What’s sexy? And I don’t mean scantily clad people, I mean information that attracts us, excites us enough to stop and peruse a blog post. Most of the time, postings that we can relate to on some level are the ones that are found on the more popular web sites, or sites that we favor. Fair enough.

When writing about race, the internet has given people like me a lot to write about. Reacting to the latest racial incident is…well not so easy, but the uncomfortable and unfortunate barrage of racial incidences over the past year has made reporting and forming opinions quite unproblematic. But as Kai Chang ponders in his post "Blackface, ebjohnson,and me” that by reporting on surface incidences of race, are we doing a disservice to structural racism?

I have to admit I sometimes feel a wave of political tedium run through my limbs when I hear about the next media outrage and subsequent boycott/protest. Not that there's anything wrong with any form of anti-racist activism that anyone should choose to take up, indeed I applaud every ounce of effort being applied out there. But I share ebog's fear of losing focus, of becoming a "lightweight anti-racist", of getting too comfortable with ritualized media floggings to give proper attention to the deep structural issues of housing and employment and the court-prison system and imperialist war and so on.

The problem is, is that the more immediate, overt incidences of racism are more sexy. People can perhaps catch a glimpse of a situation on a news channel, or see the same news report discussed over and over again on numerous blogs. We will focus on the latest slip-up by a political pundit or celebrity and then it will disappear into the horizon. But the structural issues, such as institutional racism, housing and economic disparities and discrimination in the health care system are always there, yet we either don’t want to talk about them or the majority of people don’t care enough to tackle them in their blogs. On the other hand, people are simply trying to get through the day, too preoccupied to sit down and write an investigative piece on what could and / or should be done. according to the stats provided by Republic of T when he disscusses the presence - or lack thereof - of black political bloggers, there are almost ten times more black blogs that focus on Hip-Hop (3,000) and Rap (about 4,000) than those that focus on black culture (258).

While sometimes I brand myself as being a bit of a lazy blogger,I will admit that while I struggle with the feeling of whether I am providing a much needed analyisis or simply recycling the same news. I think that the first step in increasing awareness about racism to the uninformed and apathetic public is to start with observing and commenting on the more overt and immediate reports of racism in our society. Hopefully, it will encourage more thought and will bring more analysis to the structural and prevasive issues that affect all of us - whether we want to believe it or not.