What's the danger in that? The danger is in the legitimacy. We are taking our fury, our fists, our fire, and we're injecting it into the veins of the Eurocentric and Anglo-American discourse monster. That is, we inject it into media reports, legislative and policy-making debates, and much much more.
We stand proudly in the present day structural and blatant racism of the world; firmly supported by histories of struggle to fight racism in all its forms. The sixties was an explosion that brought massive progress--you know, the Civil Rights Movement of course--only to be followed by a conservative backlash in the seventies--the Drug Wars, three strikes laws, drastic cutbacks on the social safety net, and more.
We take our knowledge of these histories, and use them to fight in ways that haven't been used before--in this case, blogging.
Vanessa E. Jones reports for the Boston Globe that numerous bloggers of color are fighting racism in a new way through sites. She mentions prominent blogs such as as Too Sense and Angry Asian Man.
These intellectual challenges to mainstream and other viewpoints are some of the opinions Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander-American, and black bloggers are exposing on a growing number of sites focused on social, political, and cultural issues. The sometimes facetiously named blogs range from Angry Asian Man to The Angry Black Woman. Readers can find Latino viewpoints at Guanabee, The Unapologetic Mexican, or Latino Pundit. Those interested in information from an Asian angle head to Ultrabrown, Zuky, or Sepia Mutiny. Sites created by blacks include The Field Negro, Too Sense, and Resist Racism. But often these bloggers discard the handcuffs of their ethnic origins to tackle subjects affecting a range of racial or ethnic groups.
These sites - many of which launched in the past year, although a few are older - have become places where people of color gather to refine ideas or form thoughts about race relations, racial inequities, and the role pop culture has in exacerbating stereotypes. The writers often bring attention to subjects not yet covered by mainstream media.
There is a flourishing ring of websites that are all interconnected through discussions of subjects such as the Jena 6, undocumented immigration, invisible racism in our capitalist society, and more. These websites strive to interrupt the dominating mainstream media conversations that overlook issues of race. But even more, these sites also blog on things that the media fails to mention entirely, such as Allposters.com's commodified "ethnic people" category!
This is a great time for us all, whether you are looking at the more prominent blogs like the ones Jones mentions, or the smaller ones just starting off. Through these ever growing online networks of bloggers of color, our power is getting stronger. And it's not so much about how many of us are joining the blogging ring--it's about how many of us, from varying parts of the racial/ethnic spectrum, are signing on to each other's sites and developing progressive partnerships.
Just go to any of these sites, such as RaceWire, and you'll see they all have long lists of links to one another. Again, the power isn't in that they exist, but in that they are all uniting.
It's a dangerous thing to have so many people of color fighting against racism instead of fighting themselves to escape it.
Divide and conquer us no more!
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