Why I Don’t Want to be Considered a Black Blogger

Before Al Sharpton takes me to task, let me explain what I mean. Black is who I am. Black is my eth­nic­ity. This post has noth­ing to do with not accept­ing who I am. This post has every­thing to do with per­cep­tion. Perception in the blo­gos­phere.

In blog­ging there are cer­tain groups that we cast blog­gers into. We have Mom blog­gers, Black blog­gers, Health blog­gers, etc. etc. etc. These become a niche. Even if our blog isn’t par­tic­u­larly about these sub­jects.

For exam­ple, a blog­ger who also hap­pens to be a mother may be defined by being a par­ent. Her blog may focus on a topic like career strate­gies, but occa­sion­ally she posts things related to her fam­ily. Human ten­dency is to for peo­ple to asso­ciate her with being a par­ent.

If that’s your aim, then there’s no issue there, but if it isn’t then that is going to affect the num­ber of peo­ple who come to read your blog.

Let’s look at two exam­ples from oppo­site ends of the spec­trum, but who are both suc­cess­ful in their field. One from the world of blog­ging and the other from the world of act­ing.

Darren Rowse — Problogger​.net

Mr. Rowse is well-​known to blog­gers every­where. He also hap­pens to be Australian. Even though that is who he is he isn’t defined by it. He is just a great blog­ger. I imag­ine that if he were defined by where he is from that-​as a reader-​I may have drawn the con­clu­sion that his blog only related to peo­ple of that par­tic­u­lar area. Therefore, I may not have taken the time to read his blog and gain the invalu­able infor­ma­tion that I have.

As I men­tioned before this is about per­cep­tion. Every reader is dif­fer­ent. Whether we acknowl­edge it or not we do have these built –in per­cep­tions based on cer­tain mark­ers like race, sex, age, and so on.

Another exam­ple is actor Will Smith.

How does Will Smith fac­tor into this? Well Mr. Smith has gained suc­cess in two careers. An actor and a rap­per. Even though that is the case he is rarely referred to as an actor/​rap­per. From my per­spec­tive when I think of actor/​rappers I think of some­one like DMX. In these cases actor is more of an hon­orary title than based on tal­ent.

However, Will Smith has earned the title of actor. He also isn’t called a black or African-​American actor. Why? Because he is just a tremen­dous actor who can take on a role meant for any per­son of any race. So there’s no need for the clas­si­fi­ca­tion. He’s just a great actor. Period.

So here’s my point: I just want to be con­sid­ered a blog­ger. Hopefully, a good one. Not just among a cho­sen group, but in rela­tion to every­one else. In what­ever we do don’t we want to just be acknowl­edged for being good at it? Do we want to be char­ac­ter­ized by who we are? “You’re a good _​_​_​_​_​_​for a woman” and other sim­i­lar state­ments. We want to be com­pa­ra­ble to our peers regard­less of our back­ground, race, sex, parental sta­tus or any other marker. This is why I don’t want to be con­sid­ered a Black blog­ger.

What do you not want to be defined by?

Thanks for read­ing,