Jerry Kang's article Ruminations On Cyber-Race is largely anecdotal, with Kang drawing much on his own experiences as a Korean-American law professor. His interest lies mostly in the construction of race on-line and the manner in which this may disrupt racial mechanisms, as he states “race is a social construction…I began wondering what happens when race is constructed through code, in cyberspace” (p. 58) Following the introduction to his article Kang then proceeds to establish some of the ways in which ethnicity may work in the cyber medium, these fall under the main categories of abolition (removal or invisibility of ethnicity on-line), integration (considering ways in which ethnicity may be celebrated or facilitated peaceably on-line) and transmutation (the act of performing a different racial identity on-line).
Kang acknowledges the high probability that there will be a reduced number of minority groups with access to the on-line world as compared to the "white" population, a point which is also raised in the Menu-Driven Identities article by Lisa Nakamura. However despite this somewhat major drawback Kang sees cyberspace as an unmediated space through which we would be able to "engage in more direct experiences with other races - experiences with actual people, not mediated by third parties" (p. 61) He thus sees it as a space where the media and other external sources have not been able to filter information, whereby they place stereotypes and generalisations (often inadvertently) on ethnic groups for their readership. He also considers 'shared goals' to be a way around racial segregation on-line. Forums that facilitate discussion about a particular topic such as sexuality, illness or favorite animals removes the focus from one's ethnic identity and places it on a common feature that each person within the forum shares with the others.
He sums up his short article by assessing the value of those processes of abolition, integration and transmutation. He suggests that integration is something that must worked and built on in social spaces (such as web page designers and on-line gaming technicians) which will facilitate interaction in cyberspace between members of different ethnic groups. He also believes that understanding and utilising the positive aspects of cyberspace will help to avoid future disappointment at missed chances for integration.
I have some questions which I hope you may answer...
Q. It would seem that race, or as I prefer and what I think is more politically correct, ethnicity is so integral to an individual's identity that any attempt to 'erase' or remove it from their online self is far more damaging than it is liberating - what do you think?
Q. While Kang suggests that cyberspace lifts geographical boundaries, with the possibility of opening communication pathways between different ethnic groups; do you think that this may or does now have the opposite effect and instead allows for racism to have a larger audience where people with similar prejudices may group together and fuel their ideas in larger think tanks?
Q. Kang discusses the idea of "transmutation" whereby your on-line self (usually one represented by a digital avatar in an on-line gaming world) chooses to be of a different ethnicity to that of their "real world" self. While he suggests the pros and cons of this idea I was wondering what others thought? Is this an inherently racist act - masquerading under false pretences or like Kang points out, does it make a user question the actual constrictions that their ethnicity places on their real world identity (p. 62)?
Q. And finally, do you think that having to restrict inter-racial interactions to cyberspace is a very sad state of affairs? Or is that what we have brought ourselves to given our racial prejudices and stereotypes that we have gleaned from the media?
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3 comments:
in regards to question 1,
i think that a history of down-trodden ethnic minorities may find it liberating to suddenly be in the same boat as say a white American when on the internet. No-body can actually leave their body, their skin and their history behind in the real world so perhaps it is something thats safe to play with online?
I suppose that is a point but isn't it just brining up the same issue again? That being how can they escape their pasts as it is something that is surely so ingrained in their sense of self.
Of course they have the opportunity to "play" with the ethnic identities online but to suggest that the cyberworld provides a space to wholly remove racial indicators seems ludicrous. Well to me anyway!
I appreciate you commenting Serena :)
In reply to your first question: I just recently had a discussion with a friend about something that to me seems very similar: if you adopt children from different racial/ethnical backgrounds (like e.g. Madonna or Angelina Jolie) does that make you in a weird sense racist again because you somehow try to complete your family with 'every colour of the rainbow'...or is it an utterly un-racist thing to do because you don't care what race or colour the child is you're adopting...?! The internet works in the same way when the question of race is deleted I think. You could say it is a good thing because superficial differences between people disappear, you could also say it is a bad thing though, because part of our personal culture gets lost. Does that make any sense?
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