Race and the social web: a bit of a moment right now

Do racial divisions exist on a web where everyone’s whatever colour they choose to be, avatar-wise, at least? I’m picking up a bit of a racial thing in the social media zeitgeist:

● Microsoft social researcher Danah Boyd gets frustrated that racism and classism, while as evident on the social web as they are IRL, are a taboo subject. MySpace and Facebook: How Racist Language Frames Social Media (and Why You Should Care)

● Slate digs into the culture phenomenon around How Black People Use Twitter, wherein I learned about the dozens, an important piece of African American history.

● Ad Age isn’t sure about the Slate piece, “cringing” about the “awkwardness” of making observational generalizations. Ad Age themselves have an entire section devoted to Hispanic marketing.

● I discover McDonald’s bizarre 365Black, a website where McDonald’s compares itself to the African baobab tree, nourishing African Americans with “opportunities”, basketball and “fresh” music.

● And the good folks at Pew Internet & American Life Project note that while broadband access has barely increased from last year among the general population, not so for African Americans, whose home access increased a dramatic 22% from 2009 to now, closing the high speed gap by 8 points to 67% of whites and 56% of African-Americans.