I find it absolutely frightening , the unwillingness for some on the Left to shy away from talking about race relations issues. Even worse, they call themselves Progressives. I have never in my life heard of a Progressive movement that only included one race , one gender and one tax bracket.

Ever!

Nicely done, Jenifer.  Reading this with my own home site Firedoglake in mind, here are my perspectives:

Include racial justice issues in your organizational discussions and analysis.

This we do.

Commit to doing serious work against racism as part of your organizing and to forming meaningful, principled alliances with people of color organizations in your communities.

We have the commitment.  Now that I'm doing less writing so I can focus more on site and movement development, I'm able to focus on this a bit more.  We also look for people of color to add to our site as regular guest writers, but have not succeeded in finding the right people with the time to do what we've needed, and now our stable is pretty full.  We had to fill up fast to cover the extra content needs during Jane's (ongoing cancer) treatment coupled with the extra traffic from the Libby Trial.  

We can get better at some of this, but it's also a matter of time to do things other than just generate content, which does take a lot of time and preparation.  Also, we don't just want to "shop" for color:  we want to find the people whose issue approaches compliment our brand approach and style.  An ongoing process, but it has been an ongoing priority and subject of discussion.

Make sure that your agenda isn't set before considering the goals and demands of activists of color. Too often, white activists think of the issues that they are working on as "universal" and approach activists of color asking them to join their "big tent". Why aren't white activists holding themselves accountable in the same way and viewing racism as a universal concern?

Our strategic team is mostly caucasian women and a couple of gay men, one of whom is Latino.  When I was writing more, I tried to pick up prison reform/felony enfranchisement as one of my beats, but I just could not dig into it with my time constraints and need to earn a living outside of politics.  

We can get better at this, and I think we would if we found the right African American person to join the team in a more meaningful way.  I bring one Latino POV, but we'd like to expand our perspectives and thinking on behalf of our audience.  Again, time and the voluntary nature of our work influences how much we have been able to pursue this with any consistency, not to mention, cancer.

Take steps to create a more tolerant culture within your own organization. Sometimes, white culture is "invisible", meaning that methods of work, choice of music, food, ways of communicating, etc., are thought of as "progressive" ways of doing things, instead of "white progressive" ways of doing things. One way should not be held up as "authentically progressive", especially when that cultural form is typically or historically white.

This seems more targeted to a bricks and mortar organization, though I apply it to us in terms of the pop culture and music stuff we chat and talk about, or that we integrate into our work.  Taken collectively, it probably signifies more white and educated than people of color.  I remember when I did some YouTube posts that included Tyler Perry and a few readers were like, "who's that?"  There was some cultural stretch there, but everyone welcomed it.

Consider the needs of people of different backgrounds than your own. Can people with jobs attend your meetings? What about people with children? What email list or social scene do you have to be a part of, to hear about meetings?

We're okay on this one.  The real access barriers here involve digital access and comfort.  We do have conference calls, but a number of us are working and one of us is a full time Mom, though with a spouse for support.

Work to build long term, authentic and trusting relationships with organizations led by people of color in your community. As we stated above, white activists are prone to "shopping" for minorities. Too often, when it comes time to host a conference or chose speakers for a rally, white activist organizations are out looking for brown faces, when they haven't supported the daily work of anti-racist organizations all year long.

This is the kind of thing we've been doing more receptively than proactively, again due to time limitations and lack of funding resources to support our organization.  We have not held conferences or events, so I apply this as a matter of looking for providers of content.  

As we've looked for content providers, we've emphasized good, sharp, concise, witty writing that fits our brand style, with a similar strategic movement and message building point of view, holding those in power accountable.  

We have learned it's easier to find people who know how to write in blog style among actual bloggers, and we do include diversity in our invitation considerations.  Maybe it's the nature of our core audience, but most of those new content providers have been women and we've done well sustaining that, though we have not been able to identify any more people of color.  

The first hoops for a new content provider to get through is the quality of their writing and clarity of thought consistent with our mission, and we do like to elevate voices from within our own community.  If any people of color would like to "audition" for when we have needs, I would recommend becoming a regular FDL commenter.  That's how I became a part of the site, though not with any intent:  it just happened that way.  You don't have to leave your own blog to do this:  we like to bring in people who have their own blogs, like Phoenix Woman or Eli.

Speak up when people of color in your community are being attacked! Don't wait for the Black Student Union on your campus to write all the letters to the editor of your student newspaper. It is time for white people to police their own communities around these issues -- after all, whose responsibility is it to fight racism in the white community?

We do this.  We don't hesitate to pick fights with racists and we have always kept bigoted comments out of our comment section.  We have a very well moderated comment community.

Listen harder, and better. Too often, white activists try to be the savior -- instead of the ally. One of the legacies of the early Civil Rights Movement's organizing style, which came from people like Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses of SNCC, was the deeply rooted belief that there is no one who knows more about the experience of oppression than those who are oppressed themselves. Simply put, go to meetings of people of color organizations, find out what they are up to, and help out. Period.

I think we do this well, but now that I can focus more on organizational development, I ca do more. The netroots equivalent of going to meetings is often conference calls, and I do those and would like to be invited to more that include ways to promote diversity.  Since I have a full time business that pays the bills, I have a harder time making time to go to face-to-face meetings in places.

Working in an inter-racial coalition can be a difficult and humbling experience, but also a sweet one. The most important things we should take with us on this winding road are a willingness to be vulnerable, to make mistakes and be self critical, and to listen to each other. We have a lot to learn, and we need all the brains and hands we can gather. Within the movement, as in the civil rights movement of the 60's, we need a "division of labor," in which the special responsibilities of various groups are recognized. Andy Goodman was one of the many who acknowledged his own responsibility and sought to accept leadership from African American activists. To broaden and deepen today's movement, we need to learn from that spirit of listening, uniting and acting with courage.

We're always listening and learning to our community members who bring up these issues and even to our past critics, even if we have not always agreed with them.  We make adjustments and communicate offline with other activists on how to do all these things better, and by communicate, I don't mean only one way.

On a strategic level, I think the core branding of FDL will probably reflect a pretty close approximation of what it is today.  That said, we can add to our perspectives, and we intend to create more ways for people to connect with each other through a social networking infrastructure, empowering more grass roots (our "Roots Project").

I also think we can do more to help other people create their own vibrant online communities by sharing with them lessons we've learned along the way in how it can be done.  Jane built a site where the main voices were strong women's voices at a time when there were none among the "big" lefty blogs, and she did it in part using practices Matt Stoller outined in his post yesterday on building online power.  But there's more we can add to the conversation about how to be successful, and I think we may do that. . . as long as people don't interpret it as us talking down to anyone or saying, "do it our way."  Still, it's a case study and one success model, and as such, sharing it could have some value for others to adapt to their own circumstances.

Thanks for sharing this content, Jenifer.  I hope people don't mind my lengthy response, and I welcome feedback.  I wanted to use your post as a springboard for reflection on the site and community for which, and to which, I am most responsible.

in issue activism in your community.  

Environmental justice, unions, police crimes and repression (brutality issues), living wage campaigns.  There are so many issues where activists need help.  The way to get past white skin privilege is to get with folks who are not like you and struggle with them.  Do it together. Learn from them.  Be open to other ways of thinking.

That's one way.

You and Jen both get at the issue that (perhaps unconsciously) divides a lot of bloggers; that is- is blogging a means or an end?  I'm jumping past issues of overt diversity a bit, but I think that we might want to spend more time and energy trying to establish what blogs are fundamentally for. Are blogs going to be used as the mechanism by which end-result messages are produced, or by which they are disseminated, or some combination of the two that has yet to be balanced out?  These sorts of issues are rolled up in what sort of perspectives we're seeking out and how we go about finding and/or nurturing them.

Might as well say Racism is as British as Fish n' Chips. It's a universal human attribute.

I wonder whether prioritizing this is less about how progressive bloggers interact with racial issues online (like MD-04, like linking to minority leaders), and more about trying to innovate ways to make blogging more attractive and/or useful for a more diverse crowd.  Whether this is up to MyDD or not is probably a different question, but in general it seems as though a first step is discussing at length the reasons why blogging has tended away from diversity.

Chris touched on this earlier when he mentioned that at least to some extent, it's only people with spare time that can afford, quite literally, to blog.  I wonder also whether there's a wider discussion to be had as to whether blogging lends itself to the traditional methods of mobilization and activism in communities that aren't particularly well represented in the blogosphere, and whether that's something that is inevitable or, for lack of a better term, fixable.

By extension, I wonder whether the success of blogs among wealthy, well-educated whites coincides with a lack of community organization for the same people that hasn't reached the same tipping point in minority communities.  Maybe I'm wrong, and I certainly don't have any scholarly evidence to back this up, but I consistently see as one of the virtues of blogs the power to unite people across wide geography.  Is that less of a concern in minority communities?

People can tell me I'm way off, because I'm just throwing out ideas and I'm not married to any of it.  But this is just the tip of the iceberg I would think.

It's a good question.

I understand the practical challenges. Finding good talent is a challenge the movement has across the board. And I appreciate the efforts you on MyDD have made.

But I do think it's up to the leadership of the large progressive political blogs, the ones that are read by hundreds of thousands of people each week, to make it a priority. There may be organizations that aren't on your radar, that can help identify talent. The Opportunity Agenda is doing some work in this area, and the Drum Major Institute.

That's not to say that advocacy organizations in communities of color don't have any responsibility. But I think ultimately the people running the blogs have some power in deciding whose voice is elevated, so I feel like that's where it should be initiated. But I would welcome pushback from those who disagree.

Which probably won't be talked about much :)

I mentioned somewhere a year or two ago that it appeared to me that the major progressive political blogs were actively targeting a "richer, whiter, righter, male(er)" audience, as evidenced by the fairly consistent dismissal of "special interest groups" and "dirty hippies" and "women's studies groups" and "race baiters" and other things.

Much of this (the specific language) applies more to dkos than to here, I think, but the general attitude is pervasive across the circle of sites.

Whether it is done subtly, blatantly or even unintentionally, the effects are the same... people with "issues" move on and what one is left with is the "comfortable"... usually (but not only) white, upper income and male.

This makes sense when you consider that part of the strategy for gaining political influence (and building a business as well as a progressive movement of sorts) is not only raising money for politicians but also breaking the stereotype for political activists (thus the emphasis, I believe, on education, age and income of the majority of readers of these sites).

I think that this strategy (intentional or no) is very short sighted... especially if things such as the blogads surveys showcase this disparity this year, loud and clear. Hypocrisy is not politically effective.

Media Matters had some sort of alert a day or so ago about the lack of diversity on cable news channels, after a slight improvement during the Imus mess. All well and good but when you look at the intentional spaces progressives build for themselves, it is no different. TPM (cafe, etc), TAP, MyDD, Daily Kos, FDL, The Nation, Huff Post, - etc... all or primarily white. Huff Post has been trying to change this, I think, after being called on it, but jeebus... why, in this day and age, should people have to be called on such a thing?

I grew up in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement (which is probably why I still have a smidgen of the "bridge builder" I've spent most of my life being left in me, and why I am bothering on this site) but man... the complete lack of awareness of the mutual benefits (not just a help up or a hand out or a magnanimous gesture) of having diverse voices on the existing topics - no special rights required! - is just appalling.

The more I think about this, and in the context of Nanette's post as well, I think there's something to this.  Painting in broad strokes, traditional socio-political rallying points (like unions, churches, etc.) still exist in the community for all groups except educated, affluent whites.  I'm struck particularly by the success of DFA meetups, Drinking Liberally, and similar organizations that build on the same successes of blogs- putting people together who otherwise lack the mechanism to connect with similarly-minded, politically-oriented peers.  To this end, I'm again not sure what sort of diversity the blogosphere wants to aim for.  Similarly disaffected minorities and women? Or better connected people of all sorts who can better integrate bloggers into pre-existing societal structures for activism? Or both?  And to what end degree does this impact diversity as opposed to just activism?