How do young Web surfers feel about racial identity when they're chatting with each other online? PNS asked Open Voice, a nonprofit youth organization based in East Palo Alto, Calif. which runs the largest teen-produced site on the Internet, to coordinate a chat-room on this question. Mike Burnside, 16, Ron Chapman, 16, Benjamin Carson 15, and Will Schultz, 15 are staff members of Open Voice and juniors in high school. This is the first in an ongoing online conversation on young people and technology produced for YO!, a monthly newspaper by and about youth published by PNS.

EAST PALO ALTO -- "Can you tell someone's race in a chatroom?"

Mike writes: I can get a good idea from what they say in the chatroom, but I never know for sure. I might know if they told me, but still, one could be lying. It's hard to tell who someone is from sentences and paragraphs or whatever they might say. Race hasn't been that big of a deal from what I've seen. No one really cares about which race they are, because everyone is just talkin'.

Will responds: Mike I agree with you. You can't tell race online. Words don't make up a race, but color does. You know, it would be funny if, when you typed, your words would be written in the color that you are. So if you were black, you would write in black. Then everyone would know your race. But why would you want that? It's nice that when everyone is alike and no one feels like a minority.

Benjamin responds: I agree with your first three sentences, Mike. On the Internet, no one is ever really in anyone else's physical presence. But I must vehemently disagree that "no one really cares about which race they are because everyone is just talkin'." No. No one really cares about which race they are because everyone is supposedly white.

Ron responds: That's what you think. But I'm sure that there are some people out there who really do care. Possibly not about others' race, but maybe like me they care about their own. Who out there would like to be mistaken for something they're not?

Benjamin writes: Personally, I must say that in the United States, you can't tell a person's race until you look at them. Because of how culture is shared in mainstream society, it's impossible to discern who is what race by the way they behave, especially if there is no visual contact between the parties.

Ron responds: Good point Ben. Just because a person uses slang doesn't mean they're black. Just because a person uses Spanish doesn't mean they're Mexican, and just because somebody uses Valley slang doesn't make 'em white. The choice of music doesn't say a thing, either. The only thing that helps is taking a good look, and even looks can be deceiving.

Will responds: You're right, Ben. You need to see the person before you can tell their race. Race is more about color of skin than it is about the way you act. You may think that you can tell someone's race online, but it is truly impossible. You need to see the person. Even when you talk to someone on the phone, it is very hard and usually impossible to tell what race someone is.

Ron writes: I used to think you could tell race online. It was almost too obvious. I would enter the chat room sort of knowing that most, if not all, of the people in the room -- not including me -- would be white. This was based on some AOL demographics that I had seen. The only thing that would make me think they were something other than your average white teenager with nothing to do in the middle of the afternoon was their interests. The types of things they talked about, the words they would use, the kind of music they liked. Then I took a moment to think about that. How truly superficial a person's taste in music is. How I myself may have been thought of as white because I mentioned that I like rock & roll. The other thing that changed my mind was a well-meant, but poorly thought-through statement. We were chatting about something else, and somehow, we began to talk about race. After about ten minutes, someone in the chat room comments, "It isn't always about race you know. If you put Will (a white co-worker) and Ron (me) in a chat room and were asked which was which, nobody could tell the difference." That comment didn't go over too well with me. I thought to myself, "This guy thinks I sound white!" And trust me, no black person in their right mind wants to be told that. So I decided I should let him know just how offensive the comment was. Of course, he had no idea how much I didn't like hearing that. He didn't understand, but then, a lot of whites don't understand the offensive nature of such comments.

Will responds: Well, Ron, I think that it is bad to say that a lot of whites don't understand that offensive nature of mistaking a black man for a white one. I myself would take offense if it was the opposite way and someone confused me for a black man. I think that when you are online, there is pretty much a neutral race that everyone belongs to. People just make it so there is race online when they say there is.

Benjamin responds: I see what you're saying in the bottom part of that comment, Ron, but there's another story. I say that you can never tell a person's race by what their interests are or what they say. Mike is Caucasian and he likes to do the kinds of stuff that stereotypical black people like to do. I know Mexican males that do the same things that black males do, and, though their friends, including me, accept them as black, they aren't by pigment orientation. The only way that you can tell race, I say, is face to face. There exists no other truly accurate way that I know of.