Friday Twitter Break: Meet the Brown Twitter Bird

Because not all black folks Tweet the same.

By Naima Ramos-Chapman Aug 13, 2010

Today’s Twitter break is devoted to all those #browntwitterbirds. Not sure what that means? Read on.

This week Farhad Manjoo wrote in Slate about "How Black People Use Twitter," arguing that black users have dominated the social network by using hashtags to categorize their messages. To help illustrate the point, Slate created a little brown twitter bird, mobile device in hand, donning a baby-blue fitted cap emblazoned with a hashtag.

In reaction, bloggers fired back with posts and tweets explaining how Slate had missed the mark on trying to answer such a race-loaded question. Blogger InnyVinny took the original brown twitter bird and created a diverse flock of brown birds for people to pick from. Soon after, the hashtag #browntwitterbird hit the Twitter-sphere, unraveling a swarm of jokes and comments, mostly about how ridiculous it is to try to fit a whole sub-group of black Twitter users into the same big fitted hat.

Shani-O from PostBourgie wrote about the short sightedness of Slate’s analysis, saying that it only quoted black men and was filled with cringe-worthy anthropologist moments.

Now Twitter’s flooded with #browntwitterbirds. Below are some of the ones that stood out the most. Remember, you can find us on Twitter @colorlines, on Facebook, and on Tumblr.

Now for those beautiful brown birds:

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