According to Nakamura, new web technologies have taken the idea of races to a whole new level in cyberspace; however digital spaces limit “the user's racial identity within the paradigm of a ‘clickable box’-one among the many on the menu of identity choices" (Nakamura 102). This implies the idea that racial representations in cyberspace are extremely stereotypical and limited. She brings on this idea of race as a menu with “limited” options from where to choose from and to which you cannot modify.
Personally, I think that the website, Race: The Power of Illusion does a really good job at explaining what race is believed to be and what race is not about. I do not think that I see Nakamura’s menu-driven identity here as much. Among the many statements made by this interactive website are the following:
- “Race has no genetic basis”
- “Human subspecies don’t exist”
- “Skin Color is only skin deep”
- “Most variation is within, not between races”
Therefore, this site does not mean to tell us what race is all about and how we should classify ourselves based on predetermined “races”. In fact, this website tell us that there is no scientific proof of race, that race has no biological identifiable traits, that humans are all humans and that we are not divided into subspecies and lastly, that the color of our skin, is just a color.
If, this website supports or demonstrates the idea of a menu-driving ethnic identity, it would be under the activity where you can sort people into different categories.
Under this activity, this website classifies U.S. population into 5 categories: American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latino and white. This is menu-driven because
- it is giving us the categories so that we can sort people in
- it does not give us the option of creating more categories according to our own jurisdiction
- it does not give us the option of modifying the categories
- it does not have an “other” or “mixed races” category (no mestizos are allowed)
- it is assuming that everyone should fit into one of this categories
Other than this menu-driven activity, the rest of the website intends to declare that even tough racism is real; race is often a misconception of stereotypes when looking at it from a third-person point of view.
“We are all more than just physical traits and our race is better kwnon to us than to others” Jesica Garcia de Laya
Citations
"RACE: the power of an illusion." PBS. California Newsreel, 2003. Web. 28 Oct 2010. <http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm>.
Nakamura, Lisa. Cybertypes: Race, Ethinicity and Identity on the Internet . Routledge: New York, 2002. 102. Print.
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