My BlogHer Thoughts on Diversity

In the Feminism "birds of a feather" meeting, I made a few extremely stupid comments about how feminism was supposed to care about everyone's voices and participation. I was trying to make a point about how many of the online political spaces are about hostility and derision, but instead I'm sure I sounded like I'd never heard about how the white middle-class women's feminist movement basically told women of color "shut the fuck up!" for several decades. I'm sure the women of color at the table were very impressed.

So when I went to the "Brown Bloggers Go West" session, I shut the hell up and listened. It seemed more appropriate at a conference that was majority white to give these women first dibs on the mic during that session.

A few things came together for me while I was listening:

• Sour Duck had brought up a question for discussion during the Feminism birds-of-a-feather: "Why it it considered women's job to educate men about women?"
• A blog is an easy way to find out about how one person who doesn't look like you thinks and feels. This is unmediated by what publishers think will sell.
• There was a lot of talk at BlogHer about how people like to read political blogs that agree with them. I think as a good general rule, people like to read blogs that make them comfortable, even if that plays out as being comfortable in their disgust for the author or other commenters.

How do I put these together?

I believe that it's my responsibility as a feminist to push myself to know more about others' lives and concerns. Why? First, I can't effectively support change that improves women's lives if I assume they all want the same thing Second, as a white, middle-class woman, I have buckets of privilege in this society - money, time, etc. - so making it someone's responsibility to get my attention and present me with new information is a bit off.

However, I don't often incorporate that responsibility into my daily activities. Reading blogs is a good example. I often go to blogs looking for comfort and socializing as much as for information, even though blogs are an amazing resource for getting snapshots of other people's lives and opinions. Since people who grew up differently than I did might use different vocabulary, speech patterns, and have different cultural or political references than I do, I'm probably less inclined to stick with a blog that isn't by someone like me. I'll delete it from my list because I decide it's uninteresting (read: not on the topics I would blog about) or I just don't like the style (read: it's not in the form of English I'm accustomed to.)

That's not really good enough. If reading blogs is the activity in my current life that is most likely to bring the thoughts, feelings, and concerns of people of color (or other folks) to my attention, then I need to be proactive about finding those blogs. (Of course, that also points out that my current life might need some rearranging, but let me take one step at a time.)

So my challenge to the folks at the BlogHer closing session was this: take on some of that responsibility. Find ten blogs by people who don't look just like you and learn more about those people. Stick with their blogs for a while even if you don't get the jokes or don't understand some of the language. I hope I tried to focus my challenge more on the white folks in the audience when I was making my comments, but I think it's probably applicable to almost anyone. African-Americans and Hispanics tend to know more about white folks than we know about them (a.k.a. they have survival skills), so I hope I didn't imply they needed to get with some white girl's program for being more culturally aware.

Here are my ten right now:

• Time Goes By
• Sepia Mutiny
• Marian's Blog
• Brownglasses, which I found through the Black Weblog Awards
• reznet blog
• Global Voices Online
• Conversations with Dina
• Blackfeminism.org
• SistersTalk
• Chookooloonks

I'm trying to get over my extreme reluctance to remove blogs from my reading list due to an unconscious fear of hurting the author's feelings, so I don't guarantee I will be reading these blogs forever. But I promise to stick with them and try to learn something.

And I'm always taking suggestions.