In a country where the number of black people outnumber the white grouping by a fair margin I’ve noticed an alarming trend amongst the online community. In my 21 episodes of The Digital Edge Podcast the darkest person I’ve had on the show is Dee Chetty, a young Indian man from Cape Town. Yes that’s right, in 21 weeks I’ve had the grand total of zero black people on the show. Now this could by symptomatic of the types of topics we choose so I decided to look at little further beyond my sphere.
Looking at the Geek Retreat, a weekend dedicated to “making the SA Internet better”, there’s a grand total of one black person going to this event. Now bear in mind this was an invite only event and since I was involved in the selection of guests I can say that the aim was to invite “prominent” members of the community to increase the gravitas of the event. Hell, the second darkest person is Nic Haralambous and only because he’s Greek!
However, I don’t want this to be a negative post and I certainly do not want to disregard any work done by black online pioneers in South Africa. My issue is that those who are the loudest in our community, the entrepreneurs, the writers, those high up in corporate environments are all pretty pale.
So here’s my question to the South African online and web 2.0 community: what are we going to do to make the situation more equitable and why are we in this position? The economics are simple, most people in the community come from relatively affluent families with access to the Internet for the past 10-15 years but now that things have changed, what are we doing to promote that change online?
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Most black people, like myself, only discovered the iNTERNETS recently. I think its going to take a while before we see a change in the demographics of the “community”. I don’t think there’s much that can be done to promote change, just let nature take its course.
I only started playing around with the Net in my freshman year of 2000. Before then, I had heard about websites and seen stuff on TV. I have seen an increase in the number of households with computers in predominantly black areas.
The one thing that keeps most of them from going on-line is definitely Telkom. The last thing we need is the Gov making noise about how exclusive the industry is and how they need to draw up legislation to fix things!
The truth is, most black guys and girls are quite content with their corporate gigs. How many guys from our 2006 IS 3 class are out there doing their own thing?
Change in this regard can be fostered through partnerships. I know of schools in certain townships that offer classes in web design and PHP.
In my home town of Louis Trichardt, my friends and I have started something similar and the support has been awesome!!
Thought provoking article.
Wow, that is so true, the only black guy that I know really have an online presence and that I’ve been following was Khayav on YouTube, and he only recently started his blog though.
He also has had his online YouTube fights with Reindeer which is sometimes quite entertaining.
I would suggest starting finding online ‘black’ guys(and girls(following one but can’t find the URL now)) and interviewing them as well. Maybe we can check out Afrigator and start interacting and collaborating and get involved in blogs as well….
I have actually met one interesting start up entrepreneaur at #27dinner in Joburg which was black, but no real online presence though.
Again, your raising a very valid point here.
One more thing. It is common in the black community to go for “safe”, tried and tested areas of employment.
When I was growing up, medicine,education and law were all the rage. They were considered “safe”, I think things are starting to change though. But the pressure that comes from family also creates an atmosphere that pushes black graduates into these so called safe professions.
People just don’t want to take risks. Personally, I am hoping to revive my on-line, presence , not to fill up any quotas or anything like that. I am doing it because its all I know and its soo much fun!!
I think that access to the internet is not an issue to many black people all that much anymore. Blogging is just not a black thing…however if you go over to Thought Leader you’ll find a few black faces. It should tell you a lot about the differences in interests. For example I only discovered this partucular blog after reading about you in the M&G 300.
We just are not all interedted in the same things. I’m black and spend a huge amount of time online. A huge amount of other black people on the other hand couldn’t be bothered.
White people need to also stop thinking that everything that they have we should have. maybe black people who do have access to the internet and havent taken to blogging and social networking are just not interested. An average black person’s life is hectic enough as it is. Some issues are not necessarily equality issues.
It seems that most of the responses are missing the point entirely. I’m also going to disagree with this post a bit. Most of these ‘pale faces’ have worked, blogged, tweeted and heaven knows what else to get themselves out there. Whether you’re pink, green or yellow, if you have that same drive and ambition you will get a silly invite to a geek retreat.
Don’t forget that most Web 2.0 business are start-ups and hence run by entrepreneurs. Given current BEE legislation, white people are predominantly attracted to the entrepreneurial calling. This is not to say there is anything inherent to white/black/indian people that makes them good or bad entrepreneurs, just that there is a statistically significant social pressure encouraging white people into entrepreneurial roles (and black people into public sector roles afaik).