Mark, Some excellent and extremely relevant questions you've raised here. See my embedded responses below. Mark Marino wrote:
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When watching this video about "Students Today," which features white student after white student, I can't help but wonder why the students don't comment on race.
Before I start, you may want to freeze-frame at 03:22 and look toward the bottom—the sign the girl is holding appears to read "Ethnic Conflict." But journalists usually use that particular phrasing to refer to the sort of unrest that happens in "other" (non-Western) settings, so you may be on to something yet . . . anyway, that said . . . In my experience as both a student and an instructor, race isn't something most white students are comfortable discussing in the classroom. Relevant research ("Teaching about Inequality: Student Resistance, Paralysis, and Rage" by Nancy Davis, 1992 is the first thing that comes to mind) suggests a pervasive colorblindness among American college students that has proven remarkably resilient to pedagogical penetration. Race may not be the first concept that comes to mind in discussing new media, and the sense that the "economic" digital divide is rapidly closing in most western nations may further buttress the (erroneous) view that the web renders race irrelevant. Another factor may be the particular school this video came from. According to the latest US Census figures, Kansas is 90% white. Without knowing its precise ethnic distribution, the state's lack of diversity may go some ways toward explaining the absence of race from students' mental agendas.
On the one hand, the video offers just "a vision" as in one vision of students. However, I read Wesch's title as having broader implications, bordering on universalism. As in "Come see what typical students look like today" or at least what a representative sample looks like today.
Even if his video doesn't claim to be representative, the fact that the video about student use of technology does not mention what to many of us might be so apparent is indicative of certain trends in discussions of Web 2.0, trends I've recently been discussing with Elizabeth Losh of UC Irvine among others: the trend to create a vision of some imaginary Web 2.0student, one that does not take into consideration differences in background or access.
If there was an "imaginary," "exemplary," or "quintessential" Web 2.0 student, an Everystudent of the future, what race/gender/sexual orientation would he/she be? I'd be surprised if no one out there has researched what online discussants tend to assume about their invisible interlocutors' real-life demographic characteristics. We may well imagine that most of the newsgroups/forums/comment areas we frequent look a lot like Wesch's classroom, at least ethnically speaking. In that scenario, inconvenient disparities in privilege and opportunity could be assumed away to ease the pursuit of less dissonant discussion topics.
What do we risk when we leave out race or even socio-economic class? I think some on this listserv are answering this question with their research.
I too would be interested in relevant research in this area. As a member of a racial minority myself, I feel that some new media outlets make me less likely to speak my mind online by bracketing ethnicity and disinhibiting conversation. The instances of casual racism I've encountered in several open forums I have observed closely but informally (e.g. political blog comments, newspaper comments, Youtube) effectively foreclose any substantive contribution I may have been interested in making. Not to jump too far off the deep end of casual social theorizing here, but perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of our society's failure to provide sufficient offline avenues for honest dialogue on race/SES/sexual orientation. Getting back to the original question, in examining whatever social benefits new media are supposed to provide, we should always slow down to ask ourselves: who's speaking and who's lurking? Whose views are represented and whose aren't? What can we do to make representation more equitable, more inviting, and more tolerant? Anyway, thanks again for starting this discussion. I don't think these issues get raised nearly as often as they should. ~DEEN
It's just something I'm thinking about this MLK Day.
More on this discussion here: http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/2008/01/20/a-revision-of-students-...
Wesch has also printed some responses and further discussions of his video here: http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=124#more-124
Best, Mark Marino
-- Deen Freelon Master's Student, Communication University of Washington dfreelon@u.washington.edu