Blogging While Brown

As I've written recently, this year I attended Netroots Nation. As in years past, there was a good bit of hand-wringing (usually under the radar) about how overwhelmingly "white" the audience is. I went to the second annual panel titled Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere where courageous members of the Black Kos community talked about why there is such a disconnect and what can be done about it. The attendance was sparse - to say the least.

I wonder if the Netroots Nation folks know that there is another annual conference that happened this last weekend in LA called Blogging While Brown. It seems that they don't have any trouble attracting bloggers of color.



One of the participants on the panel I mentioned above at NN was Kyle de Beausset, the founder of Citizen Orange. Here's something he said that I think is important for all of us to hear.

But I just wanted to speak in general about, twice now I’ve heard how we want to invite people of color in our communities. And in my experience, that’s something admirable to try and do, but in my experience it is really hard to invite people of color into a community that has already been created. It is really important to look outside at what has already been happening...

So within these spaces there are these things going on, and just like people of color have to reach out and build coalitions, white folks have to do the same thing and make a really constant effort. And it doesn’t mean inviting them into your spaces necessarily, but look at other spaces that are being built and support those as well.

I agree. Part of white privilege is sitting around wondering why people of color don't join you. Breaking that pattern means getting out of your comfort zone and exploring where people of color actually are, what is important to them, and joining what they're already busy doing about it.