Online Racial Identities

In “Life on the wire,” Brock focuses on how the media influences the construction of online identities.  I never paid much attention to how important the moderators really are.    After reading this article, I realize that without moderators, discussions about certain topics can get out of hand.  Brock talks about a series of posts that were about what “real thugs” think about the wire.  Although the Venkatesh never implied that the thugs were a certain race, the context made it obvious.  Not all African Americans are thugs, and not all African Americans eat ribs and fried pork rinds. 

With that in mind, this article made me appreciate blogging because as Brock said, the Internet enables people to better understand race through the comments that users post on these blogs.  “It is often noted in critical race literature that due to geographic segregation, many whites only know Black people through televion” (353).    I think that is why there is an advantage for online racial identification.   If someone posts something ignorant and stereotypical about a certain race and someone of that race sees it, he or she can in a sense correct what that person said.  So in that sense, identifying yourself online is good because it is a chance to give people of your race a voice, a chance to say that “not everyone is like that…”  However, I think there can also be some backlash to identifying yourself.  In one of my classes (I can’t remember if it was this one) we mentioned that since people are essentially hiding behind a screen, there is more room to say inappropriate things because no one will ever really know who is saying it.  Nevertheless, the moderators do have the option of deleting negative comments.

Overall, I think it’s both good and bad and moderators can choose what content to allow on their site.  It’s good in that deleting negative content will remove any arguments or cyberbullying.  On the other hand, monitoring certain comments, especially about sensitive topics (such as race) can also be a bad thing because it doesn’t allow people to have that discussion and perhaps learn something new or breakdown stereotypes.

What do you think?