LaShawn has some interesting comments on diversity within the blogosphere.

Whites are still the majority in America, and the Internet tends to be dominated by whites. It follows that the majority of bloggers will be white. I have no grand theories, at least none I’d care to discuss today, why white men in particular dominate the top bloggers.

At the risk of sounding like a liberal, I do wish more blacks and women were invited to these blogger conferences and called for TV spots and radio interviews. I won’t complain too much, though. I’ll just continue blogging about what interests me and hope you find something on the blog that interests you.

I remain hopeful that “affirmative action” will keep its ugly hands out of the pot. We will rise or fall on pure blogging. And some high-profile linkage

There are also a LOT of blogs which do not have a picture posted, have a generic name and from a brief read you would have no idea the gender or the race of the author, and so I think it is also fascinating to consider our perceptions of who (or what race or gender) the person behind a non-descript blog (like this one) is.

Newsweek’s Steven Levy thinks there’s something more sinister going on.

So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: “It’s white people linking to other white people!” (A link from a popular blog is this medium’s equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to “promote myself among those on the A list.”

Captain Ed’s response:

In an endeavor where everyone works for themselves — no hiring barriers, no potentially discriminatory prerequisites — this has to be one of the dumbest premises I’ve yet read about the blogosphere. Anyone with access to the Internet, including the local library, can start a blog, for free. The value of the blog gets determined by two governing mechanisms, neither of which has anything to do with race or gender. Primarily, the quality and timeliness of the writing gives most of the value, and what’s left can generally be chalked up to marketing.

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And speaking of race, Marcus Epstein has some interesting thoughts on race and the Condi ‘08 movement.

In this context, two further observations about CPAC that are worth noting:

- The growing “Draft Condoleezza” movement. Eighteen percent of the CPAC attendees said Secretary Rice was their top choice for the GOP ticket in 2008. This was only one percentage point below Rudolph Giuliani. A huge number of attendants were wearing “Condi in 2008″ buttons. Since then, I have noted an array of blogs and websites supporting her candidacy.

I find this absolutely baffling. Besides the fact that Rice has never served in elected office, we have no clue what her political views are. The only time she bothered to state an independent opinion besides echoing the President’s Iraq war stance was to support affirmative action before the Grutter and Gratz decisions.

Rice may be very conservative. But I don’t think that all the people sporting the “Condi in 2008″ buttons at CPAC knew anything that I didn’t know. What they did know is that Condoleezza Rice is black and a female. And, in their dream world, this will mean that they will be free from accusations of racism and sexism from the Left.

This idiotic rainbow Republicanism is a recipe for electoral failure. Besides the fact the choice most likely will alienate their white male base, it is unlikely to gain them any brownie points among blacks or females.

Just ask Pat Buchanan—and whomever it was who persuaded him to pick Ezola Foster as his running mate in 2000.

And continuing this Condi tangent, OTB links to Steven Taylor and the AP, pointing out that Condi says she won’t run.

“I will not run for president of the United States.” “I won’t run,” she told ABC’s “This Week.” “I won’t. How’s that? Is that categorical enough?”