Are teens subconscious online racists?

Guest post by Chenkai Zhu

In a recent talk titled “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online,” Danah Boyd used ethnographic methods to study the ways American teenagers engage social media websites like MySpace and Facebook. Boyd suggested that when teens choose one social network over the other, they reveal as much about their own self image as their choice did about the demographics of the community.

Take a look at the comments Boyd records in the section titled “MySpace vs. Facebook,” which respond to her questions, “Do social networking choices have unintentionally racialized effects?” and “Do these choices accurately reflect race-based divisions in real life?” Many of the teens say their network-selection is based on practical, technical and aesthetic preferences, not racial or class-oriented ones.

But it seems to me that a person’s race, ethnicity and class surely shape her or his practical, technical, and aesthetic preferences. How could it be otherwise?

Boyd challenges us to recognize that our everyday practices on the internet – from the way we type to the layouts we prefer, even our sense of humor and aesthetic taste – separate us along racial and social lines from people we have never known, seen, or interacted with.

For me, the bottom line is: Are social networking choices political? Ethnographic methods, which can get beyond the surface of what people say about what they do and why they do it, often reveal patterns that may be subconscious. Ethnographic data can be a rude awakening, but it can reveal to us the unintended effects of our choices.

Chenkai Zhu is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in international affairs and Asian studies. She spent the summer of 2007 in Shaoxing, southern China, conducting ethnographic research on how tourism and urban development have affected residents of the city. Her research was funded by a Cotlow Award from GW’s Anthropology Department. She is currently interested in the ways Sino-Latin American relations can influence indigenous peoples in the Andes.

Photo, “My social network…,” via Flickr user luc legay, courtesy of Creative Commons.