The Hillary Clinton/1984 YouTube mashup may have made headlines in the mainstream community. But among African Americans, Bacardi Jackson's recent email condemning shallow African American criticism of Barack Obama garnered widespread attention.

It has been almost a decade since the famous "grassroots" email circulated to most online African Americans warning that African Americans would lose their voting rights (the factually inaccurate email had some substantive truth-Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was set to expire and was renewed only last year). In 2007, I continue to receive informational emails on politics, race, and other matters-mostly from African American family and friends.

While there are a number of successful African American blogs, why does email continue to be such a big driver of political discourse in the African American community?

One possibility might be an echo effect of the digital divide. If historical racial disparities in Internet access occurred and significant disparities in broadband persist, African Americans may have hit a critical mass with email but not with blogs. Networks are most valuable when there are more participants (your phone is more valuable if everyone has a phone than if just 10 other people have a phone). If I want to hang out with my friends I need to go where my friends are, even if I know how to go to other places. This is not about "individual incompetence," but about the intersection of socialization and technology.

There is a great deal of talk among the technologically elite about the flattening of politics (e.g., blogs set up for comments can allow for less hierarchy and more back and forth). While I am a believer in the liberating power of technology, I also recognize that email may be much flatter in the African American community right now. I open email from people who care about me—it is not the mass marketing junk mail from corporations and politicians who look at me as a number. When I receive the same email three or four times from different sources, I realize that it has taken on a life of its own and has a viral, Blackroots quality (I posted Bacardi's open letter criticizing Barack's critics after receiving it from different sources). Indeed, such a message is not controlled by a single gatekeeper--whether it be a newspaper editor or by a pseudo-populist blog contributor. Instead, the email message is carried by a chain of sometimes five or ten people who have voluntarily and unanimously decided to forward the email (had any one of them "vetoed it" and not forwarded it, I would not have received the message). Thus, I am generally assured that it is a true community message rather than one pushed by a personal agenda or the desire for greater ad revenues.

Granted, email is limited in that it is generally a one-way stream (although a few impassioned people do hit "reply all" on these email strings). But despite these technical disadvantages, email is accessible to more people than blogs. When my cousin sends out an email, she can be assured that a broad group of family members with various socioeconomic backgrounds can access the information equally.

Another explanation might be "The Lunchroom Phenomenon." Email provides a relatively closed and stealth network. While an email could end up in the hands of anyone, it is generally sent to a select list of friends. It could be that some African Americans who live and work in integrated environments-bombarded by the perspectives of the majority-want a virtual place that allows them to be in the majority, and where their views are "mainstream." Blogs could be infested with "trolls" who don't respect the need for the development of alternative approaches. Black folks may favor email for the same reason that black kids sit together in the high school cafeteria.

When we started blackprof.com in September 2005 we appreciated the various attributes of blogs, and we suspected that blogs would eventually play a critical role in African American debate. How far are we from that tipping point? I don't know. I continue to believe that it will happen. But for now, I think that email plays a constructive role in African American political discourse, and I'm thankful for that.

(crossposted at blackprof.com, and blackprof users have engaged in a very interesting discussion of the issue)