This article by Jamilah King brings up several ideas that were of interest to me as a blogger and as someone who believes that longer discussions about how we are all affected by systemic racism is a necessary part of dismantling racism...
When bloggers at the South Asian American website Sepia Mutiny announced that the site would close last month, readers were saddened, but not necessarily shocked. Since it began in 2004, the blog had become an all-important virtual community square to talk about everything from politics and cultural identity to fiction. But in recent years, the website faced many of the same challenges that have plagued bloggers of all stripes—white and of color, broke and economically self-sufficient.
“The blogosphere has evolved quite a bit since we first started and for a variety of reasons [Sepia Mutiny] has not been able to keep up in recent years so as to remain a cutting edge product both from a content and technological standpoint,” the blog’s authors wrote. It had always been a labor of love; all of its contributors maintained full-time jobs from the blog’s inception.
There was something else, too. The Sepia Mutiny team added that it felt its mission was complete, noting that there are many more media representations of South Asian Americans in 2012 than there were in 2004. “A Mutiny should naturally give way to a more organized movement of some kind. I believe SM did its job in sowing the seeds for that next chapter, whatever forms it now takes.”
Still, Sepia Mutiny’s closure hints at a broader dulling of the once-vibrant landscape of blogs run by and for communities of color. I talked to a handful of bloggers of color who described the unique challenges that come along with trying to maintain a safe space to talk meaningfully about race online. Some are paid for their work, but most aren’t. Together, they painted a picture of a steadily shrinking blogespere that, ironically, is being gobbled up by the same forces that helped create it.
Read the rest of the story at colorlines.com