Ax says, “Access! Ack!” Sizz….
Why does access dominate our discussions of race and class online? What (if anything) should we being doing to respond to the dearth of discussion beyond access? Please refer to at least two of the readings in your response.
The why questions seems fairly easy to answer. Race conversations are often concerned with the problem of access–not just to technology, but to public spaces, cultural capital, elite jobs, etc. So when computers and writing takes up this problem, it’s good to start with access as a first step. If non-whites can’t even get to computers (the physical aspect of access), then the whole conversation ends there. And one step further, when non-whites actually start using computers but experience real and perceived exclusion from software, organization, or existing online communities, they lack access in another way (a de facto kind of access problem). And again, that barrier needs to be overcome before the next level of technology use can happen, like the BlackPlanet phenomenon Banks describes.
Beyond that, the prompt’s questions are harder to answer (and certainly more opinionated, yes?). No matter what I plan to say, it keeps coming back to access for me.
For example: I’m thinking about BlackPlanet, trying to think what kinds of issues we can discuss “beyond access.” Well, it’s a space that’s community-driven, where it’s safe and encouraged to relax one’s multiple identities for a second and just indulge in the ways of talking that many black folks grew up with. The site itself is organized in a way to encourage that safe community, where everyone can get to everything and comment in a complex, web-like way. Banks mentions that this site design “is important because of what it implies about access. There are no parts of the Planet that are inaccessible because they are too far from home” (77). So we’re back to access again; it’s the base on which the superstructure of this kind of online community can exist. Grabill’s concept of the infrastructural access makes the same sort of point (464-65).
Or consider Blackmon’s much more critical exploration of African American students’ computer use. If I try to think “beyond access” here, in search of another or additional paradigm to discuss her theories, I might focus on the concept of the “cyber human” who is constructed by technology to be “raceless” (417). [Firefox, by the way, doesn't seem to believe that racelessness exists, putting a little red "Silly! Nobody can be raceless!" squiggle under the word.] This cyborg concept makes for intriguing thinking, but I immediately have to back up (as Blackmon does) and start thinking about the ways different people must erase different amounts of themselves to shift into their computerized identities. For white men, in other words, moving through online spaces is a very comfortable “fit”; very few, if any, aspects of their speech, thought, and identity must be lopped off before trying on this new techno-outfit. But isn’t that again a question of access? To some, the opportunity to play with new forms of communication is simply more accessible.
So why not just accept that access underlines many of these conversations, and move on from there, instead of trying to find a new starting point?
-Kyle
