Vote for my South by Southwest panel!

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Are any of you planning to attend SXSW Interactive in March? I’m hoping that 2009 will be the year I finally make it there.

To that end, I’ve submitted a panel idea:

Can Social Media End Racism?
The tangled issues of race and privilege in our society come to a boiling point on the internet. Exploring the complicated place of race in society, this presentation examines the ideas of race in the digital environment with a specific focus on social media.

Other speakers on this panel may include Jay Smooth from Ill Doctrine and Phil Yu from Angry Asian Man, among other awesome folks.

The title is deliberately melodramatic of course, but I find this topic endlessly fascinating. Can talking about race online actually do more harm than good? Do people actually learn stuff about race from blogs? Does online activism serve as an inadequate substitute for offline activism?

I’d really appreciate it if you’d take the time to rate the panel (from 0 to 5 stars). You’ll need to create a Panel Picker login account, but this process will take about one minute. And feel free to leave a comment to the panel as well!