I'm not hating. I'm just challenging.

Hormonally speaking as well, this makes me also furious because, in the end, radical women of color don't really care for the opinion of this Puerto Rican black woman, radical or not. They're more interested in the validation of "white" sites like Feministe and such.

Word? I don't know your personal history with other radican WOC but I'm curious as to how you got the sense that radical woc don't care about your opinion (as a radical woc myself).

I don't see it so much as an obsession with validation with white sites so much as an acknowledgement of the way real world white liberal "good intentions" (which hugely privilaged undertones) replicate themselves in the blogosphere.

The site doesn't have the look and feel of a blog that's political which was what folks were looking for. Now, I know from reading you, you want to redefine what political means in the first place.

But, you can see how someone would see the name and see the design and think -- not really radical, etc?

That's just an offhand thought.

Ha. Yeah. What does a radical look like? I've gotten my radical cred questioned because I let my kid listen to effing shakira so I mean alot of the labeling is subjective. Pero do you consider yourself radical (the write about the issue it would seem not) and is that coming from a place of ideology?

I am so going to write a whole post about that one. Especially coming from you, rubia ... pero no blanquita.

I know exactly what you mean. Sometime last year I got wind of an article that was written about feminist bloggers. Nobody contacted me. This, even as I've been promoting a lot of the women that have joined BlogSheroes.

The article was written by some freelance for a some online feminist publication. I want to say it's either Bitch or Bust, but honestly I can't remember.

I found the article thoroughly racialist. The gist was that there were good-looking blonde, white women blogging about politics other than Wonkette. The pictures that were in the articles were, as far as I remember, of CultureCat and Lauren of Feministe. I may be wrong about that. To make a mockery of balance, though, the article mentioned Tiffany of BlackFeminism on the sidebar; literally, as a last minute tack on.

In trying to discredit the blonde bimbo myth, the author and the publication showed the stupidity of "real world white liberals".

Now, I could have called out the article, ranting and raving about racism ... or I could have chosn to forge ahead, working on creating community spaces so that women of all ethnicities and races and creeds could show their feminist colors.

So I chose action.

Calling out the big feminist bloggers may feel like an honest radical activity but, in truth, you're targetting the wrong people and for all the wrong reasons. For one, they are as much in the margins of the "real world white liberal" power structure of the blogosphere as you are.

More importantly, the problem with that power structure is not predicated in whiteness or race. That power structure is predicated in the technology that has been developed for blogs to maintain the power structures that were already existent outside of the blogosphere.

Given that a lot of the people who developed those technologies were at the margins of the "real world" oligo-capitalist power structures that control this country and the world, again, the idea that power has a skin color is not just simplistic but really counterproductive to really exploring how power structures are replicated on the internet.

So again, my challenge is to call out these simplistic notions of race or racism because, really, they take us nowhere.

is our "lowly little carnival," then, not a call to action?

because i do see it as that. you mentioned that instead of calling out the bigger feminist blogs, you chose action. why is this any different than a group of women taking action by forming a space dedicated to women of color bloggers and the woc experience?

and why is this any different than for me, to expose the structures of power based on race and privilege in a medium that is an extension of our racially oppresive society? is that not action?

maybe i am confused--maybe what we are really seeing here is that you are upset that we didn't know about your goals with culturekitchen. you mentioned that we chose to ignore your voice as a puerto-rican black woman--but we did not know your voice was there. i have visited this site before and only until your last posting, did i figure out that it was a network for other bloggers--that is not clear, or maybe it is just not clear to me.

most of what i keep reading from your postings is that we did not care to contact you, is that ego-tripping?

i think it is very immature to imply that i, or other woc that have criticized white feminist bloggers for their covert racism, means that we do not "love our melanin." i do not think real dicussions happen with insulting others. no one has insulted you verbally, but yet every post i see on this site in reponse to my original posting, is tinged with offensive rhetoric reasserting your power, or your websites power.

href="http://blog.pulpculture.org">Bitch |
Lab

Hey Liza,

'scool. I'm familiar with how hard you've worked, having read you. And, yeah, that was just an offhand comment about the appearance of the site and I only mentioned it because, well, you're a good designer, so I know you know what that kind of thing means. When people spend so little time looking at a site, often making a judgment within the first 20 seconds, it all makes a difference. (And, like I said, who the heck has time for a voluntary effort. I'm just exhausted imaginging what it takes to run the site!)

I mean, hell, because I'd prefer not to afford another domain name and am too techy to use a free site, I use pulpculture.org. And yet, I get dorks (white men!) who have tried to tell me that it's just a fluff bullshit site and that I'm misusing my gift by writing about things that aren't really political.

Oh, dude, just fuck me in the ass with a football bat already!

It's pretty frustrating when you're trying to rework what political supposedly means in the first place and what dominates is the views of the DailyKos's of the world

And holly hell, I did not know that Dkos had delinked Amanda, too. (I knew about Maxspeak....) And the thing is you could get more recogniztion, but it's not exactly like you're grossing the approximately $500,000 that a site like Dkos is grossing. Not exactly like your life isn't challenged enough already that you have loads of time to self-promote, participate in other communities, get your voice out there.

Anyway, I hope we see some change. Maybe it's my privilege speaking, but I figure, if nothing comes of this conversation, in terms of building alliances, then at least we know who's on our side and who's not. That's how I see statements like that of Dkos and that's how I see decisions to ignore issues of substantive justice, rather than mere procedural justice.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle asleep in Harry Potter's cloak.

(Is this hegemony too, that my so-last-century-acculturated brain falls back on male metaphors in what I woke up to believe was the village I knew, and knew me?)

how did it switch to me and my "worthless" time in academia all of a sudden? hmm, i'm through with this conversation.

peace

Bitch | Lab

I guess I just think that, if mainstream bloggers have been upset that men have left them out, then it's important to listen to women of color and poor white women who've been marginalized, too.

When I pointed out that sometimes people used the words hicks and rednecks in unthinking and crude ways, I was flooded by women (and some pro-feminist men) who were relieved to finally hear someone say it.

The same thing is going on with race but the problem with the race issue is, as you say, lefties are supposed to have a critique of racism. If it feels like they don't or dont quite get it, it's frustrating.

As you say, you know this. I'm just not sure that the answer was to necessarily keep on keepin' on and not say anything.

I like the way you think and write, Dr. B. I might finally be getting a glimmer of understanding about this.

I'd agree answers usually lie elsewhere than ignoring people problems and saying nothing. This can work in diplomacy, but isn't so good for intimacy. And the difference between diplomacy and intimacy is a distance thing. Could this be about renegotiating distance and autonomy between next-door neighbors?

We attack those closest to us when they get TOO close. They're handy when no one else cares, and are supposed to take it because they love us (or because they ARE us.)

That's what happens in my house whenever things get too "frustrating." We can't change the people causing our real frustrations (or recognize our own need to change) so we mess with each other. My family has been together long enough to recognize it, but we can't stop it much better than we ever could.

Last night, after our air conditioner died on a record high day in Florida and it was too humid to open the windows, after we'd all grumpily lost an hour of sleep the night before due to daylight savings time, we froze each other out just to get some relief from the heat and stress. Nobody would sit close or even touch each other. We squabbled for an hour about whether to have the supper we'd planned, loathe to heat up the kitchen, inclined to get out of it instead (you know the expression) but too worried we might need a whole new system to spend money on a nice, cool restaurant. Plus, the youngest of us (at 10) has been coming down with something, running a real fever all day apart from the dead A/C, and I couldn't have left him NOR put him in the car where he often throws up. So there wasn't much I could do to help him, and it felt like I couldn't help myself. It's paralytic. Too hot, too cross, too helpless, threatened by the uncertainty of the night ahead - I sleep hot anyway - and the cost and disruption to come, whether we could take this in stride without further turning on each other.

I just wonder if relates - if not, no problem. I know how to say nothing too.