Who Are We: Racial Construction in Cyberspace

Lisa Nakamura, in “Head Hunting in Cyberspace,” investigates how racial identities are presented in cyberspace. Looking at the “chatspace” Club Connect, which is related to the African-American-issues-focussed site, NetNoir, she wants to see to what extent racial diversity can be found online. She finds that there are few avatars on the site presenting themselves as particularly dark-skinned. Also, there were no Asian-presenting male characters, only female Asian-presenting.
Tara MacPherson looks at the construction of identities of race and place on the Internet in “I’ll Take My Stand in Dixie-Net.” She looks at how cyberspace is localized and raced, counter to arguments that the Internet is a free, democratized space.
Cameron Baily, with “Virtual Skin: Articulating Race in Cyberspace,” looks at how the Internet is raced by discussing the nature of race as a social construction.
I hadn’t thought about race in these terms prior to the reading. Baily asks early on if race is corporeal, immediately following with the explanation that it is a social construction. If race is not just simply based on one’s appearance or body, if it’s something more abstract, then I can easily see how it would translate onto the Internet.