Worse than the picture or the reality that suggests is the meta-story of the miserable attack on blogger Liza over at FDL by TRex for daring to raise the issue to the mostly Caucasian bloggers visiting Harlem:

So, Liza, dear, before you go assailing your betters and making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off, maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion.

Wait a minute--why black and Latino bloggers are being given short shrift? I'm not denying the general trend or that it's a problem we ought to be nipping in the bud before it gets any more entrenched than it already is, but... I thought Kos was Latino?

I'm sorry bit I think this is a massive overreaction. For starters bloggers and blog readers are in no way representative of the population, or indeed the voting population, or even the democratic party, so a typical group of bloggers is highly likely to be vulnerable to criticism for not including enough black, hispanic, disabled, young people, working class, union members...............

My understanding is that the meeting consisted of people who could attend at short notice.

Massive overreaction?  Would it be a massive overreaction if people of color decided not to vote Democratic because, once again, they were not invited to the table?  Let's face it, the progressive movement cannot win unless it includes people of color.  It's not the white liberal vote that makes the Democratic party even remotely competitive; it's the overwhelming margins of African American, Latino and Asian American voters.  The progressive left cannot expect to leave someone off the guest list and then go asking for their votes on election day.

The interesting thing, to me, is that the group was 40% female.  That's one nice thing about where we are going as a society.  We notice the lack of diversity more than the diversity that was in the picture.  Fifteen bloggers did not equal 15 white males.

If no minority bloggers were even notified of the event, I certainly see the problem. If some were invited but couldn't make it, then this is all pretty ridiculous. The truth lies in the details.

thanks for the link, jill.

i can excuse a mostly-white gathering of people who had the time and ability to drop everything and fly to nyc. not everyone can do that. bloggers of color were invited, couldn't make it, no biggie. it happens.

what i can't excuse: letting this photo into circulation. it's the very hallmark of amateurism. hello, did folks not think that some people would pick up on the paleness of it and comment? like, our republican enemies, who would love to convince more black and brown folks that dems are just using them, and don't really care about minority issues?

image is everything.  bush "won" because people think he'd be better to "have a beer with." similarly, kerry and gore lost, as least in part, because they were "stiff" and "uptight." a pic of a bunch of mostly white geeky people with clinton- not really helping our cause. i'm a geek, i love and am one of the regular folk, but we've got to be smarter than this.

take your glamour shots with clinton all you like. just think, like Felix didn't, about if it's really a good idea to put it on the intertubes. individual shots would've been a much better choice.

and when responding to critique on this matter, try to avoid describing yourself a one of the "betters" to a black woman blogger. that's just not cool.

I think that photo shows (1) that Progressive blogs have produced an elite class and (2) that this elite class, in the absence of any conscious effort to build racial diversity, has reproduced the generic racial profile of the elite class in this country.  

Power reproduces itself.  For it to be different, there needs to be an effort to make it so.

With that in mind, I think we're lucky to see it so vividly in this photo so we can use the strengths of this medium to do something about it.  But Progressive bloggers are certainly not above or outside the racial dynamics of American culture.  So, if we want an elite class that isn't all one color, there needs to be an effort to make that happen.

For starters, I think YK07 could have multiple workshops and panels devoted to this very topic--conversations, how-to sessions, networking parties, panels, speakers--just about anything to encourage the growth of diversity amongst Progressive bloggers.  The convention is an ideal way to get the ball rolling.

Well seeing as there is little chance to include anyone who sees the world differently than the top bloggers, thanks to their minions...I would say that this is a tough prospect.

I go away for five minutes and a blogo race war erupts!

One of the great things about this site is that we have a minimum of this sort of stuff.

Mostly, I haven't the faintest idea whether folks commenting here are male or female, far less what their ethnic heritage (if that's the expression) might be.

So much the better, I rather think: we can judge contributions on the quality of the material alone (kind of the equivalent of the content of their character thing).

Perhaps that's because we're 100% a bunch of white boys - but I'd wager the odd coin that the demo is slightly more diverse.

(Interesting to note that Matt's piece here which included the Clinton group photo attracted one or two comments on the whiteness of the group, but nothing condemnatory.)

The sheer absurdity of the donnybrook is pointed up by parentage of the Great Moulitsas himself, who, I believe, has a Salvadorean mother and a Greek father.

Yet I've never got the impression that he figures himself politically as specifically a Hispanic leader. (Or a Greek-American one, come to think of it.)

I note with some pleasure this instance of American Innocence (most of them make me nauseous!): here we have a bunch of politically wised folks lining up for a marquee photo with their (ex-)prez - and none of them apparently figured the racial angle!

I love it!

I remember stumbling upon Bob Woodward's book on the Clinton administration at barnes and Nobles, and the one thing that struck me was the lack of Black and Latino faces in the picture section in the middle of the book.  In fact, the two highest black and latinos in the clinton administration were his caddy (vernon Jordan) and the lady in charge of handling his phone calls (his secretary cant remember her name).  There wasnt much diversity in the clintons' white house and that's why I'm not surprised NOT to see any black or latin face in that picture at the top of this post.

I simply cannot believe the ridiculous statements being made here masquerading as somehow "relevant" and "sane."

As someone who is 99% lurker on DailyKos, MyDD, FDL, Eschaton, BooMan Tribune, Hullaballo and Crooks and Liars, I do not know any of the featured posters as anything but a pseudonym. Until a few days ago I didn't know if the people I read were green, black, red, blue or otherwise. In many cases I didn't know if they were male or female.

Suddenly, the folks who I've read and agreed with (and often disagreed with) are under attack because they lack the proper pigmentation in proper quantities.

This is insanity. First of all, how can one even know if this event's organizers knew the makeup of who he was inviting? And even if they did, how does one know that everyone invited showed up? Furthermore, how presumptive does one have to be to ASSUME they know the heritage of someone in this photo? Is the skin of the half-hispanics not dark enough? Shame on you!

I have an idea. Let's bring back the circular firing squad! Let's destroy those who care about and fight for our our common cause. I say let vanity and jealousy reign! These obviously white and obviously privileged people are clearly at fault here.

But those who would say so are clearly mistaken. If one were to look at me, at this moment, one would see a middle-aged, white man with a corporate job. In other words - the enemy. However, that would not tell the tale of my Native American blood, nor of my family's struggle through poverty. I may appear - like those in this photo - to be white and privileged, but are any of you truly so omniscient as to know me? Absolutely not. And I say the same for everyone pictured.

The opportunism and self-promotion advanced by way of the "white bloggers only invited to Clinton meeting" scandal is shameful and transparent. And those pursuing this line will be remembered.

Much like the United States itself, our Progressive cause can never be destroyed from without - only from within. I urge the self-promoters and "concerned" observers to consider this, as the rest of us march past you.

Cross posted at
Connecticut Local Politics

Now it might surprise some readers, 'tho it shouldn't, to learn that I don't spend a heck of a lot of time on the blogs that get a lot of attention in the blogosphere.  I didn't even know about the big pow-wow called by Hillary's top advisor (and BTW, can you imagine having this guy as your chief political strategist?  What the hell do think he gets per hour?  I bet it is more than five hundred bucks!).  

But I digress (or for those of you paying attention to the inside jokes, regress).

Anyways.  Turns out, the Big Dog had Hillary's top blogger call sort of a summit meeting of what apparently is the - and this is an important phrase and meme gang - "liberal blogosphere".

Daily Kos diarist kid oakland's post is mostly concerned with the lack of color in the photograph of the bloggers with President Clinton.  He wrote, in part:

It may well be, as we learned at Yearlykos, that the liberal blogosphere is significantly more white than the Democratic Party at large.

Now one might reasonably think to oneself: Damn, good thing Chris MC has nuthin' to lose, because he is practically thumbing his nose at the Power Players of the "liberal blogosphere"!   And if you had that thought, you would be right.

My question to you, "liberal blogospherists", is about the ideological divide that "liberal blogospherism" appears committed to creating in the Democratic Party.

To me, a candidate who cannot get elected if only the liberal blogospherists vote for him - which is to say every candidate - should be able to say that he will do what he believes is right for Connecticut not what's right for either political party (much less an observably narrow slice of a political party, a number of whom don't even vote here) without having to fend off a fusillade of insults, accusations and threats.  Seems like a very sound way to represent your constituents, too.

By way of illustrating just how cut off some of these folks are from reality, this tidbit from none other than the illustrious Matt Stoller of MyDD in the wake of Ned Lamont's historic upset of sitting United States Senator Joe Lieberman:

If white progressives, disaffected union members, and blacks strengthen the informal alliance that's being created in this campaign, there's not a Democrat anywhere in the country who can't be beaten in a primary.

What could diversity in the blogosphere reasonably mean?  If it doesn't mean diversity of opinion, diversity of doctrine, then what remains?  And if liberal blogospherists do mean that, then they are coming right around and meeting themselves without, somehow, seeing it coming.  The liberal blogospherists, if they are talking about diversity of opinion - which is what a truly liberal community would mean - are going to have a very uncomfortable "Pogo moment": We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Ideology is fundamentally, irreducibly, and always about power.  All ideology develops within the metaconversation of dogmatism, that is the problem with all ideology. Dogmatism produces ideology, ideology demands intolerance, and intolerance justifies lots of nasty stuff like, say, hating someone because they have different color skin or facial features or religious practices than the ones you believe are correct.  

Heads up "liberal blogosphere", your entire project is about to implode into a black hole of hypocrisy.

I guess there is good reason to be unfamiliar with the firmament of liberal blogospherists and their paralell universe...

"Mostly, I haven't the faintest idea whether folks commenting here are male or female, far less what their ethnic heritage (if that's the expression) might be.

So much the better, I rather think: we can judge contributions on the quality of the material alone (kind of the equivalent of the content of their character thing).

Perhaps that's because we're 100% a bunch of white boys - but I'd wager the odd coin that the demo is slightly more diverse."

Good point, but some contributions commenting on certain issues need to be addressed by a person of color. I write posts on My DD all the time, and I doubt seriously if people don't know my ethnicity when I do, as my handle -field-negro-doesn't leave much for the imagination.

I do think it's ridiculous to say they are not many black bloggers, as a previous poster stated, check out "negrophile" there are over 400 of us.

Is it a major problem that there were no blacks in Bubba's picture? No, but it's problematic nevertheless. In my opinion, as black bloggers we need to try to become more relevant by demanding a seat at the table, whether it be the democratic or republican one. Then, maybe there won't be a white out in future pictures that are supposed to represent bloggers.

BTW, I am still looking in the mail for my invitation to attend the conference.    

The photo is indicative to me of the unfortunate fact that in 2007, even among so-called progressives, that people of color are an afterthought.  I seriously doubt that the absence of POCs, ironically enough in Harlem, was intentional.  At the same, the glaring absence of any POCs, including someone like Keith Boykin (keithboykin.com), who worked in Clinton's advance campaign and in the Clinton White House, and who's a major presence in the blogosphere, strikes me as par for the course.

Perhaps the critiques of not only the imagery, but also the very FACT--that is, the substance--of the absence of any POCs at this event, will provoke, at least temporarily, an effort towards more inclusivity.  Ultimately, I hope that we can move beyond reaction, so that bloggers of color--who have quite a bit to say about the topics that are bandied about and debated on many of the most high-profile progressive blogs--are considered from the beginning, and not just as tokens, in any future events of this sort.

I think honestly that this is entirely too representative of the problems that we face on the internet.  That is to say that instead of talking about solutions or actually help to develop some sort of policy we are fucking around with stupid and useless arguments.  Does anyone here actually think that the people who were not invited were not invited because they were black, hispanic, Japanese, Papau New Guinean, or whatever?  Get a fucking grip.