I am over at my other favorite site, Blacks In Technology http://www.socialbit.net/home, in the forum a discussion is brewing about folks who don't believe we Blacks can be expert computer technicians and engineers, especially other Blacks. The image of the Black geek ie computer enthusiast and/or professional is hammered in mind and reality. I know we have made image strides in the movies but on the ground there seems to still be a disconnect of unbelief and much ridicule. Smart Blacks are seen as an alien threat by normal folk and the baddies. Blacks with displays of discipline and intellect are seen as having given in and sold out to the "other" culture.

We are not anomalies as suggested by todays media and we are not having lost our "Blackness" just because we are techno smart. What I have found is that among us there are a lot of late bloomers because we have believed the "BS" ourselves. When we discover we are smarter than we've been told all our lives, we instantly start making up for lost time. Because we've needed lawyers in our civil-rights struggles and needed doctors for our specific health demands, we see them but we are not sure about needing computer techs and also how many Black architects can you recall? If Black scientist, architects and computer technologist are science fiction to them, it is ten times still strange to us.

Also most times we are so busy proving ourselves and our skills over and over to people that we posthumously make a name for ourselves. Give'em hell while their breath'n, thank'em at their funeral.

As you all write into the world's story, you are also writing us into the future, at least that is how I see it. When you visualize it in fiction, we might actualize it in hardware/software.

Here's what I saw on the BIT site, a Black man wearing a dashiki, He is a Christian, a Computer professional. This is not possible if you stereotype it all out. There are over a hundred different persona's on this site alone that don't match the white media geek stereotype, which is a rouse to deflect us. We watch lots of media, we don't want to appear stupid as that, we avoid that. Simplistic? Yes. True, you judge.
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