Of implicit bias and telecom blogs

[osewalrus]

Or, how the telecom world mistook this brilliant young African American woman for me -- a middle aged male white guy with a beard.

https://www.facebook.com/jjallohghatt/posts/2264212540279006?comment_id=2269305713103022&reply_comment_id=2269325423101051&notif_id=1547123326465562&notif_t=mentions_comment

 

A most fascinating story of implicit bias which, I have to confess, is somewhat personally flattering. For those who don't want to click through and watch the 8 minute video (you should), here's the story. J.J. Ghatt  is a talented lawyer (and numerous other talents) who used to do telecom policy (but has since moved on to other things). 5 years back, she was dong a telecom blog with a picture of herself up on top wearing professional lawyer costume and a website that was all business brand professional lawyer. Studying her analytics, she saw that she got a lot of incoming from important places -- FCC, NTIA, Hill staff -- but that people left fairly quickly and didn't stay particularly engaged.

 

Ghatt decided to try an experiment. She created a plain, anonymous, Wordpress blog called "Broadband Lawyer," on which she placed parallel content written in the same style. Now she started getting engagements. She was getting comments. She had a whole community form around this blog.

 

She also got a bunch of emails from readers trying to identify her. In the video she says that nearly all of them thought she was a "white middle aged guy." I only know it was me most people guessed because JJ tagged me on Facebook. As you will see when you click through, and if you then look at my staff picture on the Public Knowledge website, you will no doubt understand the confusion. I mean, separated at birth, right?

 

I end up having decidedly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it is disheartening that this brilliant woman of color was not regarded as sufficiently worth reading when everyone knew the blog was being written by a woman of color. It is also disheartening that everyone assumed that the same material on an anonymous blog *had* to be written by a middle aged white guy, because only middle aged white guys can sound that brilliant and authoritative and witty. 

 

But on the other hand, I'd be lying if I pretended I wasn't flattered that when so many people saw a new anonymous broadband policy blog they loved, they assumed it had to be me. 

 

To paraphrase Spock from "Friday's Child:" I intend to be insufferably pleased with myself for at least a month. 

Comments

[vettecat]

You should try writing each other's blogs for a few days and see if anyone can tell...

[osewalrus]

She has moved on to other things. Although I did like the suggestion by someone that we do a joint vlog (she does a vlog).

[vettecat]

Could be a fun project, if you both had time.

[marahmarie]

Everybody's a middle-aged white guy on the interwebs, didn't ya know? *rolls eyes*

--from someone considered an anonymous middle-aged white guy on the interwebs