Recently, Fuerza Dulce buzzed me on IM to ask me if I was going to the conference on “Blogging while Brown.” A BwB conference? I’d not heard of such a thing, but website masthead was promising, claiming that this was a conference “for, by and about bloggers of color.”
I eagerly looked to see who they had invited as panelists, expecting to see some of my favorite desi bloggers mentioned, and perhaps some new ones I had not yet encountered. But there was not a single desi name listed of any sort, neither ABD, DBD, IBD, PBD, BBD, SLBD, NBD nor BVD.
Nor were there any Arab or Latino bloggers, another possibility for a conference on “brown bloggers.”
In fact, every single blogger listed
was African-American. Blogging while brown may well have been true in terms of skin color, since “black” is a misnomer when describing the hue of African-Americans, but in all colloquial meanings of the word, the conference would better have been described as “Blogging while Black.” And while the bloggers on the panel were all bloggers of color, they represented only one slice of the “of color” spectrum.
What puzzles me is why the promoters of the conference aren’t be honest about what they’re doing. Why not just call themselves Blogging While Black? Are we so cool now that even black folks want to be brown?
The fact that you would even ask such a question simply proves that you are trying to impose your culturally hegemonic chromatically normative colonialist pseudo-construction on the pigeonholed fractions of our multicultural post-ethnic society by marginalizing the otherness of those would deconstruct the socially dominant paradigm by perpetrating epistemic violence on their choice of signifier.
Speedy
Holly shit! I have no idea what is going on.
You misspelled my handle, saley.
Typo – honest! I know how to spell your “name”
A few things: 1. Perhaps they were trying to be inclusive when they were planning the conference – maybe they wanted someone like you to attend. Would you have attended if they called it “Blogging While Black”? From your post, it’s very clear that you wouldn’t. 2. Perhaps they were trying to be inclusive and for whatever reason it didn’t work out. Sorta like when we call something “South Asian” and it only includes Indians. Happens pretty often, doesn’t it? 3. I personally would embrace a label that would include all PoC, and not one that would selectively exclude black people – which is what it seems you want from your post. That’s all.
I’m for truth in labeling.
Where did you get that idea?
Then perhaps they should have included panelists who would discuss a much wider range of issues than the ones they selected. I’m not uninterested because the panelists are black (some of my favorite panelists are black ;)), I’m uninterested because the topics are narrow.
Yes, it does. But with the number of desi, arab and latino voices out there, if they didn’t manage to include a single one, they couldn’t have been trying very hard.
4 · Ennis said
Thanks 🙂 You’re the best.
There are some very snarky responses I can think of to this statement that apply to this blog as well as to the one I write for…
I saw the website a few months ago and was very excited about it. The only thing that prevented me from going was the prohibitive cost.
What puts me off most about your post, Ennis, is that you’ve made this public statement without having made any apparent effort to e-mail the organizers (can’t be that hard, can it?) to figure out what their intent was.
I found your last sentence to be obnoxious. Who owns Brown?
Smart African American men?
When? Where? I am sooooooo there!
Yep that’s probably it. Or it could be, the black bloggers knew your parents would’nt allow you to hang out with those people anyway,&wanted to spare embarrassment all around. Best bet: they are old school and still subsuming brown/wheat/Scythian etc under Black.
Tangential but germane…recently here on SM- I made the comment that I had SM envy- after another commenter pointed to a “corporate” blog for African Americans. Envy because SM is more organic w/o all the logo’s obvious commercialism etc. Since then- I’ve discovered a counterpart of SM: Jack and Jill Politics I found this site- by reading a somewhat mainstream (umm for lack of a better term:”white”) blog eg: Daily Kos. Another great site TheBlackSnob** Since AfAm’s can’t talk about immigration cohorts, H1 Visa’s etc- “snob” will have to do. I got to that from an article at Huffington Post.
Point being I can look at and read content from different perspectives – Blogrolls at JackAndJill and BlackSnob etc link back to “mainstream” AND other’ communites – there is nothing like that on Sepia Mutiny. You do link to mainstream blogs. Shout out to Coach Diesel- but outside of her- it seems the only other “color” SM links to is the paisley sort of Brown. Maybe you have to reach out to other groups /electronically unless you reject the idea of being a hyphenated American (joke- maybe)Not that this blog doesn’t feel welcoming in the first place. Of course isn’t obligated to do that, but sometimes gestures are important.
Lastly- if it makes you feel better- none of the sites listed on the conference are any that I’d heard of- though I’m admittedly I’m just finding different communities online, but doubt they are ones invited to cover conventions In St Paul or Denver. (e.g. no clout)
for clarity – nobody really wants to be a hyphenated American but when statics for negatives etc are quoted- and of course they are- they are never just Americans, so to forestall any flag waving comments- it could be that people who hyphenate are just saying they can take the rough with the smooth 😉
ouch.
well first, one can’t really assume all these folks are AA. we live in a society where asians and blacks have Jewish names (as an example of how we can’t label people in this mixed society). second, person of color has historically referred to the AA community. furthermore, the brown moniker is evoked by many groups, not just AA or south Asians.
it is just a term. the real issue is that minorities in this country seem to operate in factions, not as a common community. perhaps the best move would be to offer a hand to work together vs try to claim ownership on a term.
8 · ptr_vivek said
Is your question allowed in the National Conversation on Race by Ennis’ Dear Leader Obama? ‘Cuz Wright sure was escorted out of the room when he tried to engage in it.
Why bother mailing when it is much easier to engage in sanctimonious polemics?
To be fair I didnt really understand the point of this blog post. Since when have we determined who and who cant be brown?
Post 9-11, doesn’t _______ while brown have a specific meaning to do with fear of presumed Arabs / Muslims and national security theater? If I write about flying while brown, people know what that’s about in the same way that they understand what driving while black means.
Oh ye of little faith. You think I didn’t do the research? Check out the invited panelists yourself, almost all of them have photographs posted on the web.
Im sorry i meant to write since when have we determined who can and who cant be brown
16 · Ennis said
Ennis,
i really weight that variable less then if you had emailed the organizers to ask them about their outreach/search criteria. Have you? If so, was there any response? the topics seemed interesting and of utility to any blogger, so it certainly does matter.
I’ve gotten the same, quite fair, question a few times:
I conceded in the post that many African-Americans have similar skin-tones to me, so calling themselves brown is literally accurate. However, post-9/11 the phrase “_____ while brown” has a fairly specific meaning to do with the fear of presumed Arabs/Muslims, national-security, and terrorism . The phrase is a riff on the phrase ____ while black, most often driving while black.
@dilettante – LOL
I didn’t see any of the big names from the black blogosphere that I know of represented either.
I tried to keep the post fairly neutral for that reason. If the organizers are blog savvy, they’ll see a trackback and they’ll explain what they were thinking. That’s how most inter-blog conversations are conducted. Sending an email to somebody I didn’t know seemed far more confrontational, like making a phone call or dropping by in person. Blog chatting happens between blogs.
19 · Ennis said
I’m no journalist, but i think that directing questions to the subject of the story about material facts likely unknown to the journalist, is a ‘best practices’ guideline for the profession–not blogging. (that being said, I’m highly interested in how exactly they went about this. The Black Student Association at my alma mater made no bones about the fact that most of the people who came to the Multicultural Student Union meetings weren’t exactly their target members)
Do you really see my commentary on this topic as sanctimonious? I tried to keep the tone neutral, not self-righteous. Trust me, when I’m in a high dudgeon about an issue, I’ll let fly. Here I was just puzzled.
The norm is derived from the fact that only one party has control of the press, and so you want to give a chance to the other party to speak their mind.
In blogging, where both sides have blogs (as is true here), the norm is one of conversation by trackback. This is more like a conversation between two different writers of opinion columns, where they don’t call each other before writing, but instead expect a response in kind.
Again, I tried to be open and questioning so that a dialogue could develop if the other party is interested in one.
Many people who use the term “brown” include Lebanese & Persians and others who would be classified as white if they were wearing abercrombie & humming Vampire Weekend instead of beards/burkas/ill fitting suits & ululating. That pretty much makes the term “brown” meaningless and up for grabs. Bhangra & dappankoothu have a way to go before we are cool enough for African-Americans to co-opt our art forms
south asian folk aren’t the only people who refer to themselves as brown. black folk do too, from time to time. yes, it is a literal rejection of an inaccurate color-based label, and also a rejection of the other inaccuracies associated with it. brown can be used to redefine african-american identity.
you were asked if you were going to participate but are dismayed that other brown minorities aren’t currently included. why not step up to the plate instead of away from it, since you know about the conference?
you assume sepia mutiny has been overlooked, but possibly the b-w-b conference doesn’t know any more about your blog than you know about the black blogosphere.
if Fuerza Dulce doesn’t see desi participation as a problem, why are you reluctant to put your toe in?
i don’t know. you may see brown as a universal signifier of non-african or non-black people, but not everybody thinks that way.
I can see being intimidated. It’s like going to a family reunion, even though you weren’t invited, because the host has your last name. But you could still show up or “crash”, and claim (very legitimately), that you were somebody’s cousin.
much blog luv
Oh, I never expected SM be invited. I did however think that there would be at least one blogger who was desi / arab / latino, or heck, even one asian-american blogger in the list.
I mean, if I was to put together a bunch of desi bloggers and call it a conference “for, by and about bloggers of color†I’d expect eyebrows to be raised by black and yellow bloggers and how presumptuous I was being in claiming that my corner of POC somehow represented all POC bloggers out there.
Do they use the term “____ing while brown” to talk about their interactions with law enforcement? I thought the term had a pretty well defined and narrow meaning.
I never claimed it was that broad. I don’t think of whites as browns, nor east-asians. Nor am I trying to exclude Africans, I’ve written a number of posts about desis from Africa who are African browns.
You’re right, I hadn’t realized that there were overlapping uses of the term in this way. None of my black friends calls themselves brown, so it was something I really hadn’t considered before this.
It is a bit confusing though. If African-Americans get to be both black and brown, and yellow and red are taken, what color is left to refer to the over 1 billion SouthAsians in the world? Hmmm … maybe we can all be “Wheatish” instead.
btw @ dilletante
speaking of clout…, Pam’s House Blend, and What About our Daughters all have received credentials to cover the DNC in denver. they got credentials by asking the dnc not to exclude black bloggers.
going to any of these sites should give you a great blogroll to browse if you’re looking for black bloggers.
I am more “pumpernicklish”. This will exclude us dravido-lemurians
i meant to include jack and jill politics in the credentialed crew too,
firedoglake, is going to B-w-B and I don’t think they’re a black blog. But that’s just one.
also, I don’t mind the south asian use of brown, but from my perspective, it’s because i like the expansion of the word. what’s wrong with being brown if it includes south asian as well as african-american people? brown doesn’t mean african-american any more than it means south asian. but it does make me think you might be interested in working to end oppression of brown folk in general. it feels like a solidarity move.
25 · Ennis said
That’s what I call a wry comment.
Perhaps a rye comment.
30 · Ennis said
Subtlety gone awry!
The most obvious reason to me is that South Asians don’t even register on the organizers’ radar, i.e. they wouldn’t have even thought that other people may think ‘South Asian’ when they hear ‘brown’ instead of thinking ‘black.’ Though it is true that often things are given the ‘people of color’ label but actually only includes black people, not even Latinos. It’s an iffy label.
UPS
If anything its desis (including you obviously) who seem to think its cool to be “brown” like an arab or latino though neither arabs nor latinos want to be associated with desis. Clearly there is a pecking order among those who use the word brown and desis rank at the bottom. As another poster correctly pointed out: who owns the word brown? “Black” americans such as Obama and Condoleeza Rice and numerous others are a lighter shade of brown than the majority of indian-americans, who in turn are not as dark/black as the majority of indians in India.
So I guess brown encompasses Desis, Middle Easterners, and Latinos if not Black folk as well? Why don’t we just say people of color! I also don’t see what we all have in common. Is it racism? There’s plenty of white victims of racism so where does that leave us?
Huh? What did I do now?
I’m absolutely loving sitting here on the sideline watching the multicultis bash other multicultis for not being inclusive.
Since when has the interwebs operated differently for blogs that cater to different demographics? Looking at most of the B-w-B workshop topics, most – not all – are issues facing all blogs, irrespective of racial makeup.
I AGREE WITH YOU Ennis!! i mean sure its not perfectly accurate to call black ppl “black”, but keeping it simple is BEST. i mean imagine how crazy it would get if we were forced to call caucasian ppl: peachy ppl, or rosy ppl, or ivory ppl? cuz they’re not really “WHITE” either. And what about the caucasians who are dark (italians) should we call THEM browns too?, or african americans who are light ( ie “matthew perry” from harold and kumar 2)? white, black, yellow, brown, red
ACTUALLY I GOT A BETTER IDEA: forget the colors ——>
caucasian, east asian, desi, latino, native american, persians, semetics (although this is often mistaken for jews bcuz of hitler, it actuallly referes to the race of ppl that are middle easterners.)
i don’t know about “black” ppl though, because “African American” would not work well with all “black” ppl, and negro . . . . .well . . . sounds kind of RUDE, and not to mention it also means black.
Ummm … no. I’m wondering why one group calls itself inclusive when it is not. Quite another thing entirely.
You’re making a couple of assumptions (at least) here without any basis. You’re assuming that I think desis should or should not do something here – none of which I’ve said. You’re also assuming that Ennis isn’t putting his “toe in” and you’re assuming that he isn’t attending based on something having to do with color.
When I asked Ennis if he was attending, it was because I saw the name of the conference “Blogging While Brown” I didn’t assume anything about it. I went on what the site itself said. “Blogging While Brown is the first international conference for bloggers of color.” So…. we’re of a color… so I thought there might be some desi folks repping at the conference, esp from such a major blog (at least in my eyes) as SM. Ennis is someone I know that’s “in the know” so I thought he may have heard of it. Which is why I asked. If you read the website further, esp. their workshops section, it seems that it’s a conference for people starting out in the blogging world who want to make an impact as people of color. I wasn’t bothered, but I was confused, similar to Ennis, as to why the conference is being marketed as being for “brown” folks or “people of color” and it seems to be more for African-Americans. It’s fine if it’s a conf. just for African-Americans, but if I see “people of color” I’m going to assume it’s for me as well.
So it’s confusing. And Ennis was confused too. So he questioned how those running the conference chose to label themselves. That’s it. Can’t a man on a blog ask a question? To his own people? Come on 🙂
My point in mentioning that it seems to be a conference for beginner bloggers is that, after finding that out, it’s a whole other reason to not attend for folks who are already vets like Amardeep and Ennis and ANNA.
But hey, if any of you Wheats/Wheaties want to learn more about pumping up your blog, hit the BWB folks up and let us know how the conference turns out. 🙂 Maybe they’ll modify their conference next year if they see that they have a more diverse audience than they expected.
in 2000 bill bradley was running for the dem nomination on the plank of helping heal america’s race problem. he had a speech he would give about america in black & white, etc. etc., a latino reporter got up and asked about where latinos fit in, and he didn’t have a response and looked confused. this was in the year 2000, when less than half of americans of color were black. there’s a dominant historical discourse in the united states to dichotomize race relations, and blacks and whites regularly engage in this. it’s also regionally biased; if you live on the west coast it is pretty much not an issue since blacks are minority #3 in rank order, you have to use a multivalent terminology to capture lived reality. OTOH, in many eastern states, especially rust belt ones, minority = black, and the old model still holds sway. if you listen to the black media you’ll note it as well, e.g., i listen to news and notes on my local NPR and often the discussion involves the black-white dichotomy, and occasionally someone will mention, “and it isn’t just black and white, there are also latinos….”
There are some very snarky responses I can think of to this statement that apply to this blog as well as to the one I write for…
that’s all you do, so why even type that? 😉 seriously.
razib, dude, I’ve been gone a while… when did you find god???
45 · PropaMcGandhi said
Yeah, I was wondering about that too. I remember ‘the atheist’, ‘the carvaka’, but didn’t notice the transition to “found god” phase. Or is it more of a transition to ‘leave me alone – I’m not sure about nothing’ phase? But, that’s not like the razib we know and love.
White is White, Black is Black and we’re Brown. I’ve never met a Black person who referred to themselves as Brown. Where the fuck is this confusion coming from? I swear to dog, I leave this blog for a few months and all sense does, too.
The only confusion about Brown is whether it’s South Asian or Hispanic (remember Lighter Shade of Brown and their hit “On a Sunday Afternoon?”). Ennis and Fuerza Dulce had every right to be confused by such a sloppy concept for a conference. Also, this reminds me of the only BlogHer I attended, which I was a panelist at (When Globalization is Good for Women); when I was done paneling, I went to the session about/for Bloggers of Color…only to discover that it didn’t include any South Asians, until an SM reader and I called them out on it…after which they had the grace to be mortified at such a lapse.
47 · A N N A said
I’ve met many who do just that.
48 · ptr_vivek said
Well, your friends are more interesting than my friends, then. 🙂 Pearl Bailey didn’t call U street “Brown Broadway”.
whatever the track-back situation, we’re still yet to be graced with BWB organizers’ search/outreach criteria.