I’ve been classified as an African American but I come from a strong ancestral line of Algonquin Native Americans and mixed with Irish/Dutch/Black with the last name of, yes that’s right you guessed it, “Smith”.

I’m a FB user and studied and noted my family and friends and their friends FB usage and narrowed down topics of interest for more than a year. I will email you or connect with you soon.

Michael

I suggest thinking about this phenomenon of digital racialization/segregation and the way it is co-productive of and reinforces offline racial formation relative to the recent York University study on why taking anti-racist action is rare for whites. Given an experience that occurred at Berkeley in which a white male publicly attacked a black female fellow graduate student and the majority of his Facebook friends (also Cal graduate students or recent graduates who knew/know both parties) chose to remain friends with a person they knew to be a racist bully who engaged in a public email attack, it is interesting to think about how Facebook reinforces whiteness and anti-black racism via the decision of third parties to condone racist bullying via continuing to be ‘friends’ with known racist bullies for the reasons discussed in th York study: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2009/01/09/taking-anti-racist-action-why-rare-for-whites/. Something else to think about (relative to the question of Jenkins and ‘participation’). when even someone like KPFA producer Laura Prives won’t unfriend this person, despite knowing about his documented racist bullying, there is a lot to think about relative to hoe race is and is not being (re)configured by social networking sites like Facebook.

I think once everyone is on board(online), we’re going to see some interesting(familiar) patterns with regard to social interaction online and off, as the line blurs between the two.

If you’re interested in other more niche communities feel free to get in touch with our team at Rafi.ki (a network of schools in 115 odd countries). We’d be keen to support.

What was interesting to me is that these students were also participating in a non-profit run afterschool program to help them earn admission to a 4-yr college (with a 98% success rate). Most of them would be first-gen college students and interestingly, they saw Facebook as part of their college transition strategy; once enrolled, they would get on Facebook, tapping into (their perception of) its college going culture, but keep their MySpace connections to high school roots. For me this raises the question of what role these technologies might play, if any, in disrupting long-standing patterns between education and income?