I just realized that I didn’t answer part of the email you sent me before. Yes, Whites’ well-meaning intentions to avoid appearing prejudiced can backfire, and this effect may even be more prevalent among Whites who are relatively lower in prejudice to begin with. Sometimes this may occur because they appear to “freeze” in an interaction rather than engaging (see Shelton et al., 2005) and other times it may be because they become very aware of negative stereotypes about White people and then engage in fewer intimacy-building behaviors (see Vorauer & Turpie, 2004).

Whoops, I misspoke — when I said “guest blogger positions” I meant blogger positions.

@fillyjonk since you didn’t read my post you obviously didn’t get the fact that I wasn’t asking you to guest-blog anyone. I’m actually scoffing the idea of guest-blogging as a solution to diversity in the fat-o-sphere.

Folks – I’m talking about THE INTERNETS here, which are for porn, and clearly are whitified. Should SP treat diversity as an important priority as they are soapboxed as the flagship of Fat online? Yes. Am I restricting my comments to SP? Nope. Also there’s no battle cry here – I didn’t say “take up arms and stab things with pointy fat.” Instead I said “how can we become more inclusive as a fat-o-sphere” and asked why, when there are so many diverse bloggers already out here are we restricting our haildom to whiteness?

Also to those who decried the links I posted – note that they were just a smidgen of other fatshion-related diverse bloggers, given that I’m on fatshionista. I would love for someone to make a comprehensive list of diverse bloggers and blog sites and maybe ….. who knows? …… create a diverse space in which fat and inclusion is discussed without fashion as the rallying point? Thoughts…thoughts…..and I’ll restrict myself to that.

Etana’s posts are always so distracting to me, because I always end up thinking if she knows that her nick means ‘snail’ in Finnish? But she raises an excellent point. Funnily enough, though, for me Shapely Prose has very often been an excellent 101 lesson about racism and white privilege. About half my coworkers are immigrants and exchange students of colour, so I need to think about these things, but am frankly terrified of most POC spaces. I like the way SP writers and commenters address race issues, because it feels approachable to me, as I am very much still learning. I’m hoping that SP will end up being my gateway drug for broader understanding.
I guess my less-than-eloquent point is, that you’re not perfect. No one is, but we’re getting there. I’d be thrilled if SP got a POC co-blogger at some point, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

1. Kate makes this clear in the post, but: the choice wasn’t between A Sarah and any number of other qualified applicants. The choice was between A Sarah and nobody. I appreciate volcanista’s job search analogy but it just isn’t the same thing. We were not looking for another blogger, and then she occurred to all of us more or less simultaneously. AT NO POINT was the thought process anything like “should we bring on A Sarah or should we look for someone who will diversify the blog.” It was “should we bring on A Sarah, the obvious choice for another coblogger, or keep on with just the three of us even though we’re kind of burnt out.” We just didn’t have the time or energy to find someone we didn’t already know and trust more or less implicitly — and now that we have a fourth person, well, we will.

2. We wouldn’t have offered guest blogger positions to any of the bloggers etana linked to because they are bloggers already.

None of this changes the fact that we understand why people feel like SP has a responsibility to be more representational. We’ve done a whole lot of talking and thinking about this behind the scenes and we absolutely encourage people to talk and think about it, here and elsewhere (especially if etana’s post ruffled your feathers, it’s worth examining that reaction).

And now I am on vacation again.

Zomg! I just snorted tea out my nose laughing at this. . . .so true!