Science and Technology : on the net Black or African American or.....

rnojonson

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Mar 7, 2008
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Lorain, Ohio
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electrical draftsman/pc tech
It is driving me crazy. When I use search engines to ferret out sites for African-American artist or Black American artist or even Black artist, I get limited results. If I use Black artist in particular, the results are even more dubious. How can we get internet search engines to better identify us and/our info? Can we be better defined on the net? African-American, Black American, Black, all get questionable results. Black in front of anything has a negative connotation in search engine definitions or a color thing (artist who paint in the color black). Also note the word "artist" will get you music artist before visual artist like painters and graphics.
 
In the Spirit of Sankofa and Real Truth!

on the net Black or African American or..... ...What?


It is driving me crazy. When I use search engines to ferret out sites for African-American artist or Black American artist or even Black artist, I get limited results. If I use Black artist in particular, the results are even more dubious. How can we get internet search engines to better identify us and/our info? Can we be better defined on the net? African-American, Black American, Black, all get questionable results. Black in front of anything has a negative connotation in search engine definitions or a color thing (artist who paint in the color black). Also note the word "artist" will get you music artist before visual artist like painters and graphics.




mojonson,

My thoughts are on the continual digital divide that permeates the Internet, not in favor of Blacks and/or specific information relative to Blacks, in a positive manner, in other words cyberspace racism:

The Digital Divide: Where We Are
A status report on the digital divide.

by Norris Dickard
Diana Schneider

The digital divide is most commonly defined as the gap between those individuals and communities that have, and do not have, access to the information technologies that are transforming our lives. In February 2002, the U.S. Department of Commerce released "A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet," the latest study on computer and Internet use in America. Formerly a national benchmark for measuring disparities in access, the implied message of this latest release is that the digital divide is no longer a major concern. Many organizations feel differently, and as the debate intensifies, we are asking after ten years of national leadership to address the issue, "Where are we?"

The Civil Rights Forum, Consumers Union, and the Consumer Federation of America released a report in May 2002 called "Does the Digital Divide Still Exist? Bush Administration Shrugs, But Evidence Says 'Yes.'" The report concludes that the true measure of the digital divide is in assessing home Internet access. It also states that an inability to access the enhanced content available via broadband is creating a second-generation divide.


http://www.edutopia.org/digital-divide-where-we-are-today



 
It is driving me crazy. When I use search engines to ferret out sites for African-American artist or Black American artist or even Black artist, I get limited results. If I use Black artist in particular, the results are even more dubious. How can we get internet search engines to better identify us and/our info? Can we be better defined on the net? African-American, Black American, Black, all get questionable results. Black in front of anything has a negative connotation in search engine definitions or a color thing (artist who paint in the color black). Also note the word "artist" will get you music artist before visual artist like painters and graphics.

RNOJohnson ... Hi There ... :wave:

I remember in the early days, any search on black men, black women, or black teens yielded sex sites. I think it's better than that now, but it's still probably not what it should be, as you've described. I don't know how we could encourage search engines to do us better. What would you suggest, an email writing campaign or something?

Much Love and Peace.

:heart:

Destee
 
it's the software, tell toyota

I don't know how we could demand a better ID on the net. Black is a color not a nationality. Saying African-American or Black American doesn't work well in either case, we don't all agree with what to call ourselves and for sure saying just American means we don't exist in the context of our relationship to our ancestral past.

I am sure white folks never type "white artist" to find themselves. In that same sense why should we expect to type black artist to find ourselves? I think with us though the problem is unique because white folks comprise the dominate culture and do not differentiate themselves the way we do, have had to and often utilize to empower ourselves. Also because of them we are defined as African-Americans, Black-Americans, Blacks, Negro and other words.

So, it seems search engines or search engine authors can not define us with the words we use for ourselves. And for us, what a drag it would be if every document we put on the net had to have a race identifier on it so that folks can know who and what we are.

If the internet homogenizes us, it is like saying we can't gather in secret or in the open either. On the one hand the internet promotes each person as a faceless avatar, but each piece of info has an author who has a real face. Perhaps we shouldn't give up old school body count meetings yet. Many black groups, professional orgs and societies though are walled communities with limited membership only access. We have a lot of those and the transfer of info requires a reciprocity agreement via a program.We don't have free flow of info among ourselves.

Rumor has it, it will improve in time, look how much has happened to liberate us in the last 50 years. I just don't appreciate the institution of the institution and the institutionalization of black empowerment itself.

I think the digital divide is both economic and educational with that added racial dimension that's in the structural design. It is hard on us because we use "race" to communicate in the world. Things still happen to us as a racial group, even at the blending edges. Our using race as a self empowerment tool is hindered by the internet.
 

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