African-American bloggers are going around traditional outlets such as the NAACP and forming their own conferences and such.
The result?
Civil Rights 2.0, as reported by the WaPo:
Others have another name for the new efforts by black bloggers: Civil Rights 2.0. Blogger L.N. Rock said that if abolitionist Frederick Douglass, former congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin and “people like that were around today, they would have blogs.”
“The NAACP’s youth-outreach efforts are dysfunctional,” Rock said. “We would have been glad to work with them had they asked. If you’re talking about the talented tenth, we are the new talented tenth,” a reference to a concept by Du Bois of a group of exceptional black men.
“The skill sets of the bloggers is no joke,” Rock said. “These guys have doctorates. They’re not being used.”
But overtaking traditional civil rights groups, which have built their reputations over time, will take more than words, computer savvy and bravado. The NAACP alone has more than 300,000 members who pay dues and an additional 325,000 who have signed up online, the group’s spokesman said. ColorOfChange.org has about 400,000 online members, Jones said.
Interesting…