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The "whitosphere" (also spelled "whiteosphere" at times) is the part of the blogosphere that is populated primarily or exclusively by white people. The term was coined by Francis L. Holland, Esq. at MyDD on or about February 9, 2007, in the context of a heated debate between white and Black bloggers over the documented lack of Black participation at white Democratic Party participants' blogs. The term subsequently was adopted by hundreds of Black bloggers and their readers as a concise way to describe a complex and hotly debated political phenomenon: the de facto segregation of whiets and Blacks online. The term "whitosphere" has [http://www.google.com.br/search?hlpt-BR&qwhitosphere&btnG=Pesquisa+Google&meta= 8,420 hits at Google,] along with [http://www.google.com.br/search?hlpt-BR&qwhiteosphere&btnGPesquisar&meta over 1,000 hits for the disfavored alternative spellings, "whiteosphere".]][http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/22/on_african_american_blogs_shar_1.html "On African American Blogs, Sharp Words for Candidates, Washington Post, January 22, 2008]
The term "white neighborhood" is very commonly used in America to describe a neighborhood that is predominantly or overhwhelmingly white. The prevalence of this term in our language is a reflection of the degree to which Blacks and whites have historically lived, and continue to live, in segregated neighborhoods in America, due historically to legal, structural, customary and financial restrictions placed by whites on where Blacks and other minorities could go and where we could live. http://academic.udayton.edu/RACE/04NEEDS /housing01.htm http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/arcjust.htm
Because the term "white neighborhood" describes where whites live, and the "blogosphere" is the part of the World Wide Web that is characterized by its resident blog population, therefore the term "whitosphere" is used to denote that part of the blogosphere that is characterized by the fact that it is predominantly or almost exclusively populated by whites.
The term "whitosphere" reflects the absence of Blacks at white blogs, an absence particularly striking relative to the prominence of Blacks in appropriate reference populations, e.g. Democratic Party primaries and Democratic Party general election voters. For example, the whitosphere blog MyDD has 1.5% - 1.7% Black participants while DailyKos has approximately 2.5% Blacks. Meanwhile the Democratic Party is twenty percent Black, and twenty percent of the delegates at the Democratic National Convention are Black. , , [http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/2/9/12568/75943#readmore "Is the term 'Whitosphere' a Fair Descriptor for the White Blogosphere?", Francis L. Holland, MyDD, February 9, 2007.]
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