Welcome to the InfoSci Platform
Reference Hub2
Veganporn.com & “Sistah”: Explorations of Whiteness through Textual Linguistic Cyberminstrelsy on the Internet

Veganporn.com & “Sistah”: Explorations of Whiteness through Textual Linguistic Cyberminstrelsy on the Internet

Amie Breeze Harper
Copyright: © 2011 |Pages: 21
ISBN13: 9781609605919|ISBN10: 1609605918|EISBN13: 9781609605926
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-591-9.ch012
Cite Chapter Cite Chapter

MLA

Harper, Amie Breeze. "Veganporn.com & “Sistah”: Explorations of Whiteness through Textual Linguistic Cyberminstrelsy on the Internet." Cultural Identity and New Communication Technologies: Political, Ethnic and Ideological Implications, edited by D. Ndirangu Wachanga, IGI Global, 2011, pp. 235-255. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-591-9.ch012

APA

Harper, A. B. (2011). Veganporn.com & “Sistah”: Explorations of Whiteness through Textual Linguistic Cyberminstrelsy on the Internet. In D. Wachanga (Ed.), Cultural Identity and New Communication Technologies: Political, Ethnic and Ideological Implications (pp. 235-255). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-591-9.ch012

Chicago

Harper, Amie Breeze. "Veganporn.com & “Sistah”: Explorations of Whiteness through Textual Linguistic Cyberminstrelsy on the Internet." In Cultural Identity and New Communication Technologies: Political, Ethnic and Ideological Implications, edited by D. Ndirangu Wachanga, 235-255. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2011. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-591-9.ch012

Export Reference

Mendeley
Favorite

Abstract

Cyberspace can be a central site for excavating the invisibility of covert whiteness (a tacit form of racialized consciousness), which does not manifest itself at the surface level in the same overt manner that extreme white cyber hate “imagined communities” do. Through the application of Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist methodology-based discursive analysis, this chapter investigates performances of whiteness in a vegan/animal-rights-oriented website called Veganporn.com. As a progressive forum associated with social justice, Veganporn.com provides a radically different environment in which to examine white supremacist ideologies; ideologies typically found in more overtly-racist, “extremist” online dialogues already examined by critical research. Discourse analysis of a specific Veganporn.com forum topic revealed three major themes in the computer-mediated discussion: (1) discursive patrolling of epistemic borders to “protect” Standard English and colorblind expressions (whiteness) of veganism/animal rights from non-Standard English and non-white racialized expressions; (2) the use of blackface cyber-minstrelsy to reinforce the “superiority” of Standard English (whiteness) over the “inferiority” of speakers of Black English and Ebonics; (3) the premise among several white-identified Veganporn.com participants that a vegan- and animal-rights ideology is “colorblind” thus making invisible the current socio-historical implications of power structures created around white skin color. Though this chapter focuses on one discussion within a forum, the analysis of this event offers insight relevant to understanding whiteness as a system, an ideology, and a structure. Specifically, by employing certain theoretical components of critical race studies (racialized consciousness, social ontology of whiteness, and racial mapping), my analysis reveals how the World Wide Web can be an effective site for cyber-ethnographers focusing on “decoding” whiteness within progressive social justice movements.

Request Access

You do not own this content. Please login to recommend this title to your institution's librarian or purchase it from the IGI Global bookstore.