I’ll take that as a compliment!

Sometimes I think you blog like a girl.

- Amanda

I hope you didn’t take the last line of my comment to mean “well, if you’re white you don’t understand.”

What I meant was that if you’re in the majority, you tend to not have to think about things that affect the minority.

For example, as a right-handed person I never have to think about being right-handed because the world is designed around my needs.

Or living a comfortable middle-class existence, I don’t have to think about the fact that if I was poor, I’d probably end up paying more for stuff than I do now. Check out Barbara Ehrenreich’s post about the “poor tax” or “ghetto tax”:
http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2006/07/could_you_affor.html

Please don’t feel picked on. I admire you for trying to understand the issue. Certainly no one here is saying that because you’re a white guy, there’s no way you can understand what we are talking about. But, I do think it is harder for you (and other WM) because by and large, what we are talking about is beyond your experience. You sympathize, maybe even empathize, but you haven’t lived it.

And in answer to your question, how would a woman/minority feel if the statement were reversed — you don’t get it (can’t have it) because you aren’t a white man…..

Well, it happens all the time. It has happened in subtle ways and in overt ways to women and minorities for years. It’s the politics of exclusion, and it is one of the reasons I am so vocal on this issue.

Some thoughts …

First off, I don’t have a problem with efforts like BlogHer (even though I’m not a conference-goer myself).

Second, if any of you believe that being a white male is always the answer, think again.

Take blogging, for example. There is a definite divide between the “techy” white male PR bloggers and the non-techy PR WMB.

That divide is evident in links, in comments, in every aspect of what defines a popular blogger. If you work in Silicon Valley or with tech-based companies, you tend to write about tech issues, and you therefore get more links from the many tech-oriented PR bloggers.

If you’re in agricultural PR, or energy, or what have you, not so much.

So these segmentations aren’t just race or gender biased. And they don’t just impact women or minorities.

In fact, I would argue that there are two main “circles” of PR bloggers — the insiders and the outsiders. There is little interaction between the two. But that’s okay.

Remember, it’s not supposed to be about the number of people you impact.

On a related note, I read several blogs about race and racial issues, and I’m often surprised at how often minorities will close off a discussion with “well, if you’re white you don’t understand.”

While there may be some truth to that, it’s not really advancing the issue any, is it? I get the sense that many of the comments here are in that same vein … “well, you’re a white man … what would you know?”

And how would the flip side of that be taken, if I were to tell a woman or minority that she/he “can’t understand this or that because they aren’t a white male?”

That would deemed racist/sexist, wouldn’t it? This double standard is one of the most frustrating things about discussions such as these.

I’m just going to start pointing people here with a “like she said” when they ask “why BlogHer?”

Just for kicks, I checked out the program for PRSA’s international conference this fall. Whether you think the organization itself is lame or not, the speakers list is quite telling. In the guts of the program (panels and sessions, workshops and so on), the split is pretty even, male/female.

At the top of the program, though, it is all men. Three keynotes and two fireside chats (whatever that is.) In a profession that is heavily populated by women, there wasn’t a single woman this group could find to put on the top of the program with the boys?

Puh-leez.

“In the PR profession — without even a shadow of a doubt — the dominant group is women. Yet there are few women PR bloggers, comparatively.

That’s not the fault of any system or any favoritism. That’s just the way it is.”

Well, my question is why is that “just the way it is?”

I don’t have all the answers, but it seems that the system by which the online community is ordered (as Susan said links) inherently favors men, maybe becasue they were early adopters. Women also favor men. The links out from my site go primarily to men. So, women are part of the problem too. Couple that with the fact that many of us (women) feel uncomfortable with women-centric events (me included), and viola, we perpetuate our own problem.

It’s a strange world when women can dominate a profession, but not dominate its voice.

I can’t speak on the minority issue with any authority, but it is hard to be heard from the bottom of the hill, and both women and minorities suffer from this vantage point.