A rant - and a little naivete

I read about a new blog a few weeks ago. A group blog by Southern writers. Sounded like just my kind of reading - as I am a Southerner, a writer, a reader and a lover of stories of all kinds, including the sometimes wonderful, terrible, fascinating tales of the South.

I am so naive.

Here is the site - A Good Blog is Hard to Find.

As I said before, I'm from the South. I know quite a bit about the South and the history of the American South and its culture. So this should be no surprise to me, but it was.

The surprise? As far as I can tell, and I clicked through to all of the author pages, all of these contributors are white. ANd it is 2007 and that is unbelievable. Forget being a Southern writers blog, an American writers blog with that many contributors ought to have some contributors who are non-white. Unless of course the originators of the blog completely ignore large portions of the writing, reading and published population.

I've been stewing about this for a few weeks and just did not want to make it a post, but it keeps making me feel like smoke is coming out of my ears. I would have hoped that contemporary, living Southern authors would not have a circle that is so limited that the only other authors they think of are white.

But perhaps they reached out and not African American authors responded or were interested in participating? Hmmmm. On another day, when I am feeling more confrontational, I will e-mail whoever is the master of the site and pose this. When the smoke clears.

Now, onward and upward.