One of the questions that has not been answered is just
how many black bloggers actually applied for credentials. Don’t you think that would be important in determining how
fair the process may or may not have been? Can we say that 20% of the bloggers should be black when it’s possible that even if all of the black bloggers who applied were accepted that number still wouldn’t be 20%?

I think the fact that 55 state bloggers were selected and none
were black shows there is a problem. But the outcry from black bloggers who were rejected for credentials is limited.
It leads one to believe IF (and I don’t know that for sure) black bloggers weren’t interested in applying on the front e end, then why such a fuss now?

I’m not certain that parity should be measured against the 20% Black Democratic delegates. Perhaps we should measure parity against the percentage of Black bloggers out in the country. Methinks that less than 5% of the bloggers are Black. So having 7.2% Black bloggers at the DemConvention may be more than we should normally expect…

peace, Villager

What we DO know is that D. Yobachi Boswell (TN) of the AfroSpear’s BlackPerspective.Net and the Afrosphere Action Coalition applied for state blog status and was rejected both for state blog status AND for general pool status. And that left the overall pool only 7.2% Black and left the state blog pool 98% (or so) white.

Why didn’t they admit D. Yobachi Boswell to the State blog pool, so that the pool could be 97% white instead of 98% white? And that is just ONE example.

The simple fact is that white bloggers from the 96% white DailyKos and 98% white MyDD wrote the state blog criteria with the specific purpose of (a) making sure that THEIR state blog affiliates would be chosen and (b) making sure that no Black blogs would be chosen.

It’s OBVIOUS. One blog was to be chosen from each state based on audience. If you gave one radio license in each state based on audience, that might effectively outlaw Black radio stations, because the largest radio station in every single state is very likely to be a white one.

So, why not bring in a Black state blog from every state with a large Black population, as part of the application criteria? The answer is simple. If they did that, then the white bloggers who NEVER, EVER, collaborate with or link to Black bloggers would be forced to see our Black faces on the floor of the Convention in Denver.

It’s like the Jim Crow laws that said anyone could vote if their grandfather had voted. Since Blacks were not allowed to vote during slavery, this “color-neutral” made it impossible for virtually all Blacks to vote.

Now, some people would have looked at that law and said, ‘Well, why don’t Black people try harder to have grandfathers who voted’? If you can’t clearly perceive when you’re being purposefully and intentionally excluded, thenn it’ll be damned hard to break down the walls of exclusion.

I agree that one result of raising hell about this is that it will be harder for the DNC, DailyKos and the rest of the whitosphere to pretend that they didn’t know we existed, and that’s why they “forgot” to include us.

Keep an eye on YearlyWhitosphere, which has been renamed Netroots Nation. There is every evidence, as I’ve shown statistically at my blog, that they have no intention whatever of including Black people this year, just like the Washington Post observed that it was an all-white conference last year.

And so, when the MF’’s get together and write the criteria for state blog status for 2012, the same all-white group will write the same Black-exclusive criteria all over again, unless we show that we are wise to their game and oppose them at every turn.

And it infuriates me that anybody could say we’re “crying wolf” about an all-white blog corps. What do they have to do? Exclude us all AND march around with a f’ing Confederate flag for us to realize that we are being purposefully excluded?

Sometimes Blacks “cried wolf” during slavery too. They weren’t being enslaved because they were Black. They were being enslaved because they lacked the documentation to hsow that they were free. Yeah, right! Wake up and smell the coffee!

“lets examine their motives objectively”?

Who CARES about motives? Did we need to examine the slaves’ motives for escaping to the North, and did we need to exampine Black people motives for wanting to eat at the lunch counters at Woolworth’s?

Do we need to examine Blacks’ motives for wanting employment in an all-white fire department, for example?

When people demanding justice, the correct response is to support them, not examine their MOTIVES for demanding justice!

When your child wakes up and says he wants to eat breakfast, do you examine his motives or simply put some food on the table?