Race & Social Media

Race: always a tricky topic, isn’t it? Check out this article regarding the races and social media. In summary: the Caucasian population can typically be found on Facebook while the Hispanic and African-American communities tend toward MySpace. A lot of questions surfaced for me when I heard about this on the radio and then subsequently discovered this article. What does this mean for schools who want to be harnessing the power of social media? Should we have a presence in both places? Does anyone right now—and if so, why? And now knowing the dominant audiences found at each website, do we tailor our messages accordingly and differently? Is that a form of racism? Or is it segmented marketing, the same thing we do when we craft different messages to parents versus students, or Lower School candidates versus Upper School candidates? Discuss! (FYI: An insightful study worth reading on the topic of race in independent schools was turned into the book, Blacks in the White Establishment.)