So why aren’t there many African-American political bloggers?

A post entitled “The African-American Blogging Thing,” raised this question on the XX blog. I read this post and then read Henry Jenkins’ article, “Cyberspace and Race,” and came to the following two assumptions.

Jenkins wrote that in our society, the average black family income is an estimated half of the average white family income. Furthermore, he wrote, “It is hard to imagine universal computer literacy in a country that has yet to ensure that all citizens can read and write-and…there is a strong correlation between race, class and literacy rates.” Taking that into consideration, it is a strong possibility that there are a proportionally lower number of black political bloggers than white simply because there are a proportionally lower number of blacks that have easy Internet access.

Also, Jenkins discusses the idea of not having a “color-blind” society per say but a society that recognizes and embraces racial and ethnic differences. One of these differences might be in the way people express themselves or the things they are interested in. For instance, there are TV shows, radio stations, advertisements, etc. that target specific racial and ethnic groups as the primary audience be they white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and so on. Perhaps political blogging is not the tool of choice for many blacks. Maybe it is a white male dominated medium because a larger percentage of white males are interested in blogging. Perhaps many black males choose to express their political opinions via a different medium.