okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

Much has been said about the loose networking efforts of African-Americans online.  Back in the day before africanamericans.com and black.com many of the best efforts to go online could be found through social-networking sites like Black Planet.  Even today, African-Americans.com offers a presence that does not readily appear to the Internet savvy 20 something set, and Black.com seems to be more about Africa than it is African-American culture here in the US.

If you really want to see what is happening online you may want to try blackvoices.com, which is powered by AOL.  Or then again you might want to try YouTube.  In fact, there is no quick and dirty way for anyone of other races to connect with African-Americans online or even for them to connect to each other.  You have to have your eyes and ears tuned into the “streets” of the information superhighway known as the Internet and make a concerted effort.

• Forget about search engines.  Unless you want some Wikipedia articles you won’t go far at all.  Try searching for celebrities you know, talk show hosts like Tavis Smiley, which has a cool site on PBS, or Roland Martin’s site.  Right now The Mo’Kelly Reportis very popular.  These are respected journalists who have a very interesting presence on the web.  They’re not mere blogs, but places where lively discussion takes place, particularly Mo’Kelly’s site on EURWEB, another interesting web site.
• It’s often thought that the few blogging efforts by African-Americans are through social-networks like MySpace or Black Planet.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Many historical black colleges have their own social networks on sites like Ning.  With individually ran sites you have to read in between the lines to tell if the blog is by an author that just happens to be an African-American, though they never really talk about anything “Black” per se, or if there truly is interesting discussion on the blog that typically caters to issues of interest to the African-American community.  You may be surprised as to what you find out.
• Typically I find my blogs accidentally.  Black Celebrity Kids is a niche site I found on WordPress on accident, however, if I search on Black Celebrities using the search in WordPress typically I will come to a site like say Black Chick Dish.
• For whatever reason there seems to be a huge number of sites by African-American women, for African-American women.  You may also find the same to be true on video sharing sites like YouTube.
• Check out sites like Associated Content and Helium and do a search.  You’ll find far more material than you could ever possibly read by African-Americans writers, with even more sites to link to through their cross promotional efforts, which opens up even more resources.
• Most magazines have an interesting presence online as well.  Essence for one is so engaging you may discontinue your subscription. 

So yes a high-minded bourgeois African-American like yourself has plenty of places online to check out to find either other people like yourself or those with similar interests.  You now officially have a legitimate reason to get off of MySpace as the argument that you’re in Arkansas or deep in the reaches of West Virginia and want to stay “in the know” no longer flies.  There’s a whole new world out there, and a far more accurate representation of the true culture than what BET attempts to offer, but can’t because their advertisers won’t pay for it.  No longer do you have to wait for a news special on ABC or CNN, as it is has been right there for the taking all along …