Friday, March 6, 2009

Friday Fish Fry

At our online discussion forum, every Friday is Friday Fish Fry. It's the day we come together for a posting marathon. Members check out current posts and comment.

To facilate activity and interaction, we've added a query. We hope you'll respond. Today's query is inspired by recent discussion and podcast hosted by Tami at What Tami Said about the state of women of color bloggers. Our query:

How do woc bloggers cultivate and sustain community? As individual writers, what actions or activities do you participate in, in an effort to support sister bloggers? How do we define color, and are we doing enough to reach out to women of color across national, ethnic, racial and sexual orientation lines?

We want to hear from you. Don't be shy. As long as you stay on message and don't pounce the messenger, it's all good. I loathe censorship but if you take it there, well, let's just not go there.

Please take time to read previously published posts and comment. Thank you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I didn't listen to the entire podcast, b/c to be honest, when they started talking about WOC not supporting other WOC online, I no longer felt they were talking to me. That hasn't been my experience at ALL, but I do think personality and politics matter as much, if not more than, race alone. I think sisterhood comes partly from shared experience, but largely from shared agenda, and not every "sista" online shares my political perspective or goals. There are various feminists and multiple feminisms, and I think there's enough room out there for everyone to build (overlapping) communities--the idea of having one large umbrella for all of us to stand under doesn't always appeal to me. I'm not a joiner, but I do love connecting with people and *sustaining* communication over time. Right now I regularly read about half a dozen blogs by WOC, and that keeps me going. One blogger I met sent me a proposal for a conference on Diversity in Libraries, and I immediately starting piecing together a panel filled by the amazing activists & educators I've met online (more to come, L). So I'd say that I have to start out on a scale that's manageable and build from there. Finding consensus on a single agenda will be difficult (if not impossible), but I would support anyone who was willing to try...