Feb 9, 2010
Haters, Crabs and the Black Tech Community
photo by Nate Steiner
SXSW Interactive hosted a networking mixer last night at Cypress Street Pint and Plate. It was very well-attended, possibly due to SXSW’s increasing visibility outside of the music, film and tech communities.
As a result, there seemed to be a lot more people out last night who had never been to SXSW; or who can’t make it this year.
One of the more interesting conversations I had centered around how the black tech community doesn’t appear to be as supportive of each other as they should.
Even when blog posts or articles are positive, there are often negative or elitist comments that follow, especially around individual. This behavior was likened to the “crabs in a barrel” scenario.
I admit to being somewhat ignorant of this because I don’t read a lot of comments unless the post is about something technical. Comments, especially those that are anonymous or aren’t linked to the user’s website, have become mostly useless to me. I’ve seen too many well-meaning topics turn into personal bitchfests. Wrong time, wrong place.
This is one of the topics that will be discussed on the Black Blogging Rockstars panel at 2010′s SXSW Interactive. I’ll be moderating the panel and will offer some ideas. But my panelists: Maurice Cherry, Dede Sutton and Gina McCauley, have strong opinions about this. Trust.
J. Please have someone shoot video of this. I so hate that I wont’ be able to be there to see you moderate this topic.
Great post J., and great suggestion Lynne! I will have a Flip Cam there, but I’m working on seeing if we can livestream the panel as well.
A livestream would be awesome. I’d definitely tune in.
J., I’m looking forward to attending your session at SXSW and yes I agree, the black (tech community) seems not to be as supportive of each other as we should be. It’s something we can work on and I hope improves over time. Sadly our offline negative behavior sees to be translating online too.
I hope all this can change for the better soon.
Thanks, Wayne. You have the right idea with your #28DaysofDiversity series. Well done.
Thanks for blogging about our dialogue! I truly am disgusted by the lack of support. And what’s more disturbing are that the comments add no value to the post. They don’t say WHY they feel the way that they do – it’s just contrary. I’m going to be writing a post as well and I plan to reference to some of the actual comments and post.
[...] in this post. I would love to hear your thoughts about this. @jbrotherlove also wrote a blog post: Haters, Crabs in the Black community which covered the conversation that he, myself and other black techies had at the SXSWi Atlanta [...]
So true!! Hopefully I’ll be able to make it in person however it would be great if you all can stream it.
Looking forward to this panel!
[...] be sharing our experiences with blogging as a platform and career catalyst as well as topics like Haters, Crabs and the Black Tech Community (you know who you [...]
[...] and Blacks in the Digital Community address some important issues. Sharina talks about the crabs in the barrel syndrome (something I’ve been lucky enough to avoid), and the tendency for black media to drag [...]