Digital Project: Assessing RaceFail '09

Table of Contents
Project Overview
Background: RaceFail '09
Findings: Participants
Keyword Case Study: Black and White
Challenges and Future Applications
Special Features

Keyword Case Study

Top Keywords Across All Files

The second part of this study focuses on the prevalence of certain keywords within all files (posts and comments). Each file was cleaned, uploaded, and queried for most popular words via NVivo. NVivo has set parameters, including a minimum length of three letters and a preset list of "stop words" which includes terms like "she," "let's," and other fillers. In addition to using the preset stop words, I added a few recurring terms to the list, including "January," "reply," and "expand." These words appear frequently within each comment post, but far less frequently within the body text itself. The first graph below show the top ten words by total usage across all twenty files. The second shows words the top ten words recurring over most files. Nine words (person, other[ness], white, race, wrong, color, culture, black, and privilege) recur in both graphs. Two words (intended, dismiss) appear once in each.






Keywords: Black and White

Given that representations of race and marginalization lie at the heart of RaceFail '09, it is unsurprising that the abovementioned words are the most prevalent across all files. However, two words, black and white, stand out in not only their frequency but their relationship to one another. White appeared more frequently as a whole, 799 times versus 263 instances of black--almost twice as often. White also appears in one more file than black. In order to further explore instances of each word, I searched each comments file for the relationship between the two words.

The results are striking. "White" appears in the top five words for eight of the ten posts. It does not appear in Teresa Nielsen Hayden's post (possibly due to its incomplete nature), and it ranks at 13 in copracat's post. "Black," however, is used significantly less often, appearing only once in the top ten list (Elizabeth Bear's second post) and once in the top twenty (Avalon's Willow's post). While other racial backgrounds besides black and white are clearly present during RaceFail '09, none of them are mentioned in a statistically significant manner. It is incredibly telling that whiteness is represented at a much, much higher rate than any other racial background. Further reading of comments such as those present on John Scalzi's post provide one insight into why this is: many commenters pushed back violently against the idea of white privilege, discussing it at length. Indeed, Scalzi's post shows the largest discrepancy in usage of the two words, with "white" occurring three hundred more times than "black." In short, it appears that, even in discussions about marginalizing people of color, and in posts written by people of color, whiteness is pushed to the forefront.

Note: Given the narrow scope of this study, I focused on incidences of the work "black" and associated words, as that grouping of terms occurred at a higher rate than that of other racial groups. In an expanded version of this study, this will be rectified, given the many other ethnic groups who participated, particularly Asians. That said, it is telling that "black" and related terms are the only ones to make it to the top ten list at all.