The Toplogy of Cyberspace & Whiteness

I've been thinking a lot about what could be called the "topology" of the Internet. And, in that vein, I came across a piece by Jonathan Sterne, called "The computer race goes to class: how computers in schools helped shape the racial topography of the Internet," (pp.191-212, in Race in Cyberspace, Kolko, Nakamura, and Rodman (eds.), (Routledge, 2000).

Here's part of what Sterne has to say on the subject:

“...the topology of cyberspace mimics the racial and economic topology of housing and schooling. Fiber optic cable, phone jacks in classrooms, and other ‘on-ramps’ to the NII are more frequently found in wealthier and whiter areas.” (p.193)

Sterne connects cyberspace to notions of whiteness when he writes that, “...the Internet’s ‘nullness’ slips quite easily into whiteness.” (p.194)

He goes on to say that the combination of “identity tourism” and “...the white ideology of racelessness," work together to "produce an online atmosphere of racial voluntarism – where race is seen as something that can simply be chose or forgotten at will.” (p.195)

And, I really grok this bit:
“No doubt that the existence of the internet shapes the politics of race in new and interesting ways; but we should be equally attentive to the ways in which the politics of race and class have shaped the very character of the internet and computer culture at large.” (p.209)

There's another piece by Phil Agre I ran across the other day called, "Cyberspace as American Culture, which I find really compelling.

Taken together, these two pieces make part of the argument I'm making in the book about hate groups online and the connection to the mainstream. While these groups are clearly at the extreme fringes of society in some ways, in other ways, they fit perfectly into the male-dominated, white-dominated, American-dominated domain of cyberspace.