Hi Guys!
So I have just realised that i was supposed to do this on monday, sorry! However I've snuck it in before the tutorial so hopefully is still ok!
The reading I am in charge of this week is Jerry Kang's entitles 'Ruminations on Cyberspace'. I found Jerry's ideas relating to racial scrutiny in cyberspace really interesting and he suggested several ways to potentially get around the issue.
To get started, the key points in the article.
- Race as a social construction - in society we consistently group people into categories, often dependant on race. Race is no longer just genetic makeup, but we have created societal meanings of what it means to be of a particular race, a societal convention.
- Then goes onto discuss how the rules of cyberspace differ to those of 'real space' and the advantages of each for example no limits of geographical positions means ease of communication, however the interaction may not be as genuine and fulfilling as it is not face to face
- Abolition - this is the approach where online, race is irrelevant, no one is to mention it or give it away through subtle hints
- Integration - trying to integrate all races into a harmonious environment
- Transmutation - pretending to be a race you are not
- Zoning - A combination of the above
- He ends the article by discussing the difficulties of all of these ways around racial segregation in cyberspace and discusses that these ideas would not be appropriate in all situations.
We ask ourselves whether racial criticism online occurs often, as it is a predominantly anonymous environment where people join groups that they want to and not because they are subject to them. Jerry gives a horrific example where he posed as an African American and here is the conversation that followed:
PERPETRATORh:ey nigger
PERPETRATOR: betta watch out we got an eye on you and others do to your reported to the aryan nation KKK mutherfucker!!
PERPETRATORe:ine mine mo catch a nigger by his toe and if he hollers let him go! HEHEHE
PERPETRATOR: KKK
ME: --- why don't you come out to play? [The perpetrator had been sending me these messages privately, after disappearing from the room that I was in. I was trying to get her to reappear.]
PERPETRATOR:run nigger run [This was in response to my leaving the room, in which I was originally attacked.]
ME: Are you afraid to show yourself even in the virtual world?
PERPETRATORw: ere are you at>??
ME: I'm at the teleporter, near Temple St.
PERPETRATORa:nswer monkey boy
ME: So why are you so filled with hate?
PERPETRATORI:m not just dont like niggers thats all
PERPETRATORw: hite power!!
ME: Is it all of us or just some?
ME: Why did you leave?
ME: Have you ever met one of us in the real world?
ME: Do you care whether I'm an American Black or a Carribean [sic] or Nigerian immigrant?12
However he also mentions of the benefits some people find online, he quotes that some people find find relationships built online as absolutely positive, "Internet users who have gone deep into cyber-community report their relationships there as remarkably genuine, deep and significant."
My question to you all would be what you think, of the three options of abolition, transmutation and integration, would be the most likely method to work to help eliminate racial discrimination in cyber-space? Or do you think none of these would work?
Have any of you been subject to racial discrimination online? If so how did it affect you, did you feel like you had lost the comfortable nature of anonymity online?
Can we tackle issues like sexuality discrimination etc with the same approach?
Could anonymity be the problem? Because people can discriminate unfairly and unleash their prejudices without being caught/known?
I found this reading to be really interesting and a complete eye-opener to what really does go on online. Some people are using the internet as a way to vent their racial prejudices and in my eyes it is completely unacceptable and is quite simply ruining the democratic nature of the internet.
I hope you all enjoyed this reading as much as I did and have found something interesting to think/discuss over the coming week :)
My question to you all would be what you think, of the three options of abolition, transmutation and integration, would be the most likely method to work to help eliminate racial discrimination in cyber-space? Or do you think none of these would work?
ReplyDeleteResponse:
I think out of the three, integration would work best. Reasons being, if you chose either abolition or transmutation, you are hiding your real identity and it would be akin to hiding from the problem rather than actually solving it.
Integration would be the best solution, nobody has to hide who they really are and it should ideally, be the way things are. However, with the anonymity of the internet, you will get extremists who will feel embolden by that cloak of anonymity.These are the people who will pay no heed to any efforts of integration.
In order to counter the views of such people, you would probably have to trace the source of such views and counteract them. Only then, would the integration method have a high chance of success.