Call a Spade a Spade

In class we discussed networks as a source of standards, and how part of a networks networking power is its gatekeeper ability to “block or allow’’ access. For networks to set common protocols paired with the power to exclude and include, prompts me to think about how this power affects individuals excluded of the network.  Richard Florida’s states that “communities are networks, not places”, if this assertion is correct than America too is a network , and also  has the power to set standards as well as exclude and include access to those outside of its network.

After Hayden’s class I began to think about my own personal account with networks and how as an African American I have many times felt excluded from powerful networks. This exclusion many times left me with feelings of powerlessness. I parallel a network’s “power” to, Peggy McIntosh’s, White Privilege. She speaks of White Privilege as an individual’s “weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurance, tools, maps, guides, code books, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear and blank checks”.  We as American’s within our network have been granted such privileges as knowing the common protocol and being included to the access of limitless opportunities that inhabitants of other countries are not.   McIntosh goes on to further state that, “whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility distress and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit and turn upon people of color”.  The American network, with is geographical location and wealth protects, Americans from hostility, distress and violence and in turn its citizens have also been trained to perceive non-American’s as either mediocre or a threat.

This obviousness leaves Americans under the facade of American exceptionalism  which is nothing more than the communication power of the American network at work. Because until we do, as McIntosh states, “ the world is not so free, one’s life is not what one makes it; and many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own”.