind of chomskyesque deconstruction. for me it was experimenting with writing and creating a new style. I thought of it as a mix of Cornel west crossed with Spaulding Gray crossed with George Clinton with a sprinkling of Rudy ray Moore. that was the artistic side.
The other side was the grass roots organization side which could be described in the dynamic we call the 'hookup'. Coming out of the guerrilla video / self-representation school, I thought it absolutely critical that black communities have their own public backchannel which would correct mainstream media distortions as well as directly inform blackfolks everywhere of models of success. Specifically, I believed that every black community organization which would consider publishing a newsletter would publish to the web. that was my webmaster/political angle. the bottom line impetus for that was the misrepresentations of the la riots, American provinciality and what I call the "semiotic swamp". Here is my original working document which outlines The Melioration Project.
It turned out that only a very few places on the Internet sustained the kind of bandwidth for the interactive hiphop provocation, and very few grassroots organizations were ready willing or able to get online. This was 1993, so I waited.
As I wandered the Internet deserts looking for fertile soil I ran smack into any number of hostile tribes. their hostility was often born of ignorance, and direct resistance to bringing the stochastic subjects of race to the sweet determinism of Internet purity. in the end, I found all of my more elevated sensibilities about black cultural production falling on deaf and/or intentionally plugged ears. So I needed to create a website.
I ultimately got hooked into anti-racist politics as a means to enabling all Americans to understand the context for why anyone would be purposefully black, as boohab is. Anti-racist activism has its own intrinsic value in the context of a democracy, and it is certainly a compelling thing to do, but in one way I got into it because I couldn't get a broad enough cross section of people to understand the context of my project to extend hiphop. Furthermore hiphop hit rock bottom, and Cornel West published 'Race Matters'. I felt that the opportunity to do in cyberspace what Spike Lee had done in film or what Anna Devere Smith had done in the theater was still there, but would not reach a critical mass who could comprehend the flavor.
My perspective as a black man is deeply rooted in the prerogatives of the group formerly known as the talented tenth and the post-soul generation. I am very much a part of a part of African American culture which is rarely ever shown to, much less understood by the American mainstream. I despair of its representation, even though there are some artistic works that come close to describing the flavor. but what I do in cyberspace is not about me, all my net writing is a creation, a pedagogical device; it's all purposefully lowercase. so in creating boohab, I try never to get personal or to personalize. it means nothing to me, as a black man, to be understood/accepted. boohab is pure politics, but with some artistic flavor. boohab in that respect represents the public citizen in me - it allows me to be 'derrick bell' without putting my name in jeopardy, sort of like 'TRB'. boohab rarely engages outside of the subjects of race. I have disciplined my whole reason for being in cyberspace to continue the work of boohab, which will (with any luck) soon come to a close.
Black Ambition - What, in your opinion, would be the best
way to use cyberspace to further your ultimate goals?
A: As boohab, provocateur and gadfly, there isn't much new left to do. I would merely be cycling the same materials for newbies. I am satisfied that I have scoped out the pulse of America, and I have every reason to believe that those who are cyberpresent are the more influential of Americans. I've proven to myself that you can have very meaningful dialog between the races which can resolve differences between individuals and really grapple with the most complex of all racial issues in a way that is unprecedented and unrivaled by traditional media. However, I believe that the limits of anti-racist activism, indeed any type of activism in cyberspace are constrained by the way cyberspace is currently structured. Chat rooms encourage chat. Discussion groups encourage discussion. What is required of us as citizens to resolve the more pressing issues of race in society is neither chat nor discussion, although they are healthy and necessary. What is needed is to engage the cyberpresent chatting classes in real political change. And that requires something a bit more involved than what exists today.
A lot of people debate the pros and cons of 'direct representation', and I believe that the new media will be made to accommodate deliberative processes which can change the way citizens consent to be governed. While we have projects like vote-smart, coin-op congress and Thomas to give us a better insight as to what goes on in our official deliberative bodies, it's all read-only. We have yet to close that circle and be able to *write* back. I am a firm believer that Harris and Nielsen are going to eventually be disintermediated. Interest groups will represent themselves from the bottom up on the web, and politicians will have to listen. The next generation of Internet tools will have to begin to flesh out and refine that process.
People who follow other political issues on the net as I have followed race, will be drawn into any process which will allow them to abstract and quantify the broad set of opinions and reasoning they have seen, without a sacrifice of detail. These people have the potential to shape the future of democracy in this country.
Crossover - Why do you bother with such a forum as this, mostly white, upper/middle class, not particularly racist, pretty much clueless when it comes to looking at the world from your vantage point? What keeps you patient with us?
A: I read too many plays by Neil Simon at an impressionable age. But seriously, I think Americans like those in Slate's Fray and Cafe Utne are of the mind to be early adopters of the kind of feedback loop a deliberative forum can produce. Imagine a system which allows you to view the 37 most common pro & con arguments surrounding affirmative action, how 100 influential people weigh in on each of those and the 4 most clear synergistic positions. This is, in my opinion, far superior to wading through 2 years of arguments covering 1200 posts by an indeterminate number of individuals. Ultimately the most compelling reasons and arguments can be linked together and referenced in real time.
Whitefolks of all stripes must, in order to forge a post-racial national identity which is shared across our current color lines, undergo some transformation of their racial identity. They must find an effective and positive manner of evading racial reductions imposed upon them by others, and by themselves. From the provocative position of boohab, you cannot be both 'white' and 'colorblind'. This is a contradiction in terms. that's obvious to some whitefolks who have read through a good number of arguments I have facilitated over the years, and of course many have independently discovered this and done the work themselves. I can't divine how successful these folks have been in changing the white public consciousness. Certainly the leaders of that movement, Ignatiev and other critical whiteness scholars, are on the right track but they are generally laughed at. I began thinking about whiteness back in '92, so I am very pleased to see that finally larger numbers of whitefolks are 'getting it'. several such folks have appeared in cyberspace and we find ourselves in complete agreement. I can only hope their influence increases.
But even without going through all the existentials of post-whiteness, whitefolks can enjoin in anti-racist politics and have done so. Often they have found themselves schocked into recognition when coarse racists post flames which destroy discussions. At such opportunities I like to speak up about the fact that I cannot punch these individuals in the nose, as I would be obliged to in real life. And that makes people aware of the issues of ownership and control as well as the depth at which my seriousness goes.
I must say, however, that I do get sick of answering questions about Louis Farrakhan, as if I cared.
Culture Clash - I notice dramatic cultural differences among different communities, cliques, and tribes on the Internet. But for the most part, these cultural differences don't seem to be highly correlated with race. Do you see the issue as one of a clash among races or as a clash of cultures?
A: I think they are mostly a clash of ideas. What's interesting is how race, class and gender effect what ideas seem to be worth believing. I beleive that is mediated by what society deems appropriate to accept on the personal authority of an individual of a particular race, class & gender.
For example, if we got into a heated discussion about music and a personna named 'scherzo' began badmouthing rap music and instead talked about the superiority of classical piano, we would not connote such a position with the person of Bobby Short, although in real life, knowing Bobby Short, it might make perfect sense. But that is an example which is tangential to racial identity.
If we were talking directly about a racial subject, then racial identity draws near to the surface. People are more likely to say "Well, as a white person I was taught...". In my online experience whitefolks try to minimalize the significance of race, whereas blackfolks try to bring the context directly to the racial. The battle for the appropriate context of discussion racial issues often breaks down by political and racial lines.
Then, the question of standing comes into play. What right does someone have to attempt to change the context of a discussion on a racial subject while saying, "I'm black, and in my experience.."? How much credibility does such a position receive and what does that imply about the audience? Misattribution almost always brings heat. Often, a person who has no idea about the racial identity or political affilation of a poster will castigate their standing en passant. For example, 'Paul' says "People like joe are always caving into the whining of people like jane, and that's why we have Affirmative Action." Nobody said, 'liberal' or 'black', and Joe never claimed to be liberal nor Jane to be black, but the message is loud and clear. What is the likelihood that Paul is a white male conservative? We estimate.
Ugly Net-Racists - Is the internet typical of RL? I think not. It's the higher socio-economic group that has computers - and only a *minority* of Blacks belong to that group. Add to that, the fact that people can be invisible so their ugliness can surface without any threat to their security. Therefore, it would seem that net-racists would have the chance to perform as the evil little toads that they are. Do you find this to be true, Boohab?
I don't believe that there are any ideas 'out there' IRL which are not present on the net. So racism on the net uses pretty much the same language you hear in the street and everywhere else. Simply because there are only 30 million people here instead of 250 million doesn't change things much. In fact, the conversations you get into on the net tend to be much more honest. Futhermore you tend to get involved in a greater variety of conversations with many more people than is common or even possible than IRL. So you are much more likely to discover a wider pattern of ideas, stereotypes, insights and vulgarities. Socioeconomically speaking, individual mobility is accellerated on the net, there are slums and salons here.
Yes it's true that racist toads are likely to mouth off in cyberspace because nobody is going to pop them in the puss, but it's only talk. For all the racism that's on the net, and it's real, ugly, pervasive and shameless, nobody gets beat down by racist cops. On the whole, as a black man, I prefer the racist openness. There was a time early on when I wasn't prepared to accept it. Now I can deal with it.
There is a fine line between speech and conduct on the net which becomes much more clear after some years of online experience. There's a lot of 'drive-by' racist speech which is part of the background noise in certain parts of the net. But then there are individuals who are persistantly disruptive, who see it as their duty to bully, insult, misrepresent themselves, distort conversations and invite others to do the same. This is the kind of conduct that all but destroyed the civility of s.c.a.a.
Racists on the net are not stupider than in real life, just easier to spot.
In Defense of Racists - Do you think that the worst racists on the 'net would be as blatant in real life?
Among their friends, I'm sure that they are. For every blatant racist on the net and in real life, there are a dozen lurkers who find little or nothing to criticize. So who's stopping them anywhere? When I asked the question about criminalization of racism, the majority of netizens responded that they believe that Americans have a right to be racist. "You can't legislate morality", goes the typical argument.
My disagreement is based on the premise that racism is a threat to liberty. Therefore if America defends liberty, then it should combat racism. From that perspective, possession of racist ideas is roughly equivalent to possession of ideas of child molestation. Acts of child molestation are clearly destructive, as are acts of racism, yet racist ideas are protected under the guise of political speech. American society protects racists, and 'little' racist acts are seen as less harmful than 'little' acts of child molestation, and consequently are not considered criminal unless they pass the test of 'discrimination', implying systematic, institutional forms. And that criminality must be tried at the Federal level under the various Constitutional Amendments and Civil Rights Titles. This makes the burden of proof difficult for those suffering racist acts. If people of color seem like they make every little act of racism into a Federal case, it's because that's literally what they must do to receive any justice at all. When the majority of Americans agree that one has a right to be racist, what else can you expect?
Racists on the net can afford to be blatant. Who's stopping them?
On the Fly Tip - What makes boohab so damn fresh?
A: I'm unleashed. I've been able to dip into a lot of flavors and they compliment my native tongue. Totally unrepentent and satisfied with my inner homeboy, I'm grounded and secure. I never let tragedy destroy me, just re-orient my baseline. So every victory is cream. It took years of grief and facing unanswerable questions and hundreds of pages of fine print in my journal agonizing over the arcane. What is America? Why are things fucked up? How am I supposed to deal with this? Am I black? How can I succeed? How do I cope with failure? Most frightening of all I took it public, and opened up bold enough to be laughed at - not for the sake of acceptance, but for the sake of engagement, 'and dem respond!'.
I recognized the power of poetry while trying to explain Bootsy. All you can do is repeat him. Ah, you can't explain him, baby bubba. So I let my own words twist a bit, and labored to lift with a verbal riff. In time, what once went clunk, found the rhythms of funk.
The realization came that history is long and deep. Others bodacious encouraged my actions. Who was I to be called a leader, with only 55 names in my little black book? So there must be more to learn and do. Happy as I was, I just had to get my philosophy straight. And so a new journey began.
Listen closely. It's the simplest and most profound advice. And so I did and became a remix of Emerson, George Clinton, Sonny Rollins, Stephen Crane, Henrik Ibsen, Moliere, Umberto Eco, Richard Feynman, Malcolm X, Akira Kurosawa, Ishmael Reed, Jose Luis Borges, Sandro Chia, Yukio Mishima, Broun Fellinis, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Cornel West, and beleive it or not Booker T. Washington. All that and family too.
I'm only fresh for a while, but recognition makes me smile.
Virtual Race Men - What is the level of sophistication on the issues of race and racism as confronts the USA today?
A: I have every reason to believe that the cyberpresent represent a fairly broad cross section of people who try to have an informed opinion about things. Overall however I'd say that most Americans get their information about race in a very flawed fashion. I have come to believe that the reason this is primarily so has to do with a fundamental lack of self-investigation as regards racial self-interest. People don't ask themselves tough questions about what racial roles they are playing when they engage the subjects of race. And there is generally no way that the average Joe will edged into a serious discussion if he's not already interested somehow. Because of that most white Americans believe that studying race is the same thing as practicing racism. People of color generally recognize that some part of their ability to succeed in America is determined by how well they handle racial issues.
Issues of race always inevitably involve questions of personal identity, I believe there is a personal component which affects peoples ability to absorb. Race is unique in that respect.
Practically speaking, people do a bit of thrashing and raging in provocative discussions because most are unable to depersonalize what they are hearing to the proper extent. Many take things too personally and start talking about slaves they never owned or somebody who kicked sand in their face as a child, others abstract the subject so much that they end up talking about Thomas Jefferson and Rwanda when the subject is bilingual education.
People who get past that fall roughly into three camps. Newbies, Gadflies and Scholars. Newbies want to make friends. They want to get along and prove that they can, and they see this as significant to America's well being. Newbies are not political, so they get on my nerves. Inevitably a newbie will quote Rodney King, or talk about their interracial sweetheart. It's all very Kathy Lee. Gadflies are political, and have a reasonably informed point of view. At the very least, they will sustain an interest in several subjects, instead of just Affirmative Action or just Colin Powell.. Some are bigoted, most have an identifiable bias. Just about all of the real racists fall at this level of sophistication. Most can identify and quote major public figures and books on the subject matters, They are the most fun to engage. Scholars will have inevitably read more than just 'The Bell Curve' or 'Race Matters' which are the two most often quoted books, (but 50 to 1 in favor of Murray & Herrnstein). A few, like myself, cross over into multiple forums and keep in mind a good set of facts and arguments.
I'd say that there are about 15 - 20 individuals whom I would consider Scholars out there in cyberspace who consistently contribute and maintain as best they can, an intellectually satisfying level of dialog on the subjects of race in public discussion groups. There are many Gadflies as well who always make the conversation interesting, but they do so occasionally and will not generally cite a wide variety of sources for their information. A Gadfly ultimately doesn't care what you think. Scholars are invested in change.
In order to facilitate some online scholarship, I have created the Race Man's Home Companion. My angle is simple. A proper citizen should be credibly anti-racist, no matter what their racial identity. Here's how.
Virtual vs RL Do you see a difference in the online levels of this sophistication vs. "real life"?
A: I don't engage people in racial discussions in real life, and have no real desire to do so. It's because I have come to such a sophisticated and nuanced level of comprehension through my interactions with people online. Plus, being a curmudgeon, I don't want to have to punch any idiot in the nose (c.f. Ellison). But to answer your question directly, I think it unlikely to achieve the level of sophistication in real life that you can achieve online. Take any group of Americans and put them in a room for as long as they can stand each other and they will achieve X level of understanding. Online, that can easily be tripled.
Since I figure that the online population is representative, what I notice is the difference in sophistication between discussion spaces. Although that is often a function of the personalities involved, the way spaces are constructed and moderated makes a very big difference in the level of sophisticated understanding people can reach.
TCP/IB - Could you tell us how race travels over networks?
A: People generally self-identify when it comes down to it, although some folks purposefully spoof their racial identity. There are a great number of conversations around the subject of race in which identity plays a small or no part, but then there are many in which the experience of reckoning with one's racial identity directly effects one's credibility. In my net experience, whitefolks generally show up as literarily white when those kinds of subjects arise.
As for spoofing, it never completely suceeds. Americans are more aware of race than they think, even though they do less hard thinking about race than they are generally aware.
- The Circle of Life - Do find that internet discussions on race follow a fairly predictable pattern or do you you typically get surprising and insightful dialogue?
I continued to be pleasantly surprised and completely grossed out for about 2 years. I would call that a grand cycle in Internet conversation life. But after abut four years it is rare that I am inspired to create anything which might outstrip my original. I am repeating myself as boohab at this point, but that is still very useful for large numbers of people who haven't heard 50 different discussions about race and all of the arguments inside those. There is a tremendous amount of extraordinary material out in the major discussion groups. It's just me, I've seen most of it.
In a minor cycle of Internet life, which is roughly 6 months, subjects will be repeated and the same pros and cons will be repeated by a different set of participants. There is always an opportunity to show new folks the ropes. But you really have to be around at least a year to grapple with the extent of dialog that goes on about the racial subjects like Ebonics, Affirmative Action, Multiculturalism, Police Brutality, Republicans & Race, Afrocentrism, Black folks in the News, Racial Uplift, The Bell Curve (still), Black Intellectuals, Blacks & Education, Black Conservatives, Black on Black Crime, Black Crime, Can Blacks Be Racist... etc. etc. I have compiled a FAQ covering a couple dozen topics lightly.
There remain a dozen or so individuals who are completely original thinkers who have done a great deal to keep conversations interesting. And of course there is always something racial in the news to spark debate. But in the end, there are a finite number of compelling discussions which have relevent facts. Most everything else is rehash. The significant problem is that nobody of any regard is willing to break down the walls of academy or journalism and wade out into the Internet real world. In the world of ideas, the Internet is very foreboding, not because of its popularly reported vapidity and vulgarity, but because there are some extraordinary thinkers out there who are quite capable and willing to destroy sloppy thinking. I believe that most mainstream magazine publishers who throw together their two-bit discussion sites actually think that the quality of Internet discussion rarely rises above the hoi polloi, but they are mistaken.
I still find a great number of writers and commentators on the subjects of race to be compelling and insightful and I would love to see them come on line. Folks like Glenn Loury, Albert Murray, Brent Staples, Ellis Cose, Patricia J. Williams, Judge Higgenbotham, Christopher Edley, Jr., Derrick Bell, Cornel West, bell hooks, Robin Kelley, Adolph Reed, Michael Dyson, Gina Dent, Hazel Carby, Richard Rodriguez. But is that ever going to happen? I believe these people have a vested interest in paid publication and they are unlikely to engage the public directly. On the other hand, perhaps this world is as alien to them as academic publishing is to me.
Somebody said, race is not rocket science, it's harder than rocket science, and we don't send people to the moon any longer.
Minority Participation - Describe what measures you would
take to get more minorities on the internet, such as 1) providing more government
assistance to purchase computers 2) asking computer companies to provide discounts for
those living in depressed economic areas 3) funding for inner-city schools to get on the
"information superhighway", etc. (the above are examples, not criteria).
When I first started on the real Internet, through panix.com back in '92, "nobody" was online. Computers cost at least 2 grand, and ppp had yet to be perfected. So my initial assumptions were that black folks might create an alternate network, and sure enough, brothers were working fidonet. The bbs world was clunky and cheap, but it was real networking and people were getting hooked up. At the time, I was part of the open mike poetry circuit and also a 'guerrila poet'. I was one of the speakers at the '7th avenue romp' on 'white flight friday', a march led by William Kunstler and others in protest of police brutality in Los Angeles. Part of my interest was to see those people who might organize a coffeehouse or put together a newsletter have the technical capability of communicating with such others nationwide. I would have been happy with 20 strategic networked computers in progressive hangouts across the country. The political activists had not hooked up with the technology people, so much of the political talk on fidonet was weak, and the technophobia of the 'heads' was pathetic. I sought to bridge the gap.
So the whole 'minority interest' argument has always sounded weak to me, because the pioneers were already doing work. If you lived in LA and were hooked up to the political/poetry scene, then you had already taken a trip to the Good Life Cafe, Eso Wan Books, Aquarian Books and the World Stage. You might have already talked to Quincy Troupe about the Black Arts Movement or Donald Bakeer about the history of the Crips. These were the folks with the serious content. Now I think there were plenty of good reasons to get such people hooked into electronic publication, and I also was very high on the idea of providing archived transcripts of such seminars and speeches. But I was never convinced that the mere existence of networks would draw huge numbers of people who otherwise did not pay attention to such events.
Today, there is a great deal of content of general interest on the net, and brand new computers are as cheap as old beat up cars. Access is cheaper than cable tv and software is simple enough for fifth graders to run. I recognize that the net is still out of the economic reach of millions of people, however what's more important is the availability and utility of content to the unwired masses. Nobody really has any idea what people who are off the net expect and want from the net. Well, I certainly don't. And I believe that if those people, whoever they are, wherever they are don't decide for themselves what kind of networking they should do, then the net will be no more useful to them than television.
So I see it as an important function for people who have network access to demonstrate to the 'internet indigent' the infinite possibilities, listen and build. That has to take place at the community level. What I oppose is the assumption that just because yuppies are doing it, that poor folks should do it or be 'left behind'.
Government assistance will be too slow. If it's done at all, it should be done in the form of block grants for network infrastructure. For example, a backbone to network public schools with community centers, libraries, and malls. In Los Angeles, for example, there are police stations in malls which often double as 'community centers'. A mall would be an excellent place for networked computers. In such places, there needs to be at least 10 machines, you couldn't run a video arcade with just 4 boxes, I can't understand why public libraries never seem to have more than 2 or 3.
I don't want to be in the position to second-guess the reasons that only 5 out of 31 black Americans are online. I've been in the computer business myself for 16 years and I'm not impressed by the hype. Being online for its own sake is a waste of time. (My daughter is sitting at my feet as I type, trying to make herself a paper airplane that I could be folding). Again, if poor blacks and latinos don't have networked computers, I beleive it is primarily because they don't see a compelling interest to get them. There is little awareness of what useful content resides on, or will be built on the internet. But I do beleive that they would like to hookup as individuals across the distances.
The Talented Tenth - I've been wanting to ask you about your
references to DuBois' ideas concerning the "Talented Tenth." Do you subscribe to
that view, and if so, how would you define the "Talented Tenth," and do you
think the net has any function for these people? I also wonder if you think the net could
be a vehicle for promoting the 13 solutions you listed in your
site. My main question, though, is what had you hoped the net would do for race issues and
how and why has it failed thus far in your view.
I often refer to myself as "a previously proud member of the group formerly known as the talented tenth". Before I understood what DuBois was all about, and actually I still don't, I knew that talented tenth was what was expected of me. You are born into this, I grew up in it, and never really seriously abandoned the concept until I was about 24 years old.
I say the former group because I believe that they have split into two camps, the old school and the progressives. Both groups despair of uplifting the race in any massive way, rather they take an 'each one teach one' approach. (By the way, this is all dirty laundry, consider yourself privileged). The primary difference between the old school and the progressives is found in the role of the church and political activism. The old school might best be characterized by Jesse Jackson, the progressive school by bell hooks. Both are certainly dedicated uplift, accepting piecemeal progress, but the progressives are much more likely to speak in multicultural, post-modern terms.
I say previously proud because I can't say that I am absolutely committed to uplift. I don't follow the program. I contribute, but I'm not a team player - I'm too mercurial. Consider the fact that I am talking to you.
The cadre of the Talent Tenth has always been somewhat elusive, yet it has a set of ways and means, reasons and rhetoric that are fairly easy to identify. Raisons d'etre of early black internet pioneers show up on my TT radar. I should know, because even though I don't have faith in the concept of racial unity, which I believe to be a fundamental TT principle, in some way boohab's activity is a hedge. Blacks in my generation would like to be able to claim TT status and have that status negotiable in America, but you rarely hear comments like "I very much disagree with Al Sharpton, but you've got to respect him for standing with his people no matter what." in the mainstream. So race raising can be something of a covert activity despite the fact that it can be so fundamentally civilizing. It's often simply not respectable to do right for black folks, no matter how noble one's orientation. So although positive things are being accomplished, TT folks are not as loud as they are proud.
The net has failed the politics of race only to the extent that its potential to change politics in general has not yet been realized. Primarily that is because the Internet competes with broadcast and print media. Both have slandered the net's credibility and both are seen to be more accurate judges of what the Internet is and does than the Internet itself. As more people get online, that will change. But most important political limitation of the Internet is structural, or rather I should say it lacks the political 'killer app'. The structure of discussion groups where politics is discussed does not allow groups of interest to represent themselves in an appropriate manner. Computer moderated discussion groups clearly can facilitate discussions which are very sophisticated. However, the net has yet to create an equivalent of Robert's Rules of Order which allows structured deliberation. The end result is that self-identified issue-oriented interest groups cannot coalesce.
To the extent that race as a subject matter is explored and discussed freely, I consider boohab's work a success in ways that are impossible to replicate in any other medium. Still the matter of resolution lies before us.
Harmonic Racial Convergence - Will the internet become a place where all races will converge as one?
A: we do converge. the problem is that we don't resolve anything. we rant and rage and get down to a lot of honest emotions and considered opinions. in my view the internet has demonstrated its ability to facilitate the holy grail of racial 'dialog' in ways no other medium has. yet if you were to scroll through the 7000 some odd posts over in the cnn community webchat area you will find nothing resembling consensus or a plan of action. that speaks more to the current design of internet discussion groups than a lack of ability or willingness of participants.
so the next phase of internet development has to take place to facilitate the ability for groups of interest to coalesce, collaborate and compose solutions. what will emerge are clearly multiethnic coalitions who are better informed than most are today.
The above is a loaded question so how can it be taken seriously?
I take it very seriously. The trick is finding out where in the whole internet, in the whole nation where such questions are taken and dealt with seriously.
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