In case anyone doesn’t realize this, India has other actors besides Dev Patel.  I’d love to see some of them in English-speaking movies!

For example, I may want to ask about and/or discuss a facet of black culture that only has a weak link to my white privilege.  (This similar to my roommate, who wanted to participate in discussions on Israeli policy that only had a tenuous link to Austrian history, if any.)  If another person criticizes me, there is a difference between calling me out on the issue at hand, and depreciating my input because I’m white.    

Amias Madonado, I think that it’s not just that this blog doesn’t have any moderators of Color and has only a few commenters who self-acknowlege that they are of Color.I think that it’s also the way discourse occurs on this blog that makes People of Color less inclinded to regularly comment here. After all there are People of Color who are feminists, and there are People of Color who understand the meaning of “praxis” without looking it up like I had to do.But I think that one of the reasons why SocImages doesn’t attract and retain many Black commenters (to focus on that population I belong to and therefore know best) is its discoursive style and not just who does the “discoursing”. What I mean by that this blog is formal, and the comments are posted more in a message board style than a conversational style that would be evident in an online space that saw itself as a “community”. 

Furthermore, from a Black cultural persepective (with “Black” in this statement being the larger population and not just African American), where “call/response” is a core value, the lack of back & forth interaction between the posters/moderators and the commenters and indeed the fact that the posters/moderators’ routinely don’t even acknowlege commenters’ comments, questions, and critiques comes across not just formal, but cold, and disrespectful. 

I’ve reached the conclusion that SocImages “is what it is”. If I don’t like it, I can indicate my concerns [which I have done], and I can move on or I can tolerate the way things are because there are sometimes posts and comments here that I find interesting and insightful. I chose the latter.  

Thing is, the problem here isn’t that privileged people are inherently worse at these subjects, but there are some major problems in that:

1. our knowlege is completely theoretical, and most of that theory comes from disadvantaged directly or in refined form to begin with. It is of course possible to reproduce that knowlege and add some insights from a privileged point of view, but something is lost when trying to recreate an underprivilegred point of view without having the experience.

2. people are far more likely to be interested in something that concerns themselves. This is a blog run by two women, and so the (cis, straight) gender perspective comes up a lot and often it is done excellently in my opinion. Other issues though are less likely to come up, and when that happens they suffer from not having the same passion behind them that matters of personal concern has for these writers.

3. This is also about walking the walk in addition to talking the talk. Sociology has issues with certain groups being privileged just like all other fields, and so it does make a difference that they for example picked a western scientist as an authority on Korean culture instead of a korean one or that they have a woman who does gender best with racial matters on the side to write about racism rather than a scholar of color who specialises in racial/post colonial matters. Statistically, I very much doubt that they couldn’t find anyone who would be as good as or better than the privileged person.

In sum, couldn’t agree more with colorblue’s analysis, but in terms of making this blog a space for and by people that are not white intellectuals, I think we need to continue to “be the change we seek.”  We can’t diversify the discourse without continuing to open up our mouths, as colorblue has done.  Again, my intent is not to look at the situation with rose colored glasses but to encourage praxis towards changing the space if people so desire, because I think that’s totally possible and in line with the original intent of the blog

However, I am troubled by the implication that a demographic of white, middle-class, heterosexual etc. people necessarily leads to shallow, misguided insights.  The point here is that a DIVERSITY of voices leads to constructive analysis, not that analysis from disprivileged individuals or groups are deeper and worthier.    

In responses to certain posts on this and other blogs, I am frequently reminded of an old roommate from Austria. She was pursuing a Masters degree in a medley of political science, human rights, and international law.  Naturally, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was often a topic of discussion in her classes.  She often came home visibly distraught because she could not utter anything critical about Israeli policies without being aggressively dismissed and cut off by her classmates.  Her identity was solely construed as “being from Austria”; her only allowed input in these discussions was to atone for her grandparents’ sins.  

As a white, middle-class, heterosexual person, I am sure I have biases, blind spots, and prejudices, including many I am not even aware of.  I welcome being confronted with these, but I resent being disparaged on my insights directly because of these privileges.      

“[Sociological Images is a blog for a specific group of white people, by a specific group of white people, with all the marginalizations that entails.”

I learned about Sociological Images last year because of a post from that site that was crossposted on Racialicious. Since that time, I have periodically commented on that blog. first under my name Azizi, and later when that blog switched to Disquis, under my facebook name that I also use. There is at least one other Black American, Tusconian, who I believe commented there before I started to do so and still omments there more frequently than me.

I only comment there sparingly now because my sense is that Sociological Images is much more focused on feminism and gender issues than it is on race, and while those subjects can be interesting, and important, and often intersect with race, those topics usually aren’t something I want to comment on.

I also comment on Sociological Images less often now because when the moderators post about race, in my opinion, the subject selected and/or the treatment of the selected subject is often rather shallow or not as culturally competent as one would expect given that at least one of the moderators teaches Black Studies on the university level. I (and others) have shared my (our) concerns about the treatment of race and racism on that blog, so my opinion that I’m articulating here isn’t something the moderators or bloggers aren’t aware of.That said, I believe that a considerable number of persons who comment on that blog sincerely want to understand race & racism. And, in my opinion, some of the “regular” commenters do understand the impact of White priviledge and are culturally competent. But that site really needs more People of Color to comment there and guest post there.

[Full Disclosure: I had a post (on Stomp & Shake Cheerleading) posted on Sociological Images. There have been a number of other posts by People of Color published on that site long before and since my post. I’d love to see more crossposting from Racialicious to Sociological Images and I’d love to see more of the Racialicious community support the race & racism (and other) posts that are published on Sociological Images]