Racial Politics in an Online Community

Racial Politics: On the Forums

The qualitative content analysis focused on all of the threads posted from April 2011 to August 2011. Any threads that involved discussion about race, either as a primary topic or as a topic that emerged through commentary, were examined. There were 19 relevant threads that emerged for examination, out of over 1,000 threads posted during that time. Of those, seven threads actually focused on the issue of race (either in the title or in the initial posting), while race only came up in the middle of the other 12 threads. Overall, the analysis revealed that there were two common themes concerning race within these threads: silence and idealism. In reference to the first, the small number of threads demonstrated that few people discuss the issue within the forums. In addition, many threads that did delve into race were quite short and only entailed a single post or two. Often, a person found a news story they felt might be of interest to other DetroitYES! members, and posted a link to that story. There may have been a comment or two, but there was no discussion about race, or even the subject matter of the news article. It is interesting to note that outside of the context of our analysis we found a thread in the forum archive devoted to discussion concerning the makeup of the forums and the DetroitYES! community. The thread, entitled “2005 DetroitYES! Stats,” was posted by the site administrator, Lowell Boileau, in January 2006. In that thread, Boileau broke down the community by the following categories: gender, age, favorite ruin, favorite Detroit place, favorite eatery, where the members are from (Detroit, Ann Arbor, etc.). Race or ethnicities as categories were noticeably missing from this statistical breakdown. The lack of any discussion about race or ethnicity in these threads also constituted silence on the matter, and fit within the theme that had emerged from our analysis.

In reference to the second theme, many people who posted took an idealistic approach to race. They would talk about racial relations as if they are currently harmonious, or with racial harmony in mind. For instance, in a thread entitled “Will Detroit Get a White Mayor” started in August 2011, one community member called stated:

Church going [Black] Detroiters weren’t supposed to vote for a gay candidate, but there one sits on city council. Cop hating [Black] Detroiters weren’t supposed to vote for a cop, but there one sits on the city council. It really wouldn’t be that hard for a white person to win a city council seat or a mayoral election in the city of Detroit. The only thing that they would have to do would be to speak to the people with respect and understanding of the problems that Detroit has.

In another thread entitled “Immigrants Add Luster to Metro Detroit” started in June 2011, a community member stated the following:

Immigrants make a city that much better. They help to improve the economy by opening up their own businesses, they bring a different culture to enjoy, different foods, a different understanding of our small world, etc. Welcome them with open arms!

In another thread started in July 2011 entitled “Thinking About Moving to Downtown Detroit but Have Some Concerns,” one person asked the community if there was racism or racial tensions of which he needed to be aware. In response, one community member stated the following:

I am a young white male who lives downtown. It’s fine. No worries on the race thing. Downtown’s residential population is diverse. I haven’t had a problem yet other than people assuming I’m from the suburbs (A stereotype I loathe and drastically wish to shed). You may find yourself a minority in some situations, but it doesn’t bother me. Black Detroit residents are great people and have a charm/swagger about them that is hard not to like.

Essentially, in these posts members of the community demonstrated an idealistic notion of race and race relations within the city. African American people in Detroit look beyond race and their own community when casting their ballots, immigrants bring opportunities and cultural diversity to cities, and the African American residents were “charming.” This is not to say that all of these things are wrong or incorrect. However, it ignores the fact that race has played a pivotal role in Detroit mayoral campaigns (Farley, Danziger, & Holzer, 2002), and that immigrant communities bring with them social change that is often resisted or resented by dominant groups (Sugrue, 1996). Meanwhile, it would be naïve (and a little patronizing) to think of African Americans within the city as “charming” characters swaggering about. This is not to say that there were never any critical comments posted in the threads. There were posts within some of the threads that did not take such an idealistic view about race. For instance, in the thread about a White mayor in Detroit, one community member stated the following:

I just don’t agree with those who say that Detroit won’t have a white mayor in our lifetimes. We just may, but people have to understand how many in the black majority see white people. There are white folks, and then there are white folks. The former group are generally viewed with hostility (as potentially dangerous given historical and contemporary factors), but the latter as having some common ground or common cause . . . “brothers and sisters from another mother”.

Nevertheless, the previous types of comments, along with the silence noted above, were dominant across all of the threads in which race was discussed.

The themes within discussions about race constitute mundane reiterations of Whiteness, discussed in previous research by Warren (2003). Working from the perspective of performativity (see Butler, 1997; Fuoss, 1999), Warren built on past research concerning strategic rhetoric of Whiteness (see Nakayama & Krizek, 1995) by illustrating certain performative strategies used to negate power discrepancies, and hide White privilege from scrutiny. Such strategies are not so much intentional as they are cultural. Strategies noted by Warren included the construction of sameness, contradictions, stereotypes, and victimhood. The first two strategies erase race and ethnicity, while the other two implicitly attack anyone who critiques Whiteness. Construction of sameness and contradiction are most evident within the postings of several of the community members. The first, construction of sameness, entails a kind of “color blindness, claiming sameness while ignoring difference” (Warren, 2003, p. 87). The second, contradiction, entails “different messages rubb[ing] against each other in performance in ways that undermine[s] the rhetorical intent claimed by the performer” (p. 95). The contradictions begin with sameness, but also entail value claims that stereotype or objectify people of color; the sameness serves as a “friendly” frame to mask claims that order the world in a way that preserves White privilege. This is similar to inferential racism described by Owens Patton (2004), which is the reinforcement of White supremacy through civility utilizing terminology and structure designated by the dominant group. The first of these strategies is evident across all the examples above. Essentially, everyone is portrayed in the posts as color-blind and equal. The projection of such equality erases or downplays the gross inequalities all across the city. In addition, many postings demonstrate the construction of contradictions; this is particularly true of two of the postings noted above. In one posting, immigrants are equal, but they are also viewed as commodities or objects. Such a view contradicts, or even negates, the equality and color-blindness expressed by the community member. In the second, the community member tries to express a color-blind view, but that view is contradicted as they discuss those people as “charming” ornaments or window dressing. Overall, such commodification silences those people whom they are discussing, and shields White dominance from scrutiny.

Racial Politics: Beyond the Forums

The threads on the forums may have downplayed racial politics and tensions within the cityscape of Detroit, but that does not mean that race was not a topic of discussion among members of the DetroitYES! community. Interviews with 18 members of the online community revealed two important concepts: site policies concerning banning and erasure, and controversial views about race held by many White members of the community. First, we discovered that the site administrator sought to avoid controversy in the forums by banishing members of the community who posted inflammatory remarks; this policy, in turn, affected discussions about race within the forums. In our interviews with Boileau, we asked him how discussions concerning race played out in the forums. We learned that he created an overarching policy for the community in which people were required to treat one another with respect, and that anyone who broke this general rule was banished and their problematic post erased. Inflammatory postings that violated this rule ranged from rude emoticons, to name-calling. According to Boileau, conversations on the forums could often “spiral out of control” and create problems for all of the members of the community. In order to overcome this problem, Boileau resorted to a policy of banning members for controversial comments altogether, and subsequently erased their comments from the threads:

In the earlier days [discussions about race were] a little bit more heated at times . . . so things could get a little out of control and then once [people] do that they switch it to name-calling and it breaks down and it loses control and everything. Over time I’ve improved my moderation skills. I am very strict: no name-calling policy. I am very strict. I throw people out and I don’t give them a reason if they get into it now.

For Boileau, this was a rule about civility in general, and not an attempt to stifle discussion about race specifically. This policy took on more importance, however, in our interview with Jake, a Black activist who had been banned from the community on several occasions. According to Jake, he often entered the community and began conversations about racism in Detroit and within DetroitYES! Essentially, Jake claimed the city had been plagued by racism for decades, and that several White enterprises (like DetroitYES!) were organized to hide White supremacy in the city. Jake went on to explain to us that he was usually expelled and banned from the community by Boileau for his comments; he would then create a new account and identity in order to gain access again. This story about banishment following racially charged postings was not unique. Other members whom we interviewed told similar stories about the banishment of themselves or other people from the community for problematic comments within discussions about race. In fact, most of the stories about banishment that we heard were associated with postings that involved controversial comments about race. Ultimately, Boileau’s banishment and erasure policy did not specifically target discussions about race, but was concerned with civility and tone within all discussions. However, as conversations about race seemed to often become uncivil and devolve into tones that were less than respectful (even according to Boileau), the policy indirectly affected threads that delved into race.

We would like to note that following our first interview with Boileau we found his policy, and its impact on discussions about race on the forum, to be negative and problematic. From a critical theory perspective, any strategies that shut down and erase such discourse about race and racism seem to be authoritarian and instrumental in protecting White dominance. Even if those conversations created problems in the community, they would be necessary for illuminating and limiting oppressive practices (e.g., Dougherty & Krone, 2000). This policy serves a kind of forced civility—similar to that described by Owens Patton (2004)—that aided in the construction of topical avoidance, a form of discursive closure that is used to suppress conflict (see Clair, 1998; Deetz, 1992). Past research has demonstrated that such discursive closures tend to “distort power relations, disguise inequity, sequester resistant discourses, and ultimately close emancipatory forms of communication” (Clair, 1998, p. 38). From this perspective, then, the DetroitYES! community looked like a site through which mundane reiterations of Whiteness (Warren, 2003) and discursive closures (Clair, 1998; Deetz, 1992; Owens Patton, 2004) safeguarded White privilege and erased racial tensions and problems in the cityscape.

As we interviewed more members of the community, however, our view on this discursive closure changed. We acknowledge that there are definitely problems with such reiterations of Whiteness and discursive closures, but during our research we also began to see that there were positive implications for the community as well. In the interviews with several of the White community members, we noted very controversial views concerning race in Detroit. Most notably, many of the White members either engaged in their own discursive closures that blocked any critical discussion about race and race relations in the city, or espoused negative stereotypes about African Americans in their discussions about race and racial politics in Detroit. For instance, one White community member called John was asked why nobody seems willing to critically discuss race on the forums, particularly the role of race in some of the more tumultuous moments in Detroit history (e.g., the 1967 riots). John responded by first discussing the 2010 Tucson shooting involving U.S. representative Giffords:

[The shooting in Arizona] hasn’t got anything to do with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Sarah Palin, or any of those talking head fucks. If you want to talk about something talk about mental illness, talk about a lack of . . . Mental illness, as a society, as a culture, as a people we are fucking freaked out when you run into a schizophrenic…People get entrenched in their –you can’t see what’s a real crime there.

John essentially conflated the tragic shooting in Arizona and the mental state of Jared Lee Loughner with some of the more tense moments in Detroit history. Such a conflation, then, emphasized the mental state of individuals who commit crimes in Detroit, and ignored any of the racial politics, tensions, and history involved; crime in Detroit was transformed into irrational actions of unstable people. The only people who John claimed emphasize or examine race are those who are biased: minorities and racists.

There are so many times with city council where you’d get the “they don’t look like me crowd. We don’t want those people in here.” You know, the Kwame-ites. They would say that. They don’t look like us. We don’t want their development going here, we don’t want them moving into the neighborhood there.

The Kwame-ites in this instance were the African American supporters of former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Ultimately, for John, race was only the concern of racists, liberal extremists, or biased Black people. The conflations and connection of race as a topic to irrationality stand as a kind of discursive closure that avoided conflict, similar to the avoidance described above. In this particular case, the tactic seems to be neutralization, in which “value positions become hidden and value-laden activities are treated as if they were value-free” (Deetz, 1992, p. 191). Essentially, John sought to avoid the topic of race by positioning that issue as a value-laden argument. His own position, however, was presented as objective, rational, and value-free, which hid his own values and opinions. This, in turn, neutralized any other position that would seek to truly raise and examine the issue of race in the city.

Shortly after our interview with John, we spoke with a White community member named Jane, who demonstrated a similar discursive closure when faced with questions about race in the city. In that interview, Jane noted that attitudes of African Americans in the city of Detroit toward White people were driven by factors that are “ancient history.” The riots, the racist attacks by White police officers, and the notorious era of redlining all happened a long time ago, and has no connection to things going on today. Essentially, African Americans are clinging to the past, and cannot let these problems go; they use those problems as excuses for why they have let the city fall into “decline.” Like John, this commentary stood as a discursive closure; in this case, the tactic was naturalization. This tactic of naturalization is a process through which “subjective constructions become made into objects that are treated as fixed and eternal, that is, reified.” (Deetz, 1992, p. 190). The subjective construction, in this case the socioeconomic status of African Americans in Detroit, does not have a past; it simply exists as we see it today. Essentially, this tactic closes off the past, so that the production of this “object” becomes forgotten. Examining the past, then, becomes irrelevant.

These discussions about race with many of the White community members essentially stood as discursive closures similar to the topical avoidance that emerged from Boileau’s policy to ban controversial comments, in that these tactics shut down the potential for conflict in discussions with others. However, the tactics of community members like John and Jane were also different from Boileau’s, in that they served as postracist political strategy described by Ono (2010) that erase historical problems and imply something wrong with anyone who would engage in such discourse; particularly African Americans. Such people were framed through the discursive closure as biased, lazy, or worse. Indeed, if anyone (particularly people of color) were to resist against such discursive closures, they would fall into the trap of appearing aggressive, over emotional, or threatening (Calafell, 2010, 2012). Many of those White members who held similar views and engaged in these discursive closures knew that they should not bring such discussions or views into the forums, as they would likely lead to conflict; they would then be at risk for banning from the community. That is what makes Boileau’s tactic of discursive closure, then, so important for the racial politics within the alternative cityscape. As uncivil and inflammatory comments are the primary targets for the banning/erasure policy, many of the members of the community felt the need to avoid discussions about race altogether. That subject, then, for the most part, does not exist, or exists in a superficial (albeit inferentially racist) way as demonstrated in the analysis of the discussion threads. There are no implications about community members tied up in this tactic; inflammatory comments based in naturalization or neutralization (and posters who make those comments) just disappear. People who desire to bring postracist politics into the community are often forced to think twice and reconsider their comments because of the controversy that they might stir; Boileau’s policy was something that John acknowledged, and Jane loathed. The exclusion of postracist politics, then, helps to foster an online environment that is ripe for narrative appropriation by minority people who come into the DetroitYES! community.

Racial Politics: Potentials for Narrative Appropriation and Bridges

The potential for narrative appropriation arose from an interview with an African American member of the community, while the concept of building bridges came to light through interviews with several of the White members. This is not to say that the before mentioned African American man is the only African American or minority member of the DetroitYES! community. However, this individual, who we call “Jerry”, had come up with ideas for his beleaguered community by taking part in the posting and reading practices of the DetroitYES! community. He presents the best evidence that the racial politics of the forums can provide opportunity for the appropriation of narratives and building bridges between communities.

We learned of Jerry from many of the interviews we conducted with White members of the DetroitYES! community. When discussing the issue of how the community members engage in the physical city, stories would emerge about the Glorious Hope Urban Gardens, an urban farm in the middle of one of the more poverty stricken quarters of Detroit. Most of these individuals would note that they had gone to the gardens to view it personally, and many had even gotten involved and worked there to some degree. Each person would then tell us the same thing: “You need to talk to Jerry.” With that, then, we sought out Jerry for an interview. We conducted our interview with him at the Glorious Hope Urban Gardens on a cold winter day in February; during the course of the interview he gave us a tour of the grounds. The gardens included plots for growing vegetables and fruits, a commons area with picnic tables and a playground, and pens for chickens and a goat. In the middle of the area is a single building, which serves as the office for the Glorious Hope Cooperative. Within this building is another commons area with a projection screen and DVD projector. Jerry explained to us that the building was used to show movies to children, and also used as a dining space when the organization provided free breakfasts to local children and other people in the neighborhood. He also explained that the building was frequently used as a meeting site by many of the people in the neighborhood.

Jerry told us that before the gardens were established, those city lots had only contained burned out abandoned buildings. There were no grocery stores in the area, and most of the residents had a hard time obtaining fresh vegetables and fruits. At that point in time, Jerry had only recently moved back to the Detroit area. Around that time, he joined the DetroitYES! community to see if he could garner information about what was going on in the metro areas, and see if he could get some ideas about jobs and work. This was where his urban garden began:

In February of ‘08 there was a thread about—after I came out and saw all the garbage—there was a thread about vacant lots, urban prairies, what can be done with urban prairies. That was about the time I came out and saw it. Well I’m going to clean it up and a community garden would be a good thing. Planting food on here would keep people from dumping on it.

As Jerry read and posted on the forums, he discovered discussions about “urban farming” in which many of the community members speculated about better uses for abandoned housing and lots in the city. Many of those people experimented with growing fruits and vegetables in their backyards and small plots in their own neighborhoods. Essentially, Jerry said that these were the posts of middle-class White people who discussed urban farming as a hobby, and they gave him the idea to build a garden for his own neighborhood. Within a few months, Jerry bought the burned out plots from the city for a small sum of money. There was just one small problem: he had no idea how to garden or farm. In order to remedy that problem, he went back to the forums and notified the community about his project, which garnered him input, advice, and active help from other urban farmers:

So I put that stuff on there [DetroitYES!] and they were like “What are you going to do with it? Community Garden!” This one lady, Christine, got on there and she was like, “They’re having a garden resource meeting right around the corner from you tonight at 6:00.” And I was like “Cool!” I had no idea how I was going to get this done . . . Everyday, I was putting stuff on the forum about what I was doing. It went from a couple of months after that, well it wasn’t even a couple of months. [A bunch of] people came out and helped me till and map out the plots of where we’re going to plant. [Someone] brought out his tiller, he and his wife, we were all tilling and setting up the wood chips and how we were going to plant. That was our first official work day, it came from DetroitYes people.

Our interview with Jerry demonstrated the concept of narrative appropriation, which in turn creates opportunities for the bridging of communities. Calafell (2007) illustrated such appropriation in her examination of the Mexican American activist “El-Vez.” According to Calafell, Richard Lopez, a musician and activist for immigrant rights, utilized songs and images of Elvis Presley in order to build a performance that he could use in his activism. Essentially, Lopez would dress up as a Mexican version of Elvis Presley and sing altered versions of old Elvis tunes (i.e., Immigration Times, You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Chihuahua); those songs contained overt messages about the struggles of Chicano people and the oppressiveness of United States immigration policies. In this way, then, Lopez had appropriated a popular narrative familiar to White middle-class people. This Elvis narrative was about a poor southern man who “pulled himself up by the bootstraps” using his talents; the story of Elvis mirrors the so-called “American Dream.” By appropriating this narrative, Lopez presented arguments about immigration rights to White audiences who would have likely never given any thought to the subject. Ultimately, Lopez was able to build bridges to other communities appropriating components of a narrative that the other community valued. In the case of Jerry and the DetroitYES! community, a similar process was taking place. Jerry had noted that the urban farming concept helped his immediate community:

I don’t know, when I started the garden I had this spiritual thing happen. We always went to church, when I started working in the garden, I have always had this big heart and wanted to do what I could…I knowing what people are going through, some of the stories I have heard in the last couple of years. I couldn’t believe it, I was seeing people that you would never think did not have heat in the winter time. Or people didn’t have water . . . That’s why I wanted to do all of this. In the wintertime if somebody’s cold and they don’t have heat they can come here. We turn the heat on, we have a kitchen, watch TV, whatever. That’s where it started, I wanted a place where we could do stuff in the wintertime. Having something for the kids to do, a place for people to keep warm, I wanted a washer and dryer for people to wash their clothes . . . get a tomato or a bushel of tomatoes or whatever.

In addition, he claimed that the garden also brought attention from White outsiders who would otherwise never pay that neighborhood any mind. As he updated the DetroitYES! community about the progress on the gardens, he found that many of those outsiders took interest and often volunteered to help; Jerry was able to recruit labor for his project. One of those laborers was John, who told us about his role in the Glorious Hope Urban Gardens: “A bunch of people show up, we start doing the rehab on [the plots of land]. We gut the [buildings], cut out, just dumpsters full of just everything.” Even Jane became involved in the gardens to some degree. In this way, then, Jerry was able to get White middle-class people involved in restoring a predominantly African American, impoverished neighborhood. What is particularly important to note is that many of these White people, like John and Jane, were individuals who utilized discursive closures to block or stop any discussion about race or White privilege.