SCN: Race and cyberspace

[Steve]

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by Henry Jenkins, director, Program in Comparative Media  
Studies, MIT

(Technology Review)---"In Cyberspace, nobody knows your race 
unless you tell them. Do you tell?” 

Several years ago, I put this slogan on a poster advertising an MIT-
hosted public forum about race and digital space. The resulting 
controversy was an eyeopener. Like many white liberals, I had 
viewed the absence of explicit racial markers in cyberspace with 
some optimism - seeing the emerging “virtual communities” as 
perhaps our best hope ever of achieving a truly color-blind society. 
 
But many of the forum’s minority participants - both panelists and 
audience members - didn’t experience cyberspace as a place 
where nobody cared about race. Often, they’d found that people 
simply assumed all participants in an online discussion were white 
unless they identified themselves otherwise. 

One Asian American talked of having a white online acquaintance 
e-mail him a racist joke, which he would never have sent if he had 
known the recipient’s race. Perhaps covering up for his own 
embarrassment, the white acquaintance had accused the Asian-
American man of “trying to pass as white.” 

Even when more than one minority was present in a chat room, the 
forum participants said, they didn’t recognize each other as such, 
leaving each feeling stranded in a segregated neighborhood. If 
they sought to correct ignorant misperceptions in online 
discussions, they were accused of “bringing race into the 
conversation.” Such missteps were usually not the product of overt 
racism. Rather, they reflected the white participants’ obliviousness 
about operating in a multiracial context.  

Perhaps when early white Netizens were arguing that cyberspace 
was "color-blind," what they really meant was that they desperately 
wanted a place where they didn’t have to think about, look at or 
talk about racial differences. 

Unfortunately, none of us knows how to live in a race-free society. 
As Harvard University law professor Lani Guinier explains, “We 
don’t live next door to each other. We don’t go to school together. 
We don’t even watch the same television shows.” 

Computers may break down some of the hold of traditional 
geography on patterns of communication, but we won’t overcome 
that history of segregation by simply wishing it away. And as the 
Web culture becomes more globalized, it will only get more 
complicated.  

So far, these topics have entered the national conversation 
through talk about the so-called digital divide, the gap between 
white and minority, rich and poor, in computer access and use. 
Such talk often assumes that if we combat the technological and 
economic problems of access, cyberspace will become more 
democratic. 

I do hope governmental and corporate resources are brought to 
bear on the problem, but equal access is not the same as equal 
participation. Giving everybody broadband is a problem of a very 
different order than broadening our minds.  

When art museums lower economic barriers, offering free or 
reduced admission, they still attract mostly white upper-middle-
class patrons; many lower-income and minority citizens don’t feel 
entitled to attend. Where museums have successfully diversified 
their communities, it has been through educational outreach and 
collaboration with minority communities. Efforts to bridge the digital 
divide must internalize these lessons.  

Some have argued that class, rather than race, may be the 
strongest indicator of who has access - though we need to 
recognize that in a society where the average black family income 
is roughly half that of the average white family income, race and 
class are not easily separable. It is hard to imagine universal 
computer literacy in a country that has yet to ensure that all 
citizens can read and write - and again, there is a strong 
correlation between race, class and literacy rates.  

There are some hopeful signs that racially based gaps in access 
are closing: for example, Hispanic Americans are the fastest-
growing population online. As minority groups have developed 
more economic clout, cyberspace has started to seem less racially 
segregated. 

Yet this may only take us so far. Bridging the digital divide needs 
to mean more than allowing corporations access to new markets; it 
needs to include empowering minority citizens to participate in 
online policy debates.  

Most digital-divide rhetoric depicts a world where undereducated, 
undermotivated and underemployed minorities are competing 
against technologically sophisticated whites. Many scholars and 
activists contend that such talk may intensify the cultural barriers to 
full participation and thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They 
argue that we need to be focusing on success stories, examining 
those projects - whether activist, entrepreneurial or educational in 
origin - that have significantly increased access, visibility and 
participation within minority communities. Our children need to 
know about the ways that minorities have been technological 
innovators rather than seeing them as constantly lagging behind.  

In the end, we will need to give up any lingering fantasies of a 
color-blind Web and focus on building a space where we 
recognize, discuss and celebrate racial and cultural diversity. To 
achieve that goal, all of us - white folks and people of color - will 
have to shed the defensiveness that surrounds the topic of race. 

Many are experimenting with new ground rules and modes of 
communication that enable us to explore the potential of digital 
technology to bring together people who would historically have 
never had contact and encourage them to compare notes, test 
assumptions and overcome ignorance and stereotyping. Out of 
such conversations might come practical approaches for 
combating racism, not only online, but off.  


Copyright 2002 Technology Review, Inc.





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