the whiteness of the echo chamber
Mar. 19th, 2007 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaA while ago brownfemipower commented on the fact that her post in December on the blogosphere controversy between (white) radical feminists and (white) transactivists received widespread attention and fostered a huge number of replies -- but when she sought to explore the racial dimensions of the debate she encountered an eerie silence. She realized that her comments on the topic had become merely another part of an ongoing white dialogue.
Now i see, via pandagon, that Garrison Keillor has apologized for his recent essay which drew considerable ire -- notably from Dan Savage. I note, with a considerable uneasiness in my gut, that all of the controversy surrounds "two sentences" worth of homophobia and completely overlooks the racist overtones of half his essay. (Read the comments for further clarification.)
These are examples of fundamentally the same issue: the blogosphere has become an echo chamber in which certain issues gain traction and grab attention, while other issues are shouted down. And what i'm seeing here disturbs me: a fundamental unwillingness to explore more than one dimension of an issue at any time. If race is not the primary aspect of an issue being discussed, IOW if it is not the "topic under discussion" from the very beginning, any attempts to raise it as a concern are ignored and shouted down.
Add this to my list of concerns about the viability of the blogosphere as genuine discourse.
Now i see, via pandagon, that Garrison Keillor has apologized for his recent essay which drew considerable ire -- notably from Dan Savage. I note, with a considerable uneasiness in my gut, that all of the controversy surrounds "two sentences" worth of homophobia and completely overlooks the racist overtones of half his essay. (Read the comments for further clarification.)
These are examples of fundamentally the same issue: the blogosphere has become an echo chamber in which certain issues gain traction and grab attention, while other issues are shouted down. And what i'm seeing here disturbs me: a fundamental unwillingness to explore more than one dimension of an issue at any time. If race is not the primary aspect of an issue being discussed, IOW if it is not the "topic under discussion" from the very beginning, any attempts to raise it as a concern are ignored and shouted down.
Add this to my list of concerns about the viability of the blogosphere as genuine discourse.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-20 02:12 am (UTC)I felt like Savage did his so well that it 100% led my mind to think of things like I wanted to bring up--such as fifties kids of other races in the same time period who took other family configurations & work roles for granted. It seemed that Dan writing counterexamples & counterarguments about one specific subset of people the [excellent] way he did would surely lead to more thoughts in more minds about potential counterexmples & counterarguments about other subsets of people than any poorly-written counterexamples & counterarguments about those other subsets of people, coming from me, could.