7: Race

Mike Arrington, Race, And HTML5

Image via WikipediaTalking about race is not negativity any more than talking about HTML5 is positivity. It is just plain objectivity. Group dynamics is more cutting edge a thing than anything we have seen in tech so far. (My Web Diagram) And race and gender are some of the most cutting edge topics in group dynamics, gender even more so.

Race, Gender, Tech
Race, Gender, Tech (2)
Tech, Women, Diversity
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!

But right now the controversy is race. Months back it was gender, thanks to the same character Mike Arrington.

Mike Arrington: Idiot

Is Mike Arrington a racist? He is a character, that's for sure. As for if he is a racist, that question assumes the label racist is an easy one to pin. I don't think Mike Arrington is capable of hate crimes. But that does not mean he is not a racist. Racist behavior is a spectrum. Racist thinking is a spectrum. There is a relationship between the seemingly benign racist joke and hate crimes. And race is not a matter of individual opinion any more than medical research is a matter of individual opinion. Mitch Kapor touches upon that.

In this debate Mike Arrington comes across as clueless and defensive.

Online Dating Newsflash: Race And Religion Matter
The Need For A Race Gender Coalition
Black Cop Shot Down In Harlem By White Cops: The Race Angle
Race, A Few Different Angles

And then there is this old media, new media tension in this debate, but there Mike Arrington is no holy cow. As a former blogger he has been guilty of all that he now accuses of: sensationalism, playing gotcha, etc.

So I Did It

I wrote the two blog posts that were so heavy on my chest for almost two weeks now. I feel relief now.

The posts don't read as angry as I thought they might read, and that's okay.

At The Buspark (2)
Kentucky Blues

Now my three blogs are all exhibiting the same piss on racism graphic. I think it is important. I think it is important to say fuck you to racism.

At The Buspark (2), Kentucky Blues
"Can You Understand This?"
"Bring Home An African Next Time"
Padgurum
Hawai Chappal
Deaths In The Family
Gonu Jha
Hum Jayega Burnt His Ears
"Thanks For Asking"
Prax
"It Was A Nigger!"
Little Flickers Of Racism
Australian Woes
Kathmandu Woes
"Do You Have An Email Address?"
Race, Gender, Tech
Doubling Down On Tech Consulting
Paradigm Shifts And Challenged Assumptions
Think Different
Alabama

"It Was A Nigger!"

Entertainment Weekly: Rosewood (1997)

In 1923, the residents of Rosewood, a tranquil all-black agrarian village in central Florida, bask in their hard-toiling prosperity. Several generations removed from slavery, they have farms, businesses, a community. They have freedom — or, at least, a hermetic approximation of it. For it's a freedom they can share only with one another. In the adjacent, comparatively poor all-white town of Sumner, the citizens look at Rosewood with suspicion and envy. The very power of American upward mobility has shaken the firmament of Dixie — its racial-social hierarchy. ...... When one of the whites gets beaten up by her extramarital lover, she's so flooded with rage and guilt that her hysteria explodes like shrapnel at the most convenient available target. ''It was a nigger!'' she wails. There are rumors of a recently escaped black convict, and with this mythical culprit in mind, the men of Sumner form a lynch mob. They never do locate the suspect, but in a sense they start to see him everywhere — in the face of any innocent black man who knows nothing of the crime. Out for ''justice,'' the mob consumes its own purpose, becoming an end in itself, a jamboree of lynching, shooting, burning, slaughter.

Little Flickers Of Racism
Tim Berners-Lee: The Internet Is Not A Country
Race, Gender, Tech
Caro, Get Off The Summit,That's A Volcano
Caroline McCarthy On Gender

Related articles

• 100% of White Racists Vote Rightwing (robertlindsay.wordpress.com)

Little Flickers Of Racism

Those little flickers of racism matter. To say they don't matter to a group dynamics guy like me is to suggest software bugs are just fine, and bad design is okay. No, it's not.

Race, Gender, Tech

I plot to go into the red circle in this diagram from the tech angle. And for someone of such ambitions the flickers of racism matter even more. They are bread and butter. That is extra true of flickers of sexism, the obvious kind and the internalized kind, both, especially the internalized kind. Women with advanced degrees of internalized sexism also tend to be the more racist kind.

My Web Diagram

When I meet early stage entrepreneurs in town, one way I gauge how far they might go is by trying to figure out how much of a post-ISMs individual they are.

Rudiments Of A Corporate Culture
Third World Guy
Web 5.0: Face Time

The world of physics felt pretty much complete and all set and done when Einstein showed up. But then he noticed light rays bent near the Sun, and based on that one flicker he turned the world of physics upside down. Innovation happens at the edges. The abandoned petri dish is where the magic is at. Little flickers of racism are fascinating like that.