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Chris Rabb's life as a blogger started with an e-mail. For four years, he sent out an e-newsletter to thousands of names in his address book. The newsletter eventually became his blog, Afro-Netizen, which provided Rabb's commentaries on politics and news, with a focus on Black communities. Since then, Rabb has become one of the most outspoken voices on the racial divide in the blogosphere. "As bloggers of color, we are such a smaller number of people than our white counterparts. That makes reaching the volume of traffic much harder, and the lack of social and financial capital also makes this harder," Rabb said.

People of color make up 40 percent of bloggers, but only 26 percent of Internet users. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's "Blogger" report, which was based on findings from their February through April 2006 tracking surveys, 11 percent of bloggers are Black, 19 percent are English-speaking Hispanic and 10 percent are some other race or ethnicity.

There are no bloggers of color with the kind of exposure and influence of superstars Matt Stoller of mattstoller.com or Duncan Black of atrios.blogspot. The result, according to Rabb, has been a typical white liberal/left dialogue in the political blogosphere.

"Whenever issues of race come up, it's seen as a distraction."

"They won't talk about the racial element of anything that's been deracialized by mainstream media. They're not going to talk about affirmative action, about the racial element of the immigration issue," Rabb said. "Whenever issues of race come up, it's seen as a distraction."

Meanwhile, people of color face more barriers to accessing web-based technologies and are less likely to have the type of jobs with the flexibility and support to, for instance, blog as part of their work. As Rabb puts it, a bus driver is probably not going to blog as much as a professor.

The Internet's element of anonymity has allowed both relief from racism (people of color who shop and do business online don't experience the racism they do offline) and, at the same time, emboldened racists hiding behind the mask of virtual reality.

For bloggers of color who reveal their racial identity and whose blogs tackle race and cultural politics, this has meant contending with hate mail.

Kortney Ryan Ziegler, 25, shut down her blog, Blac(k)ademic, because of the onslaught of negative comments she received last summer. Ziegler, who lives in Chicago and is pursuing her PhD at Northwestern University, blogged under her alter ego, Nubian, about the racism, sexism and homophobia she experiences and observes in her life and in the media.

"I just think people really don't want to hear the truth They instead attack you on your character, your writing style, and not your argument. They distract from what you just said by saying you can't spell, or that you should have put a comma there," said Ziegler.

There have also been hateful comments when she posted about her frustrations with being asked by a white grad student whether her Black skin tone attracted heat. Then, Ziegler reached her breaking point. She did an interview with Feministing.com discussing her experiences of "Blogging While Black." As a result of the interview, she was accused of believing that race trumps gender, and mistaking "plain assholishness for racism."

Ziegler took a leave of absence after the posting of that interview and then stopped blogging altogether.

For bloggers of color who reveal their racial identity and whose blogs tackle race and cultural politics, this has meant contending with hate mail.

"Every time I would log on to read the comments, there was always something hurtful," said Ziegler. "And it got me thinking, Wow, I put myself out there. There's my photograph. There's my school information ' I felt more vulnerable, not being anonymous. I now don't have any pictures on my blog, or my name."

Ziegler acknowledges that for all the distress, blogging also proved to be beneficial to her. She has made multiple academic connections and met many women of color from her participation in the Radical Women of Color Carnival, which she helped to start. A carnival is a collection of writings on a specific topic that is usually hosted by alternating bloggers. There are multiple carnivals throughout the blogosphere focused on different themes. The Radical Women of Color Carnival dedicates itself to publishing women of color who write for social change.