Diversity

Newsweek reported Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? Viewed one way, the issue seems a bit absurd. These self-generated personal Web sites are supposed to be the ultimate grass-roots phenomenon. The perks of alpha bloggers—voluminous traffic, links from other bigfeet, conference invitations, White House press passes—are, in theory, bequeathed by a market-driven merit system. The idea is that the smartest, the wittiest and the most industrious in finding good stuff will simply rise to the top, by virtue of a self-organizing selection process.

So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: "It's white people linking to other white people!" (A link from a popular blog is this medium's equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to "promote myself among those on the A list...."

But is there a way to promote diversity online, given the built-in decentralization of the blog world? Jenkins, whose comment started the discussion, says that any approach is fine—except inaction. "You can't wait for it to just happen," he says. Appropriately enough, the best ideas rely on individual choices. MacKinnon is involved in a project called Global Voices, to highlight bloggers from around the world. And at the Harvard conference, Suitt challenged people to each find 10 bloggers who weren't male, white or English-speaking—and link to them. "Don't you think," she says, "that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?" Definitely. Now let's see if the blogosphere can self-organize itself to find them.

Heather Mac Donald wrote Bad move, guys. The "diversity" mongers have just brought up the one thing that they should have stayed far far away from: the web. Newsweek's technology columnist Steven Levy has declared that the lack of "diversity" among the web's most popular blogs requires corrective action. The goal? A blogosphere whose elite tier "reflects the actual population" — i.e., where female- and minority-written blogs are found among the top 100 blogs in the same proportion as females and minorities are found in the general population.

Levy's complaint comes on the heels of Susan Estrich's campaign against the Los Angeles Times for allegedly refusing to publish female op-ed writers, a campaign that has caused widespread wringing of editorial hands about male-dominated op-ed pages. For Levy to have mentioned the web at this moment is about as smart as inviting Stephen Hawking to an astrologers' convention: The web demolishes the assumptions behind any possible quota crusade....

These diversity grievances follow the usual logic: Victim-group X is not proportionally represented in some field; therefore the field's gatekeepers are discriminating against X's members. The argument presumes that there are large numbers of qualified Xs out there who, absent discrimination, would be proportionally represented in the challenged field.

If the quota mongers really believed these claims, they should welcome the web enthusiastically, since it is a world without gatekeepers and with no other significant barriers to entry.

PoliPundit blogged PoliPundit.com is one of the top-25 trafficked blogs on the web. During the election season, we were in the top 10, with over 300,000 unique visitors on election day.

But readers don't know my race or gender! Since I started this blog two years ago, I've made very little mention of my background. Yet, virtually every prominent blogger has linked to this blog, from Power Line in its earliest days, to Slate's Mickey Kaus yesterday. The "diversity" agitators are out of luck.

This entry was also printed at Right Wing News

Captain Platypus commented Expect a lawsuit soon for not allowing equal opportunity since your links do not include enough minorities. Just what the blogosphere needs - Link Quotas!

Captain Platypus commented The only people who make race and gender an issue are the people who want race and gender to be an issue.

Lurking Observer commented Any chance white female bloggers assumed Polipundit is a white female blogger? Or that black bloggers assumed Polipundit was a black blogger?

The point is that Polipundit may be a Hispanic transsexual paraplegic, but his/her ideas are being read.

jtc commented Will sombody please just go ahead and sue Harvard for discrimination on the basis of political affiliation?

Yancey Ward commented The solution to this evil discrimination against female bloggers is this: Sue, in Federal Court, Microsoft. Win the case and get a settlement in which Microsoft provides a version of IE that only allows alternate visiting of male blogger sites with female blogger sites. Also, the software could also be written to prevent one from spending less time at a female blogging site. On the other hand, the female bloggers could start providing nude photos of themselves. That would also increase the numbers of visitors.

I link to bloggers that say something I want to comment on. Usually it is something I agree with, but I also link to blogs that say something I want to criticize. Race and gender are not a factor.