Race and the Web

Race and the Web: Jack and Jill Politics and Making Race Manifest

According to author Lisa Nakamura, during the original, heady days of the Internet, it was hoped that the anonymous nature of the virtual medium would allow for the creation of a post-racial identity. Theoretically, no one 'needed' to reveal their visual appearance online, and thus race would become less important (Nakamura 106). The disembodied nature of the medium would allow for a more fluid and expansive conception of the self. However, the Internet has instead allowed for a plethora of subcultures resurrecting old racist stereotypes. Whites have been able to try on such false personas and thus perpetrate them more easily than members of historically discriminated-against groups have been able to temporarily 'set aside' their race online. Nakamura suggests that people who masquerade as members of other races and use their posturing to advance such outmoded notions are simply engaging in a more acceptable form of blackface or yellow face, like a minstrel show or a Charlie Chan impersonator of the present day. And their actions are just as dangerous.

The digital divide or the fact that users of different races and socioeconomic categories have different types of access to online content likewise explodes the notion of an Internet 'post racial' haven. Someone who is poorer, for example, is more likely to access the Internet using a mobile phone: hence the preference for more truncated forms of communication with less of a visual emphasis like Twitter vs. Facebook. One-quarter of people on Twitter are African-American, which is double the percentage of African-Americans in the current U.S. population (Manjoo 2010). The Internet is just as ghettoized as other facets of society. In an article for Slate magazine, entitled "How black people use Twitter," author Farhad Manjoo asked "Are black people participating in these types of [Twitter] conversations more often than nonblacks?" (Manjoo 2010).

Manjoo argues that the answer is yes, noting "black people -- specifically, young black people -- do seem to use Twitter differently from everyone else on the service. They form tighter clusters on the network -- they follow one another more readily, they retweet each other more often, and more of their posts are @-replies -- posts directed at other users. It's this behavior, intentional or not, that gives black people -- and in particular, black teenagers -- the means to dominate the conversation on Twitter" (Manjoo 2010). However, many older African-Americans have expressed displeasure with the use of Twitter by what they consider an unrepresentative element of the African-American community. "Given that these [often sexually explicit] hashtags are occurring in a subgroup of black people online, it is probably a mistake to take them as representative of anything larger about black culture," but they are taken for standing in for African-American culture as a whole, much like Nakamura's former fears that racist emails and posts authored by whites will be taken as representative the of nonwhite cultures themselves (Manjoo 2005). Even if African-Americans are the authors of the posts, the fact that their identity is concealed and the racial texture of the language may cause whites observing from the outside to normalize racism. The subtly of attitudes expressed by a nonwhite subculture using irony and jest is lost in translation.

Instead of hiding one's race while posting, which can cause confusion, the more positive and radical thing to do may be to be quite explicit about one's racial identity, ensuring that no one is mistaken about the poster's racial status. This is the attitude adopted by Jack and Jill Politics, a political portal that encompasses the blog posts of a wide variety of political views of the online African-American community. The website Jack and Jill Politics proudly proclaims its black nature with humor and irony. The website's subtitle is "A black bourgeois perspective on U.S. politics." This affirms both the website's African-American identity and also the existence of a black bourgeois within America (which was once considered a radical notion in and of itself). One of the website creators, Baratunde Thurston, actually authored a book with the title How to be Black. The website background 'skin' is a slice of watermelon, ironically mocking the fruit long used to parody African-Americans in racist iconography. This suggests that the black bourgeois is now empowered enough to use such an image while speaking about its own interests.

Using Nakamura's analysis, one might ask: what would be the reader's very different opinion of this image, if the racial nature of Jack and Jill politics was not proclaimed front and center? The acceptable use of the watermelon image might initially be devoid of irony in the mind of the reader, and used to confirm African-American stereotypes rather than to deflate them. Rather than hiding behind the web's ability to conceal one's physical appearance, the physical aspects of race are thrust front and center on Jack and Jill Politics. Although the images of the website authors are not prominently displayed, their blackness is explicitly referenced, albeit couched in the irony that is typical of 21st century postmodern expression.