Is Facebook Segregated? If So, Does It Matter?

Don't know why people are giving you a hard time on this, aside from the usual reasons. Segregation is worth talking about, but no one seems to want to actually talk about it.

 

lets talk about it! this bbs is not ready for it btw.

Facebook is 'segregated' by who is on your list or not.
Facebook is somehow about race? Lol..This thread sucks.

People tend to hang out or do things that are familiar. Hanging with your race is inherently part of it. You were born there!

To ops point race seems to REALLY be a factor with black people so yes it really does seem to play into how THEY identify. I think of sammy sosa as latin before i do black but im not op

We can call human nature segregated in that sense the same we are segregated as rockets fans against other fans.

Having whites only school or colored water fountains was a racist approach and that type of segregation was lame. No one is suggesting that.

That is not what this is. There are different kinds of segregation i think we all agree that!

Do you want me to feel bad about colored water fountains in the 60s? Well i do.

Now what?

 

Facebook is a reflection on the lives of people, who their social networks are and who they talk to. If someone had the data (which apparently isn't hard to do with Facebook) and the inclination, I think there's a lot of statistics you could do to say something interesting about self-segregation in America as it is reflected in Facebook interactions.

But, yeah it's not water-fountain segregation but self-segregation. And people are and should be free to associate with whomever they want. I don't think the point of the thread was to denounce you for not having enough black friends on Facebook. OP even says it's not a problem in the OP, so I don't know why you're accusing him of insinuating something else. He made the observation that Facebook is segregated and that he's cool with that.

Where I think it's worth thinking about is when we think of the effects of segregation on things like opportunity for minorities. If white people have an historical advantage on wealth and power and then they network with mostly just white people it perpetuates as an incumbency advantage. White people sharing their advantage (give advice, support, business, introductions, parenting help, deaconal aid, loans, water rescues, whatever) with other white people because they mostly know white people. And the white people mostly know white people because their family is white, the neighbors/friends/fellow congregants/coworkers/classmates/ex-girlfriends they choose to associate with happen to be mostly white. The preservation of the incumbency is not a Facebook problem, but you can see it reflected in Facebook, and Facebook is just another vehicle for conducting these white-to-white (and black-to-black) relationships. We can see in a cold, digitized, measurable way how segregation and white privilege perpetuates. Which I don't say to shame anyone. I don't feel bad that 58% of my network is white. It is what it is. It's normal human behavior. But it should help people to understand how power devolves through our social networks and over generations to see it reflected back to us this way. When people (like pgab) tell Gallup that they believe black people are mostly responsible for their own lot in life and it's not the legacy of slavery or racism or whatever, they disregard this dynamic of segregation that stares us in the face. Nobody is pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. So much of success is about who you know, and that is going to depend on the color of your skin.

 

Facebook is not segregated; it's probably more segmented regionally than racially. If black individuals only interacted with blacks growing up and were somehow able to find apartments, jobs and cities where they could only interact with blacks maybe that's the explanation. There isn't anyone on my timeline who I didn't go to school with twenty plus years ago or work with for at least two years. Seems like a threadbare premise to project whatever separately odd views you have on racial isolation.

 

Conflating it to invoke and separately endorse racial segregation, as you have, is completely irrational.

 

You have been around here long enough to see that op is obsessed with white black and trying to call things racist or exclusionary based on race.
He should change his handle to "trolling for white guilt".. "You see that tree over there? It was planted racially."

"This street? Racist"

"The letter m? You betcha racist"



Sure race is a factor but im going to now replace your entire post with "rich" instead of "white"

Thanks for a thoughtful post btw but im afraid you are being trolled.

Edited:

Replaced white with rich

Some more edits.

Also fwiw people have preferences. Like im attracted to dark hair persian middle eastern type women. That is my thing. You could argue im "racist" against white people or black etc.

Guess what? They may not be attracted to you because you are black white etc. Thats not racist thats called preference. Same way i like strawberry ice cream or rocky road.
No amount of white guilt is going to get me there ..nice try though troll op.

 

I have been around a long time, and been arguing with @pgabriel a long time. And honestly, I think you have him confused with someone else. Pgab is the black guy who is always telling elitist white liberals like me to stop blaming racism for the problems facing the black community. He says black people need to confront their own problems instead of blaming the system, fix the broken homes, pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That's why I'm totally unsurprised that when he points out segregation in Facebook he also says he doesn't have a problem with it. He thinks black people should be able to succeed despite it with a hefty dose of personal responsibility. He is not the guy to try to make anyone feel guilty for being white.

(@pgabriel, apologies if I misrepresent you in any way, and please correct the record.)

 

Thanks for glossing over the money rich poor aspect.

The sooner we recognize the economic segregation against ALL races the harder and longer we will all suffer.

 

I know that is why I bit. Jv was incorrect and thanks for admittimg it. We are getting somewhere.

What?
Black people,white, green, fuschia people need to focus on the economic segregation (see aunt becky usc story) and ease the hyper focus on race. We are missing the forest for the trees.

How do you feel about economic segregation?

Republican?
I can see where you might be torn between the idea of the poors and how can we blame this all more on race?

 

Didn't mean to gloss over it; just wanted to make sure to address the white guilt thing.

I don't disagree with your point. There is also a socioeconomic stratification in which rich families are mostly going to know and network with other rich people, and the network benefits are slowed in reaching into poorer classes. If I counted my Facebook friends by their wealth instead of race, it'd probably look more segregated than it does counting by race. But, I think there is also a network phenomenon around race. And when you have a history like the US does with official race-based persecution in the past, you are starting with an incumbency where the rich families tend to be white families and the black families are starting with almost no wealth. So the phenomenon of rich people networking with rich people also has a racial correlation. But, it isn't just the coincidence that white families are starting with more wealth than black families. There is also the racial divide that means less networking benefit is jumping from rich white family to rich black family or middle class white family to middle class black family. There's some, but there's congestion there because of self-segregation. Because self-segregation will persist, it'll be a long time before we get any real racial parity. And of course, there is always the risk that some day the people with the power will perceive some racial threat and go back to official persecution. I think we see it happening right now with hispanic communities -- whatever the merit of the reasons, households and communities are being broken up with deportations, which breaks their networks, increases their segregation, and destroys their wealth.