Lisa Nakamura's theory of cybertyping

Lisa Nakamura takes on the issue of cybertyping in her book Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. Her goal is to persuade the reader that the internet is not the great equalizer that it has been hailed as. Instead it propagates, disseminates, and commodifies images of race and racism: cybertyping. Cybertypes are “the images of race that arise when the fears, anxieties, and desires of privileged Western users are scripted into a textual/graphical environment that is in constant flux and revision” (3).  The way that I think of cybertypes are racial and gender stereotypes online; Nakamura would disagree with my simplistic interpretation. Nakamura wrote her book in 2002. The Internet along with media in general has evolved since the release of her book. Nakamura is writing you internet users who believe that the internet equalizes all—and all that believe that it is a good thing. Instead she argues that the internet is creating a monoculture, producing an assumption of whiteness, not fully representing minorities, and creating false sense of racial equality. While I agree with Nakamura’s theory with cybertyping, I do have some serious concerns with her argument. She takes a deterministic stand; the color of your skin defines that you cannot join the internet community without losing your race or feeling under attack. Because you are black, brown, yellow, blue, indigo, magenta, you will feel attacked on the internet by the representation or lack of representation of your ethnicity. Also one of the key claims Nakamura makes is that the internet does discriminate based off sex, age, race, and location. She cites a claim made by two plaintiffs defended by Equal Rights Center for racial “redlining” because of what was perceived as geographical discrimination. What Kozmo judged as Internet-penetrated zip code “follow racial lines”: Kozmo refues to deliver to a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. occupied primarily by upper-class African Americans with equal “Internet penetration” as white neighborhoods (10).  However, with further research I saw that David Berenbaum on behalf of the Equal Rights Center announced on Dec. 5 2000 that  "Based on our discussions with Kozmo executives and our review of the evidence, we concluded that the definition of Kozmo's initial service area was not motivated by racial discrimination” (freelibrary) . Besides the fact Nakamura makes a claim based off a claim, this comment by the representative of Equal Rights Center completely takes the bite out of Nakamura’s claim.  My final critique of Nakamura’s book is her criticism that “Commercial sites such as these tend to view women and minorities primarily as potential markets for advertising and merchants rather than as ‘coalitions’”.(8) To me Nakamura ignores that the Internet plays a pivotal role in a capitalistic economy that many of the major nations follow. She criticizes these sites for treating their users as potential markets. Many websites need funding to run. In order to gain funding they allow companies (who their customers might be interested in) to market on their website. Also, of course they would market themselves and their beliefs, which is what people/companies do.  It seems ridiculous for Nakamura’s critique of commercial sites.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Kozmo.com+and+Equal+Rights+Center+Announce+Initiative+to+Bridge+the...-a067584214