I’ll try my best to keep this critical, but let it be known that I think a web browser for African-Americans is just as inane and untenable a concept to bring to market as any other web product or SaaS which tries to commodify African-Americans as a monolithic entity with the same skills, likes, dislikes, and interests.

Then again, my degree was in Math, not marketing, so what the hell do I know? Let’s run this bitch!

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Recently, Mashable had a giveaway for a free pass to Future of Web Design in New York November 3-4. All you had to do was leave a comment with a question that you’d ask one of the speakers on the panel. Here’s my question:

As you all know, web design is a field which skilled designers — both male and female of all nationalities — participate in and contribute to through collaborative efforts, and through conferences such as this. About two years ago, Chris Messina of Factoryjoe.com described a Future of Web conference as the “Future of White Boys club”. About a year ago, Black Web 2.0 made a succinct observation concerning the 2007 A List Apart Web Design Survey results and the lack of Black web professionals in the design industry. Since this conference is titled the “future” of web design, what are you doing to ensure that both women and minorities are included in this future (and not just on this panel)? [link]

And here were some of the e-mail responses I got from my question:

Isn’t that question racist/sexist?
Your question’s not realy [sic] relevant to web design or the future of web design.
I don’t think this is really about affirmative action. Why does it have to be all about race? It’s just web design.
There are just web designers — not black, white, male, or female. At least that’s how I feel.

I think it’s a viable question — some of the people on the panel are at the top of their field, and certainly in an influential position to give the question considerable merit. Then again, the usual canned response to this is something along the lines of “wow, that’s a great topic that isn’t really dealt with. Thank you for sharing.” Paying lipservice to the obvious disparity does little — if anything — to actually helping to reverse it.

Then again, maybe lipservice is all that can be done. How many in the web design industry that fall into the “White Boys club” would step out on a limb and look to actively recruit and train minority and female designers? Do they want to see a future of web design that’s more diverse than now? Do they care?

Yeah, I know it’s a touchy subject, but let’s touch on it. What do you think?