If you have a diverse amount of sexes and colors promoting kraft cheese and they are doing that because they are the best at it you haven’t really added anything.

Whereas if you have people who have genuinely different opinions and backgrounds adding their voices to the mix that is something to be proud of.

I don’t read bloggers because they are great writers. I read them because they have something different to say. So I think the focus on merit is a bad idea. Instead the focus should be on diversity. It is about promoting a community rather than a bunch of individuals

Create your own blog, forum, or ratings site at functional forums

their

I was a regular commenter at Driftglass and one day I woke up and moseyed over to see what was going on and discovered one of my drunken rants posted on the front page. Then Driftglass and his ratfucking band of scurrilous commenters mercilessly hectored me until I started my own blog. The bastards.

Anyhoo, the point is that this technique is highly effective at getting new people blogging.

And yeah, I do see a lot of parallels between how White feminists often treat women of color and how men treat women though I think I get back now that making that observation is not acceptable within feminism.

But a lot of the female and POC (hate that abbrev—I’m one, I can hate it—but whatever) bloggers tend more often to talk about politics as in the effects that policy have, and the incidental policy effects of political machination.

It is part of privilege that allows someone to talk exclusively about political machination. However, in the way of such things, talking about political machination confers greater power and prestige. Why? Because the political machinators are more interested in what you do, if for no other reason. And political machinators are the ones who deal in power—power to effect policy.

whereas WOC bloggers are simply looking for recognition for their ideas.

No! Not “simply.” That whole thing kind of implies I’m trying to speak for WOC bloggers and HELL, NO. Let me flesh it out:

Where “the way white feminists often treat WOC is just like the way male progressive bloggers often treat white feminists” breaks down is–well, it breaks down at multiple points. What I was trying to say is that I had started out believing it was a fairly solid analogy, but having read more by various women of color bloggers since then, and Blackamazon in particular, I don’t think I can say anymore that it is. The problem might be similar, but the solutions I don’t think always are.

For example, Seal Press: They really did interpret BA’s “fuck Seal Press” remark as a plea for dialogue and inclusion, when it was anything BUT. (The word “inclusion” is itself problematic, but that could be a whole post in itself, and one I think many women-of-color bloggers have already written more than once.) I think you have to look hard at the entitlement that must exist to enable a white woman to read “fuck you” as “please invite me to your lunch table, please dialogue with me, please publish me.” Or, really, “please” anything. Seriously, if a white woman says to another white woman “fuck you,” can you imagine any believable scenario in which the other white woman would respond with, “I can see how much you want to dialogue with me, let’s do this?” It’s insane.

Let me punt to Vanessa’s post here:

pluckypunk.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-reconciliation-is-not-really-primary.html

Here’s what I wanted to say to this young, white, male, dreadlocked college student. I wanted to say that no, the goal isn’t reconciliation. The goal is the end to the oppression and suffering of people of color. I hope reconciliation can happen as part of that, and I think that would be a natural byproduct, but no. That’s not the ultimate goal.

–because I know that’s a point that goes right by me 90% of the time, even though it seems so obvious once Vanessa lays it all out. “Reconciliation” centers the needs of white people. The real primary goal, as she states it, does not. This is not always easy for me to drill into my skull because I’m not used to facing the fact that I am not the center of the universe.

Apologies for the digression, Jill. And I am damn glad you got a mention as a political blogger.