20 March 97 CDA Update by John Heilemann A promising day in court for the CDA Special Report by Sandy Zipp Young people talk about race online Features: WiredSide Chat CDA debriefing with CEIC attorney Bruce Ennis Daily Poll Race?! Online?! Daily Quote Rosenberg's guilt proven - sort of Noise Barbara Marx Hubbard Post of the day Defending the NEA Netizen Archive

What Color           Is the Net?              Special Report by Sandy Zipp "There is no race. There is no gender. There is no age. There are no infirmities. There are only minds. Utopia? No, Internet." This recent MCI commercial articulates a ubiquitous conceit about interactive electronic technology. But the long-distance company's vision of an online paradise doesn't begin to address the complex issues emerging around race and the Net. In a world far removed from marketing slogans, the young people at Pacific News Service's Youth Outlook (or YO!) and America Online's Plug In (keyword: plug in) grapple with these issues daily. These programs - a Web version of a bimonthly newspaper distributed in schools and youth centers, and a teen chat room, respectively - are staffed by diverse teams of teenagers and young adults from the first American generation to come of age with these new technologies. Their staffs' varied insights on how the Net obscures and affects race offer nothing less than a glimpse into the future of the medium, and also, perhaps, a guide to the social dynamics of our nation in the 21st century. These teenagers haven't found the colorblind Net conjured up by MCI. Stanley Joseph, 22, a staff writer for YO, describes the Net as "colorful." Drawing a comparison with isolating suburbs versus a bustling city where "you have to interact with oty of cross-cultural learning and communication. They are not without a sense of wonder about what this technology helps them do. More impressive, though, may be their remarkable pragmatism about making the technology work for change in the real world. "Some people we might be able to change, and some we can't," says Plug In's Dwyer, "but we're just going to have to carry on." . . . . email The Netizen Talk about what race means in a community of invisible people, in Threads. . . . . Copyright © 1994-97 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.

Opinions among these young netizens and the adult staff who guide them differ when it comes to the effect the Internet is having on race relations and the ability to communicate with people from different backgrounds. Many, like YO's Pao Sae Chao, 21, are optimistic about their ability to meet and learn from "people of all cultures and backgrounds" online, precisely because they can't be seen and judged right away.

Others, though, are skeptical about whether chat rooms, newsgroups, or Web conference sessions provide a useful setting for balanced and healthy discussions across perilous racial divides. As Andrea Lewis, another associate editor at YO, puts it, the Net's MCI-sanctioned myth of racial anonymity seems to make some people "feel more free to come into chat rooms to harass people." While this may provide a chance to educate people, as Rasheed mentioned, it also leaves a bad taste in a few mouths. Plug In's DaMeila Drayton, 15, says that if someone said some of the things she has seen online to her face, "they're about to catch a hot one on their lip!"

Even with all the practical experience these youth have online, it's hard to sell them on the idea that the Internet might cause overwhelming changes in their lives - especially when it comes to their personal racial or ethnic histories. "Why is that so fascinating?" asks Andrea Jones, 22, a YO writer, about the Net's potential to remove race from human interaction. She's not intrigued by a communications medium that's most effective only "if you're nothing."

Many of these young netizens said they feel that their social histories, their identities in the real world, are just as necessary on the Net as away from a computer screen. Joseph believes we can't "achieve this wholeness without knowing about each other." Perhaps the Net can be used to help us inch toward understanding each other, but, says Kumagai, we should give up "talking about this 20-year-old thing erasing social structures that have developed over centuries."

The youth who make YO and Plug In happen expect to find and confront racial issues online. In fact, the online world they're creating is no more or less than an extension of the lives they live day in and day out, rife with racial hazards but rich with the possibility of cross-cultural learning and communication. They are not without a sense of wonder about what this technology helps them do. More impressive, though, may be their remarkable pragmatism about making the technology work for change in the real world. "Some people we might be able to change, and some we can't," says Plug In's Dwyer, "but we're just going to have to carry on."

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email The Netizen

Talk about what race means in a community of invisible people, in Threads.
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Copyright © 1994-97 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.