That means it's time to sneak in one of those posts.

Roughly simultaneously I got email from Nichelle asking:

"Why don't we see more African American and Latino bloggers getting the amount of press in MSM as the melanin-challenged (White) bloggers?" 

and got pointed to this thread by Memer

You want in on some of this?...
http://sandhill.typepad.com/sandhill_trek/2005/04/happy_birthday_.html
Should more black folk be making a fuss about not being on more white blogrolls?

The questions feel similar but they're different enough that I could respond to the first briefly and without much deep analysis (though there's depth to the topic). The second I've said nothing about yet, largely because my actual involvement in it means I'd have to review my own history. Plus there's that "should"...I'm always careful about whether or not I even respond to questions with "should" in them (STATEMENTS with "should" in them are immediately fair game).

On the mainstream media thing, you shouldn't expect a greater ratio of minority-to-mainstream blogger voices than you get from academia, the business world or any other domain from which you'd choose your authorities. The guys (yes, guys) that pick the bloggers are the same ones that pick the economists...in the end, they're all just interviews so they go about setting them up the same way they do any other interview. I have very little idea of exactly what that process is (though I have ideas on how to approach finding out if it becomes important to me). I know part of the search is domain-specific, so they will, at best, seek out a Black voice (although a Black face is often sufficient) to speak to what they consider to be Black issues.

And what does the mainstream consider a Black issue? Either something that

1. upsets Black folks and no one else (interestingly, if it upsets Black folks it is usually assumed to be specific to Black folks), or
2. issues the mainstream must face because of Black folks (and that "because" is interesting for various reasons).

It is clear that issues of type one get short shrift these days. Seems there's just so many more important things to discuss, nahmsayin?

Issues of type two require specific messages to go down easy, and only a very limited number of Black folks are willing to make such statements.

On the blogrolling thing, it's complicated because the blognet has changed in the two years I've been at it. I have a fair amount of incoming links, and they're almost all blogroll links. As for links from white folks, it's interesting in a way that I was blogrolled by MaxSpeak, Brad DeLong and Digby before Oliver Willis and Pandagon, and I'm still not on Steve Gilliard's blogroll. In fact, I'm fairly sure Amanda is responsible for my presence on the Pandagon blogroll because I only noticed it after she started blogging there.

I could have a lot more links had I been a blog alliance joiner. I could have had a lot more if I was a party-line sort. But I don't know that I'd have been heard more broadly (there are a few that, technically, should have blogrolled me when I was writing and managing a section at OSP) , and I don't think I would get the attention I have if I started, say, last week by doing now what I did then.

So now we reach the "should" part, the part where I need to tip-toe.

Should minority folks make more of a fuss about not being on white blogrolls? You trying to move up the ecosystem? Is the ecosystem working? If it is, all you need is numbers of links...where they come from isn't that important. And systems that weigh the "importance" of incoming links by the number of incoming links the linking site has (read that slowly and it makes sense)

But why? Seriously. I don't doubt that you have a valid reason, it's just that your reason is what you need to pursue, not links from white folks per se. Is blogging really the tool to accomplish your purpose? If your purpose is to achieve fame or notoriety my advice for you isto study Paris Hilton.