Menu-Driven Identities - Nakamura

So in this piece Nakamura discusses how  the web is intended to be a place where you are free to write, blog, or post and this will not be affected by your race or any other qualifier.  She continues though, saying many site require the user to select a race or other features so they can better target them, and when doing this, the site narrows the user into a predefined category that may not completely fit them.

In particular she uses the web portal "Excite".  Before 2002, the site supposedly used a menu system that forced the user to choose just a specific race, even bunching together race, orientation, and religion.  This obviously goes against what we all see the web as.  What she is getting at, is that the internet, although its not supposed to, gives everyone a default avatar of a white male unless you indicate otherwise.  Probably since a large portion of developers are supposedly white males.

What's interesting is using the "wayback machine", it is possible to see the sites sign-up page as it was in 2002 and today.  Today the site actually use check boxes, providing the user to select multiple races.  Where as the 2002 date doesn't ask for any information at sign-up, probably instead waiting for the user to prompt the need for it, such as Nakamura did when searching "Racial", providing the menu list mentioned in her piece.

In my own opinion, I don't see the use of racial profiling on the web much.  Facebook, Google, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, the list goes on, never ask for your race, and have the option to mention your gender if you so choose.  Perhaps the profiling is there, and its just hidden.  It is bothersome that there is the default, but part of the nice thing about the internet is that it puts all users on the same platform.  The information you provide is scrutinized just the same as that of anyone else regardless of who you are (exceptions being when someone has already acquired credibility).  Unfortunately, parts of our world still do not see all as equal, but on the internet there is no way to tell between users for the most part.