Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Menu-Driven Identities

This article, “Menu-Driven Identities”, is really starting to confuse me. First, it is not fun to read; the text makes it hard to read. Second, I don’t know what Lisa Nakamura is talking about. First it’s all about race or the lack there of on the web, then she starts talking about portals and the overload of information found on the web. She compares it to literature. Then, she loses me. I wish that at least at the beginning she would stay focused! She then discusses how portals have discreet way of identifying your race by tracing the type of sites you focus on. The portals mentioned above refers to Yahoo and something I’ve never heard of: Excites. This portal does focus on race. In fact, they use white as its default race. Gender is also included. This article seems to feel that while race should not be an issue via the Web, identifying race is important. I say this because the author seemed to be slighted since some of the ethnic groups, such as, interracial,l is not listed as a choice. Would you make up your mind? Guess what, as long as race is important to people, racism will be an issue on the Internet. As mentioned, while participating in chatrooms, people sometimes live out stereotypes. The article eases its way into the discussion of the division between Whites and Blacks and their computer literacy and access. While the lack of a connection is made with Blacks of the World Wide Web due to the fact that the creators are white, Blacks are encouraged to get involved and create web sites that address their needs.

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