I first noticed this when reading TPM Cafe and while I don’t usually scour sites to see how representative they are, after a period of time of reading articles and seeing photos I thought… well, hey, wait a minute. And then I started really looking. It’s not a pretty picture.

Huffpost, TPMcafe, the Nation, american prospect, the largest liberalish political blog online putting on political/strategy event and unable to find even one black speaker and example after example. There is something wrong here and I don’t think there are very many acceptable explanations.

Regarding the possibility of some considering the presence of Jews as providing enough diversity or minority culture input, I don’t think that works very well. Jews indeed are an historically oppressed group, and have faced discrimination and anti semitism (and still do… in fact, I think they are in great peril now, especially as the religious right starts to jettison the ones that have made common cause with them and vise versa), but they are sort of on the opposite end of the discriminatory stereotype spectrum, so to speak – whether they are considered white or not doesn’t really matter.

The stereotypical Jew was/is considered too intelligent, too industrious, too good at business, too good with money, too apt to take over, etc, etc and thus feared and/or hated by established majorities for this reason (not to mention the whole religion thing).

The stereotypical Black or Latino was/is considered too unintelligent, too lazy, too unindustrious, too apt to bring down the neighborhood, too inarticulate, too emotional, etc etc, thus generating an entirely different sort of fear and/or hatred.

Asians are a still circling stereotype… both loved (why can’t they all be more like them!) and hated (my god, they are going to take over… stop the yellow horde!)

(All the above is, of course, very generalized, but still… )

Anyway, when you have multiple white liberal/progressive planned and intentional communities/sites/organizations and there is a consistent dearth of non white persons on the rolls, especially if the excuse is made that this is due to ‘color blindness’ or ‘minority issues are american issues and so anyone can address them’ or any of the other things one hears, I think it may be time to take a step back and do some reconsidering of just where one stands and just what message is being sent.

Eteraz–I agree with the idea of institutional/unconscious racism; I think that without analyzing it, it’s impossible to look at the effects of racism at all.

And David–what everyone else said. Were there a paucity of thinkers/bloggers/writers of color, it might make sense to ponder its potential effect on Arianna Huffington’s blogroll. Since it doesn’t exist, it’s not relevant.

Sally: I think what was meant was that the Irish were not part of the “privileged” groups in society. They may not have been called non-white, but they were still subject to ethnic prejudice.

That’s certainly true. But there’s a real tendency to equate “not privileged” or even “considered racially inferior” with “not white,” and that’s not accurate in the U.S., where white was a legal, rather than social category until quite recently. And it ignores the ways in which the Irish were privileged from the very start. Being categorized as white gave them many tools with which to combat the ethnic prejudice they faced.

This is partly history geekery, but I have a point here. The people who came up with the idea that Irish folks “became white” were trying to make an anti-racist point, but that idea can also bolster white supremacy.

To me, the question of whether she does, in fact, have such an obligation depends largely on various statistics of her blog. Does she seek bloggers out or do they make submissions to her? How big is it? Are her connections with other bloggers formed mostly in cyberspace or mostly in real life?

All of these will effect the racial make-up of her blog, and will make it more or less excusible, depending on the answers.

Please understand, I’m not trying to rebut these wonderful arguments I’ve heard, but if we’re going to truly move toward a more tolerant society, these are the kinds of questions we’re going to have to ask ourselves. And I’m afraid I have no idea how to answer. Thoughts?

eteraz: Actually, a lot of South Asians do anglicize their names – either they’re given anglicized names by their parents, or they use a “Western name” in addition (this can be a name given by parents, or chosen later in life – a lot of Asian businesspeople have a Western name for use with their English-speaking colleagues). Granted, they can’t pass as white – but I suspect a lot of Arabs with anglicized names do so because they don’t want to deal with the “how do you pronounce that” thing, and I think it could be argued that many Asians take anglicized names as part of a process of assimilation.

These terms are an american construct formulated from the days of slavery. Such distinction arose from the knowledge that the bondsman and the poor, often indentured immigrant shared a bond in oppression and also outnumbered the property owner by a huge majority, as much as 75% in some southern states.

The virulent and entrenched form of american racism acheived its goal of carefully seperating oppressed peoples into different classes of priviledge, won on the oppression of another group (the poor white gaining status over the slave for example).

Such social construct still exists. We sit here wondering how Huffie can call herself a progressive while dismissing the voices of a group of persons whom the progressives have claimed for years to hear and share. She does so for a multitude of deeper social reasons, many out of her control.

But still, it is legitimate to question the progressive claims of an individual who cannot or will not make the effort to constantly put a hole in the fences that we are taught to construct, to let people from the outside in — if they wish to come in.

Republicans have taken advantage of the blind hypocrisy among many of the intellectuals of the left, who by and large have enjoyed the fruits of priviledge. It is not the only hole that has developed due to ignorance and priviledge among the power brokers and intellectuals on the left. I don’t know that the democrats can, with any credibility maintain that they care passionately about minorities or poor folks without considering seriously and examining their own racism and mysoginy.

That Piny makes the effort to point this out as well as ersatz shows that a true progressive does have a sensitivity to this kind of tacit exclusion.

Republicans are playing a sinister game, lying to the the disaffected and disillioned to get their votes, while completely abandoning them with nothing immediately after. That the democrats seem to consistently walk around the elephant, like the Blind Men from Istanbul, each one proclaiming to know the whole elephant by holding only its singular body parts.

Writing *as* a Jew, I’ll point out that Irish were also once considered nonwhite.

You know, people throw that around on the internet as if it’s a settled fact, and it’s really not. There’s a lot of evidence that Irish people always have been considered white. For instance, until the mid-19th century, only white people could become naturalized U.S. citizens. After that, only white people and those of African descent could. Despite a whole lot of brutal anti-Irish prejudice, and despite calls to keep Irish people from becoming citizens, I know of no instance in which anyone challenged an Irish person’s right to naturalize on racial grounds. If the Irish weren’t white, then why didn’t nativists try that strategy?

More nuanced scholars of race claim that Irish people (and Jews) were always white, but that until around WWII, they were still considered racially inferior. There was a concept of races within whiteness, with Anglo-Saxons being the highest kind of white people and other white folks being inferior to them. This was racial prejudice, but it was a different kind of racial prejudice from the kind that non-white people faced.

I really just don’t buy the idea that white-looking Jews aren’t white. My mom grew up Jewish (and not able to pass) in the segregated South, and her family was clearly white. They sat in the front of the bus, drank from white water fountains, and ate at segregated lunch counters. My mom attended segregated, white public schools. They faced a fair amount of anti-semitism, but they were still white.

Further, it’s a total cop-out to claim that your all-white blogroll is diverse because there are Jews on it. There isn’t a shortage of Jewish voices in the mainstream media. Jewish commenters are not generally called upon to give “the Jewish perspective” or to interpret the Jewish community for readers who are presumed not to be Jewish. I just think it’s a little outrageous to claim to be diverse because you don’t marginalize people who aren’t generally marginalized.

Eek! I’m feeling a bit ranty. It’s been a long day!

And I think that was a fine analogy and not at all offensive, fwiw.