(Cross posted at DailyKos)

I’ve been trying to get my mind around all the discussions that have happened after Peter Daou invited a bunch of his blogging friends to get together with Bill Clinton. One of the most interesting was an email from Terrence asking me what I thought of “some kind of central site for progressive POC bloggers”. One of the places I got to know Terrence was through the Progressive Blog Alliance where progressive bloggers cross post to drive more traffic to their own sites.

Why did Terrence write to me about this idea? Doesn’t he remember my melanin deficiency? For get the brown paper bag test, I’m about as white as those environmentally destructive white plastic shopping bags. About all I know about people of color is from a few experiences I had when I was young, and what I read on the blogs.

When I was in high school, I lived in a very wealthy white liberal community. If we wanted any diversity, we had to ship it in from half way across the country, which is what we did with a program called ABC. (For more on ABC, especially as it relates to the Governor’s Race in Massachusetts, read this blog post).

My one of my few other experiences that taught me a little bit about being black was when a friend of mine in college, a townie, invited me to go with him to his church. As we walked along the road in Wooster, Ohio, his uncle and aunt drove by. They asked Ronnie where he was going, and he said to church. They offered us a ride and we hopped in. His aunt looked me over and said, I’m surprised you’d be coming to church with us.

I had no idea what she was talking about and I asked her why. We got to church, and Ronnie introduced me to his friends at church, one of the preachers, and slowly it dawned on me. No one in the church had the same skin color as I did. I felt a little out of place, especially when they asked the guests to stand up and introduce themselves, but I got into the service and learned a little bit about what it feels like to be in a minority, even in a very friendly setting. Afterwards, Ronnie’s aunt came up and apologized for her comment and maybe even she learned a little from the experience too.

So, I guess it takes me back to the comment I made up above, “about all I know about people of color is from a few experiences I had when I was young, and what I read on the blogs.” You see, that’s the whole point. Other than sometimes reading The Republic of T., Culture Kitchen and a few other blogs, I rarely step outside of my comfortable little white liberal blogging community, and that’s the problem.

Yeah, it would be great if there was some easier way I surround myself with POC bloggers, that I could learn from people that are different from me. “8ackgr0und N015e” has a great diary on DailyKos about this. From all of this, I’m out there trying to learn more about people whom I probably don’t listen enough to.

Like Pam Spaulding. Her post, Skin and the color of money is a great starting point for anyone wanting to venture out of their comfortable little world. Another new favorite for me is Jack and Jill Politics. Jill has been writing a bit about the whole Clinton blogger brunch dustup. She also has a link to one of my favorite sites on race relations today, Black people love us.

As I crawled from one blogroll to another, I stumbled across Anderson@Large. I ran into Ms. Anderson at the Media Giraffe Project Conference back in June. I really like her writing. She has a post up about the blessing of Gatehouse and several posts about HR 6061, the “Secure Fence Act of 2006” and about voting issues.

As I surf a little further, I find Afro-Netizen writing about 2008 hopefuls courting the CBC.

It’s getting late, and I need to find someway of tying all of this together. I’m frustrated. Terrence’s idea of some sort of POC blog alliance is a great idea, but it is almost overwhelming. There are so many great POC blogs, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface, and if I ever manage to get my arms around so this part of the blogosphere, I need to go out and explore the Latino blogs, the AAPI blogs, the Native American blogs, the GLBT blogs, the list seems endless.

I guess this gets to one of my favorite talking points. In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam talks about bonding social capital and bridging social capital. So many of us, especially in the liberal blogosphere, spend our time with bonding social capital. We have all our posts about how important it is to win back congress from the corrupt Republicans. We bond with one another over this. It is important. But we need to be out there building bridges between our communities, bridges that help us understand our common humanity and the importance of working together, and not simply bridges to nowhere.