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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?
I ask not because I want to spend time speculating about "intentions." I find speculating about intentions to be ultimately unsuccessful in changing things or making things better or different.
I ask because there is a long history in the U.S. (and other places as well), of especially white centered leftist groups going round and round with communities of color about "diversity" and "inclusion".
And yet, at the same time, none of these groups that are so concerned about "diversity" or "inclusion" really have any idea what's going on in any community of color, much less the communities that live one google search away from them. They're not even sure if we exist.
So why do they care if none of us showed up to their party?
But let me back up a minute here.
(read more after the jump)
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