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Digital White Flight: On Twitter and Race

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Twitter and Race
Two major events have happened in the last few days involving Twitter
and race. On Sunday night, during The BET awards, the trending topics were:
The BET Awards, Beyonce, Ne-Yo, BBD, Mary Mary, Keith Sweat, Tiny
and Toya.

Yesterday afternoon, the trending topic became “fakeassnigga”
because many, presumably Black, folks were retweeting @lilduval
who tweeted about “fakeassniggas.”

Then all of a sudden the trending topic, “fakeassnigga” was gone.

The Twitter administrators apparently deleted it.

This action reminded me that as much as we think that the tweets
are ours, there is in fact a firewall, and by using the website we have
consented to Twitters written and unwritten rules of usage.

In response to the deletion, I tweeted, “Wassup with the digital race scrubbing”
and “Why should we expect people to be any less racist online than they
are offline?”

I then received a direct message from @allaboutgeorge for a link
to danah boyd’s essay, “Viewing Class Divisions through Facebook
and Myspace.”

boyd’s essay provides an accessible theoretical framework
for understanding race, class and social stratification on the internet.
The essay was exactly what I needed to read at the moment.

Digital White Flight
boyd’s general thesis is that some teens are flocking to Facebook
and others are going to Myspace and their reasons for doing so have
to do with class.

She observed that the issue wasn’t that Facebook wasn’t becoming larger
than Myspace. The issue is socio-economic class. She writes,

Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture
is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some
teens are flocking to Facebook. Who goes where gets kinda sticky…
probably because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.

Which brings me to her general thesis which is that “what we do in society is
mirrored in our behavior online.”

She has four notable points.
The first is that,

As a society, we have strong class divisions and we project these values onto our kids. MySpace and Facebook seem to be showcasing this division quite well. My hope in writing this out is to point out that many of our assumptions are problematic and the internet often reinforces our views instead of challenging them.

The second is that Facebook appeals to teens who,

tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to
college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are
primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking
forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens,
“burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths,
gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant
high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t
go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school.
These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after
schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace.
MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school
because they are geeks, freaks, or queers..

The third is that what we do in society is mirrored in our behavior online.
She writes,

The division around MySpace and Facebook is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values. Embedded in that is a challenge to a lot of our assumptions about who does what. The “good” kids are doing more “bad” things than we are willing to acknowledge (because they’re the pride and joy of upwardly mobile parents). And, guess what? They’re doing those same bad things online and offline. At the same time, the language and style of the “bad” kids offends most upwardly mobile adults. We see this offline as well. I’ve always been fascinated watching adults walk to the other side of the street when a group of black kids sporting hip-hop style approach. The aesthetics alone offend and most privileged folks project the worst ideas onto any who don that style.

Lastly, and I was surprised to learn this, but there is apparently a
class division in the military that is reflected in social network usage.
boyd writes,

A month ago, the military banned MySpace but not Facebook. This
was a very interesting move because the division in the military
reflects the division in high schools. Soldiers are on MySpace;
officers are on Facebook. Facebook is extremely popular in the
military, but it’s not the SNS of choice for 18-year old soldiers,
a group that is primarily from poorer, less educated
communities. They are using MySpace.

In light of boyd’s Facebook & Class doctrine, I began to see Twitter’s
move to erase “fakeass nigga” from the trending topics
as a move to protect its brand, and prevent it from looking
too young, urban, working class and ghetto. In some ways,
it can be seen as an effort to remain on the hegemonic,
Facebook side of the equation instead of the moving closer to
the subalternative Myspace side.

Lets take a look at some of the comments made
about the “fakeassnigga” trend by some of the
presumably white, users,

@zacharyskinner Why do retarded subjects like “Fake Ass Nigga” keep
becoming trending topics? Is twitter being overrun by the idiot crowd

@moohalaa I don’t have a “Fake Ass Nigga” clue why its a trending topic, I
must admit

@sandy7172cat OMG! This “Fake Ass Nigga” is horrible. Twitter you should be
ashamed.

@Kashaseptember Why are all these black people on trending topics. Neyo, Beyonce,
Tyra, Jamie Fox. Is it black history month
again? LOL.

During The BET Awards some of the tweets were saved as screen shots
and posted on Tumblr, on the site titled, “OMG! Black People”
Tumblr, took the site down. In true internet fashion the , OMG! Black People
sprung up on WordPress. Here are some of the tweets,

@peggyrossmanith The current trending topics make me sad for America.

@Jennibenn1 screw these stupid trending topics, I am going to bed

@brighteyesjulie did anyone see the trendning topics. I don’t think this is
a very good neighborhood. Lock the doors kids.

@sweethayle So many black people!

@rolololodan Why are all the trending topics about the BET awards.
Fuck that channel.

In many ways, what we are seeing on Twitter are the racial
comments that folks would normally keep to themselves,
or only mention to their peers with whom they feel safe.

These tweets run counter to the mainstream press’s notion
of a post racial America. Keep in mind that I write this with
the understanding that noticing and understanding our contradictions
is the only way we can reconcile them and have real change
and progress.

The added dimension of the internet means that off handed
comments that where once private and racial are now public,
racial, screen saved and posted on blogs.

In many ways, Iwe as a nation are so afraid of dealing
with race and class that we hope a technology will come along
and serve as some sort of microwave social justice tool that will
and deal with it for us. The consequences of four hundred years of
chattel slavery will not be erased with the internet.

The truth is that technology will only further magnify the stereotypes,
class distinctions and our general efforts to avoid dealing with each other.

boyd’s research, Twitter’s censorship and the comments made during
The BET awards evidence this.

Who we are in our daily lives is who we are online, a key board,
some plastic a hard drive will never change that.

What do you think of the removal of the trending topics?

What do you think of danah boyd’s theory about Facebook, Myspace
and digital class distinctions?

Have you noticed anyhing else racial that has been censored recently
online?

The Children of Alcoholics Either Marry One or Become One

by

Me and Dig Dug in August ’05. I had no idea at the time,

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but my whole world was about to shake.

I woke up this morning with this thought, the title of the post,
in my head, probably because it ties into so many other things
that I have been thinking about, as usual.

Thinking. Thinking about Michael Jackson, about stolen
childhoods, about adult onset addiction and what it means
to live in a culture that doesn’t have a language to grieve.

Thinking and observing the ways in which we are dealing
with Micheal Jackson’s death. Thinking that if we do not
deal with our history as a people,as Americans, as Black
people, as the children of abusive people, we will be
trapped in it and triggered into our childhood fears
whenever any new loss occurs.

A dear friend of mine has been recently doing work on dealing
with his childhood. It’s painful to watch, yet awesome because
I suspect it will make him a more human human. Often times,
I don’t know what to say when he tells me about making a
connection between something janky from his childhood
that carried over into his adult life, so I just sit there speechless
and attentive, trying to be a good friend.

My father has both struggled with an addiction for twenty years
and he also works incredibly hard everyday to maintain his
sobriety. Four years ago, in July of 2005, he came back east to visit me
and to reconnect with his momma and forgive her for giving
him up for adoption. It was incredible. In watching him do this,
instead of telling me who a man, a human was, he showed me.

He showed me the power of forgiveness.The importance of humility.
He showed me the gift of not harboring resentments. He showed
me that if he could forgive her, then I should forgive him, if I
already hadn’t. He showed me that adult Black men, that men,
did in fact do the necessary emotional work to get their family
lives and emotional lives in order. Despite what CNN’s Black in
America, the Black intellectual or Black Politician du jour
were saying.

This visit is material because my grandmother died in March of
2007, just two years after that visit.

You and I know that there is nothing quite like a person dying
before you can tell them, I am sorry or I forgive you.

He showed me that a man, a man who has dedicated his life to
healing his own wounds from 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago must
make it a priority to deal with the events from childhood that
never have been addressed, or else he will be trapped by them.

It was on this trip that my father noticed that I was “angry.” Of
course I was. Anger is often times the only emotion that we
are permitted to have publicly. Yet, there is a caveat for Black
women, as we are presumed to have attitudes and be angry
often times before we even open our mouths. This
of course is rooted in myth of Black women that go back to
slavery. Damn near everybody in East Oakland is angry and
with good reason. East Oakland houses the bodies that
capitalism no longer needs, (to a greater or lesser extent.)

But trip, I wasn’t in East Oakland. I was in downtown Brooklyn,
bourgie as all get out, about to get married and go to law school.
What did I have to be angry about?

Well, in the ensuing months, the angry ripped through some
more relationships and played a huge role in my ability to adjust
to law school. It also played an active role in killing two relationships,
and in killing credit score (which was perfect when I started) by
shopping instead of dealing with the grind that is law school by
developing new tools to cope. Instead I tried to assimilate into the
existing culture of play hard and work hard and I became a little
bit to comfortable with cappuccino’s in the morning and Black label
at night and trying to read four hundred pages in between.

Some days I failed miserably, on others, I knocked it out the box.

However, the above three tendencies were bad for the wallet,
bad for the kidneys, bad for my eye sight. After Dee Dee got
stolen in Prospect Park, and I moved back to the Bay, it was
clearly a sign that I had enough and I started to deal with
how I reacted to the anger triggers head on. That was fun.

Anger is a drug, anger is also a secondary emotion that is usually
a cover for how we really feel. When I accepted that, I became willing
to be the person that I was put here to be, not the person
reacting to twenty years ago, and certainly not the person
that my friends or family thought I should be.

Every since I learned of Michael’s death, I have been thinking about
childhoods and the way we grieve or don’t grieve in our society.

I have been thinking about how he provided the soundtrack to
our childhoods, yet he was denied one.

This post is for the kids who had no childhoods. For the Michael
Jackson’s of the world who for one reason or another got robbed
of theirs. To be fair to my parents, I had an awesome childhood, until
Crack came, that is. It was awesome and irreplaceable. Both pre and
post Crack, I couldn’t or wouldn’t change it, it made me who I am.

I only hope that for anyone reading this who may see a little
Michael Jackson getting robbed of his or her childhood,
steps in to do something.

No one stepped in for him.

Further Reading
The Road Less Traveled
Homecoming
All About Love

No questions for this post.
A little too deep, feel me?
Thoughts?

Douch Bags, Wife Beaters and Vagina Music

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I was reading the Bitch Blog this morning when, I came
across a post on Vagina Music by Andi Zeisler.

I instantly suspected that Vagina music was derisive term
because vagina’s are used in popular language to describe
things that we hate, because we are socialized to hate women.

Our use of language reflects our reality.
As I read it, my suspicion was confirmed. Andi Zeisler writes,

But it wasn?t until I heard an acquaintance refer to Coldplay as ?vagina music? that I began to rethink my own casual use of the phrase as a catchall descriptor for the descendants of Cris Williamson and Tracy Chapman. Because , while I am no fan of Coldplay… it?s clear that describing them as vagina music was not this person?s way of saying that their latest album reminded him of the oeuvre of Paula Cole.

So from this, we can infer that vagina music is not only music that others feel subjected to/wish to avoid, or music that sounds generically female, it?s music for pussies. And pussies are pussies because they?re?like women.

Masculinity, in mainstream American culture is largely
defined by trying to be oppressive or violent towards
other men, and to most certainly be oppressive towards
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of women.

Which leads me to the question, without dominating women, what
would American masculinity look like?

We use language to organize how we relate to one another
in the world. I was reminded of how our word choices can
normalize the hatred of women when I read the following
passage in Taking Back God American Women for Religious
Equallity by Laura Tannenbaum. She writes,

…inclusive language is needed because words and the images
they evoke, have the power to shape our attitudes: male dominant language creates and reinforces a hierarchical order in which women are regarded as subordinate; words indicate our basic belief and assumptions about ourselves, about others and about God.

Again. Words indicate our basic belief and assumptions about
ourselves about others and about God.

Calling a group of men a “girls” is an insult because in a
system where men are dominant and women are
dominated, the last thing the world you want to be is a
woman or gay.

I do not refer to mixed gendered groups of people as
“guys.” I call them folks or if they are my friends “party people.”

I use this because I try and use language that reflects an
understanding of how gender and power is obtained and
maintained in pop culture, in mainstream media and day to day life.

Our language and our laws reflect a tendency to classify humans
as men by default.

Being a man is not the default status of humanity.
Being a girl is not an insult.
If I believed that hype, I might hate myself.

The Pervasiveness of the Douche Bag
If a douche bag is a feminine hygiene product, why is it used to describe
people in general and men specifically who are inconsiderate
and self centered?

What exactly is idiot like, inconsiderate, self centered or moron like
about a feminine hygiene product?

The passive acceptance of the usage of the term is indicative of our
acceptance of the public dislike of vagina’s. The loose usage of the
term indicates passive acceptance of the public hatred of femininity
and women.

Which brings me to wifebeaters. I don’t call white tank tops
wife beaters I call them white tanks. If I am in a real snarky
mood I call them wife killers which completly throws people off.

Why wife killers?

The majority of women killed in this country are murdered by
an intimate partner.

I would imagine that the term is derived from the stereotype of
a white beer drinking man in rural America who beats his wife.

I will concede that this steroetype may be based in fact. However,
describing a t-shirt as a wife beater when most women murdered
are killed by their intimate partners is careless and perpetuates the
notion that hitting women (and people) expected and for that matter
is accepted.

From Vagina music, to douche bags and wife beaters, the
ways in which our day to language reflects our tendency to
normalized hatred towards women.

Have you given any thought to how the language that we use
reinforces stereotypes and gender hierarchies?

You ever thought about what a douche bag is and why
it is an insult? Am I wrong?

Or does language in fact reflect the way we see women?

**This post was informed by Douche Bags and Wife Beaters

The End of Journalism, the Beginning of the Future

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A couple of weeks ago on Twitter, Toure went back and forth with
several people, one of which was Aliya S. King, on the future or
the end of journalism.

Given the dismissiveness of Toure’s tone, I was reminded
of calling Derrick Bell a couple of years ago, as I was fighting
being dismissed from law school. Yes, I picked up the phone
and called him, told him my situation and requested some
advice. My aunt was on me to advocate for myself, to not be
a victim and to show me how to be empowered. It is an
important lesson that I carry with me every day.

While Professor Bell, was kind and encouraging, he is also a
lawyer, and as such he asked me period point blank “Are you
sure you are meant to be an attorney?” My feelings were hurt
and I blinked back the tears. It felt like he was assessing my
ability, without knowing me very well. In reality, he was explaining
to me how I would possibly be perceived and, hence forced
me to think about what was the best option for me, not simply
what I wanted to do.

He also understood and explained to me the pedagogy of law
school and the ways in which it isn’t beneficial to Black folks,
or so called “at risk” populations.

He changed my life that day. Professor Bell is a man who
resigned from Harvard’s Law School in the mid nineties
over its unwillingness to tenure “a” Black woman
professor. I respect him. He put his money where his
mouth was, which influenced my willingness to call him and be
vulnerable. At that time, I was still considering going back to
law school. His point was that people, implicitly white
people, from my school with excellent grades can have
a challenging time finding work, so he urged me to really
think about my whether being an attorney was meant for
me.

Well. I told my then partner, *David, about our conversation,
and his response was, “You are a child of God, it is not for
him nor anyone to say what are you are to do with your
career or your life.” I instantly perked up and felt protected
and little less sad.

I thought of this child of God moment when I read King’s
piece on on her exchange with Toure.

I was also reminded of an editorial that I came across recently in
Art Voices Magazine. In April, Terrence Sanders, the publisher
wrote an eloquent, powerful and vulnerable editorial letter
last month, that in many ways captured the sentiment of the
you are a child of God moment. He writes,

I was told by my mother that when I was three months old, my biological father attempted to suffocate me while she was out shopping. She left him and relocated to NYC, where she re-married a Marine who had just completed a tour of duty in Vietnam. I was raised in tenements and housing projects on Manhattan?s Lower East Side, I was exposed to asbestos and lead poisoning. I was categorized as a ?have not,? I attended Head Start, I hated school, I was sent to schools that taught me just enough. My neighbors were Chinese, Jews, Italians, Hispanics; I was physically abused by my stepfather until I was 16 years old, when ran away from home. I slept in 24 hour movie theaters on 42nd street, park benches on the FDR drive, rooftops of housing projects, and trains. I was exposed to petty criminal elements during my informative years. I was lost, I had no skills to survive in a capitalist regime; my role models were actors, athletes and Jesus….

…In retrospect, I never gave up on myself, I didn?t want to be a slave or live in fear, I didn?t want to walk amongst the walking dead. When we visit the information channel or the news we mainly cialis 5mg price across the difficulties which the men and it may lead to a great deal of shame and embarrassment. After the physician approves the order, medications online purchase of cialis then gets dispatched to the customer at their home or office. As stated earlier, a burn (oxidation) will lead to a scar (hyperplasia and buy levitra canada fibrosis). So bang upon this solution in order to get relieved from the problems & thus cheapest brand viagra secure the health of human hair follicles. I?m an Artist, my son?s an Artist in his 2nd year at Cooper Union. Art and Art alone saved my life; it completes me. It is my therapy, my weapon of choice; it helps me to cope with the day-to-day struggles of being a human being. My contribution to humanity will be my art, my voice, and in that and that alone I am alive.

Never let anyone tell you what you what you can and cannot do, let my life be an example. Listen to that inner voice, and not power-hungry elitists with hidden agendas. While they are the fraud, Artists are the truth. We are in the game, and they are on the sidelines. So, I stand before you stripped naked and not afraid to bare my soul. I created my own jobs, my own opportunities, and now I?m living the dream.

Best Regards,

Terrence Sanders, Editor & Publisher more here.

Yes. Terrence gets it. In many ways he is like Camus
in his understanding of how art and humanity functions.

Yet, that doesn’t take care of the messiness of figuring out how
to make a living as an artist.

Don’t get it twisted. I understand that the news, journalism and
advertising landscape will never look the way that it has in the past.
Three reasons come to mind, based on ideas from people who
are experts in their respective areas.

Kevin Kelly says that data linking is the future.

David Simon says that corporations screwed newspapers
by treating copy with contempt, worshiping advertisements,
and passing along corporate profits to shareholders instead
of investing in journalist who could and arguably would
create copy that people would WANT to pay for online.

Chris Anderson says that there will be two versions of
everything available on the internet. He was
quoted last week saying that, “Everything that becomes
digital will become free. There will be a free version,
either you will be competing with free or giving it
away for free and selling something else. If it is
not zero today, it will be zero tomorrow.”

And lastly, The Washington Post just fired one of the most
analytical, largely bipartisan and accessible cats covering the
White House, Dan Froomkin.

The ground is in fact moving beneath us. But I was raised
with earthquakes, so we know what it is.
At the end of the day, If one wants to write, write. If you want
to write, and can’t, don’t do it. It will work its way out. For true,
if writing has gotten a hold of you it will not turn you a loose.

Trust me, I learned this the hard way. For example, last March,
I wrote about Honey Magazine, Kierna Mayo and my personal
process of accepting the fact that I am a writer.

Last fall, I used some of my blog posts on hip hop, feminism
and labor and other personal experiences as fodder for my
grad school applications. This is material because, if I am
passionate enough to spend my time blogging about it, then
studying the same issues in a classroom setting arguably
is for more enticing than say, civil procedure. I am happy to
say that I will be a graduate student in the fall.

I mention this because I had to accept that I was a writer.

No one could do this for me.

When I accepted this, I set out on a course to act like one,
to choose my goals and take the necessary steps to
try and achieve them.

I hope that this helps you accept the writer, the artist in you.

Related Post’s
Is Blogging Journalism?
Cognitive Surplus: Did TV Kill the Book?
The Curse of Being a Black Artist


Thought about being an artist lately?
How do you shut out the critics, but take their advice
about being cautious seriously?

PSK, what does it all mean? <<<>

How has ’09 been?

*Not his real name

Girls and Math

by


Last month I spent 30 minutes of a 50 minute tutoring session
 trying to teach a 12 year old year the common denominator.

Often times, as a tutor, it is hard to teach a young person
what you take for granted for knowing, almost intuitively.

But somewhere in the distant past, someone hung in there
with me, so show me the common denominator.

When I noticed that she just started guessing answers I said,
“I know that you can do this work, you just have to take you
time and follow the rules. Math is a language, and it is linear,
you cannot guess at the correct answer. Learn the steps,
and follow them every time and you will get the correct answer.
I know that you know how to do this.”

A week later, I was tutoring another young lady, 12, with a higher
math capacity, but get this, she was still visibly uncomfortable
doing the work.

I mentioned this to another tutor and her response
was, “Yeah, the girls think that math is for boys.”

The more I paid attentive the more I noticed, that the girls,
regardless of capacity to do the work, looked really uncomfortable
doing the work.

So I started paying attention to the boys. Some of them, ranging in
ages from 9-12, were better than others, many were on grade level
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their tendency and will to sit there through the tedium of doing 12
triple digit multiplication problems, 15 fraction conversation
problems, and 10 long division problems.

Page after tedious page, some grumble, some were right at home.
I realized that doing math problems is a kind of meditation.
When I told Birkhold about the distinction he said that math is
a masculine gender performance and that there have been
oodles of studies on math, girls and gender performance.

He also said that girls being scared of math is part and parcel to
the maintenance of women being oppressed and maintaining
capitalism. I just looked at him like whhhhutuuuuuuuut?

He responded saying that the two engines of capitalism are
entrepreneurship and scientific and techonological advances.
You need math in order to do all of these successfully. So, by
making it the domain of men, we undermine the future
prosperity of girls.

Who knew?

Math and Girls any thoughts?

Teach any young people math lately?

What was the outcome?

What are three material changes that
we can make to change math education for
children in general and girls specifically?