Weekly Geeks 37 of this year woke me up this morning.
Why? I’m not sure, but it did. The focus was on bloggers who are different from you, either in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, cultural background or age and came from Ali of Worducopia.
I had a dream with African-American people in it — no, really, no pun intended on the “I had a dream” speech, and it woke me up to thinking about Ali’s theme.
First, at least to me naturally as a Caucasian male living in northcentral Pennsylvania where there is a dearth (huge) of African Americans, I thought of African-American bloggers I know, let alone, book bloggers.
Sadly, I only can think of two:
- Nicole of Linus’s Blanket, a book blogger
- T. Troy Stewart of originally BlackCynic America and now Chubby Afro
I connected with T. Troy Stewart briefly through Humor-Blogs.com, I believe, although I’m not positive, and Nicole, I’m thinking through Weekly Geeks. I’ll be honest that I lost track of Mr. Stewart until this morning, when I looked up his former blog and learned that it had moved — back in June! As for Nicole, I don’t follow her blog that much either, although I think she is one of the more sincere book bloggers out there, regardless of race. And I’m not just saying that to be politically correct either.
Is it because I’m racist that I don’t follow more blogs by Afrrican Americans? You might think is a cop-out, but no, it’s because I don’t keep up with hardly anyone’s blogs anymore. I have too many in my reader and sometimes like Troy’s, they get lost and more often like Nicole’s, they just don’t get read. I mark all as read or star to read later, but sadly never do. I just can’t say no to blogs. I read a post and go, “Oooh, I connect with that,” and add to my reader. Suddenly, I have 150 to 200 blogs in my readers (one for book blogs and one for humor blogs).
I won’t go into the psychology behind any of this now (save that for another post or not, maybe it’s just something I need to work out on my own); suffice to say or not suffice to say really, I haven’t really tried to go “outside the box.” If one looks at the blogs I follow at my “humor” blog, Unfinished Rambler, it is the same, mostly white, a mixture of conservative (even though I lean left) and liberal (mostly moderate). On the blog directory, Blogged, 294 blogs identify themselves as “African American,” one of which is Nicole’s blog, and that’s only on one blog directory, and I know of only two???!?!
To me, that’s sad. Does that mean I’m going to go out and find hundreds more blogs to read? I’ll be honest. No. Like I said, I have a hard enough time keeping up with what I read now. However, if I can one or two more like Nicole and Troy’s and follow them regularly along with Nicole and Troy’s, I will consider myself lucky.
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Second, I think of bloggers of other races and those of other religions. Again, I can think of less than a handful. In this case, I just will list those bloggers I follow who are “outside my box” either racially, religiously or culturally, at least those of whom I can think off the top of my head:
- Gautami Tripathy of Everything distils into reading
- Marie of The Boston Bibliophile, who is Jewish
- Kerrie Smith of Mysteries in Paradise, from Adelaide, South Australia.
- Dannie of Opinionated? Me?, who describes herself as “a rather simple, rather bleak fourteen year old living in The Ultimate Trashhole, New Jersey” but is anything but.
All four, though, for me “operate” above and beyond, race, religion, culture or age. To me, that is what makes the few bloggers I have mentioned “outside my box” so good as bloggers, though. They aren’t defined as “African American” (well, except maybe Troy, I mean his blog is called “Chubby Afro,” after all) or “Jewish,” “South Australian,” or “teen” and are able to bridge gaps between race, religion, culture and age (even Troy 
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I have no answers here in this post, but maybe you could ask yourself, who do I read that it “outside my box”? If you don’t, why not try and find a blogger who is “outside your box” today? I know I’m going to work at finding at least a few more who are not like me. I encourage you to do the same.
This post also can be found on my main blog, an unfinished person (in an unfinished universe). If you are interested in getting a more complete picture of this unfinished person, you can subscribe to that blog, if you so choose.
