How many of you have seen this commercial? It's for a large telecom company with initials M and C and I: the lights rise and new age music starts, an announcer intones, "On the Internet, there is no race....(pause)...there is no gender....(pause)....there is no age....(pause)." The rest of the commercial rolls along this genre, busily portraying the wonderful absence of social qualifiers on the 'Net, ending with a ditty about how this company is taking us to this social utopia, and aren't they great. In fact, even if you haven't seen this particular commercial, the majority of recent internet advertisements have attempted to portray a similar image and tone: the 'Net as exemplary social space. The idea that the world out there on the 'Net is significantly better than the social reality of isms (racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) we experience on a daily basis.

Besides the fact that this simply isn' t an actuality on the 'Net, there is another element to this John Lennon Imagine rip-off which I find disturbing. While these advertisement campaigns promote free-form interaction, exploration, and escapism (which can be desirable), they also fall in line with the growing social approach to dealing with racism, sexism, ageism, and other isms. Rather than continue confronting actual institutional inequities currently perpetuated in modern society, contingents of people like to purport we've "gone far enough." It is as if society has hit a mental wall with discussing how to deal with prejudice. The metaphor I like to use is trying to sit on Pandora's Box, afraid to let any more issues escape. This maneuver leaves society with only the infinite numbers of social problems that have been surfacing in the last several decades. In addition to trying to physically reverse civil rights achievements (like trying to eliminate Affirmative Action programs), claiming there is no need for special treatment anymore, there is great deal of lip-service given to the theory of color-blindness, or what I like to call the, "Oh, I didn't even notice you were a Chicano lesbian female" philosophy.

The blindness approach may seem innocuous in its intent, but it disempowers one's sense of identity more than it works towards freeing it from stereotypes. Instead of actually ridding people of social prejudices, we are pushed to simply ignore that they are there: if we do not see race, then we do not see racism, if we do not see gender, we do not see sexism, and so on.

This commercial works to create the social fantasy that the computer age will accomplish what the real world cannot - an ism free zone.

In the MCI commercial, we hear about how there is no race, and see a flash image of black man. No gender? A white woman. No age? A sixty-five plus white male. The audience is confronted by imagery of individuals they don' t want to see, by the categories they want to ignore. The commercial goes a step further than just perpetuating the idea of becoming blind to social inequities. It supports a blindness that approaches eradication, or what I call "erase-ism:" the desire to entirely eliminate social categories. This commercial works to create the social fantasy that the computer age will accomplish what the real world cannot - a place where intimacy and understanding can finally occur because we have rid ourselves of all the misnomers, stereotypes, and false pretenses - an ism-free zone. They have been erased completely, and isn't that great.

Erase-ism, like color-blindness, may seem innocuous; it too contains elements of escapism and exploration. Personally I'm all for the elimination of pejorative assumptions, however, I do not want to have to relinquish sources of my identity to do so.

Despite the Erase-ist goal of eliminating the categorization of individuals based on their skin color, language, partner, or whatever, there will still be people who want to stuff individuals into divisive social boxes. The difference between perceiving a social category as a source of identity and perceiving a social category as an impediment deals with boundaries within social categories, not the idea of a category itself. Erase-ing a category doesn' t consequently erase an ism association. Exploding the stagnant definitions connected to a social category works to keep both a social category and to give it boundlessness. For example, if one's perception of "what it means to be a woman" ends with visions of domesticity, then there is a limitation in one's perception. Erase-ism appears to deal with this issue by tossing the entire bundle: both the category "woman" and stereotypical assumptions. Yet in keeping all of the elements one could associate with a woman, domesticity included, then similar ends are accomplished without the elimination of a source of identity. What is lost is a narrow perception.

If I re-wrote the script for this commercial, I would create a different social fantasy. The announcer would intone, on the internet there is race...flash image of dozens of different type of individuals....there is gender....flash images of dozens of individuals.....there is age....flash image of dozens of individuals....etc. My closing ditty would not be about the elimination of categories, but about the potential for social transformation through interaction, through communication and recognition. This could occur not because I am passing as simply another user, but because my identity is expanded through its recreation on the 'Net. This is the internet social fantasy that I would enjoy...and isn' t that great.

Eleanor Russel Mason