My internet has a Dyshiki. Yours is racist.

I was going to ignore Black Bird...the web browser made specifically for the African American Internet using community. I first read about it on kissmyblackads and I ignored it. That is until I found out that Blackbird was not compatible with Mac. 

*cricket*

So I did some research....and in it's most basic form, Blackbird is a customized version of Firefox 3 for Windows and Vista. It's all black (I can already hear the African drums in the distance?). Creators, 40A Inc (still have no clue who or what they are) claim that the browser will: " broaden the Internet experience for African Americans." 

You are probably thinking right now "that's nice, 'broadening'..yeah that should be good.". They continue:

"...when using Blackbird's built-in search box, results will skew towards African-American news sources and blogs, again, in an effort to highlight those resources for the community. A search for "Barack Obama" in Safari's search box, for example, will bring results like BarackObama.com, Wikipedia, and Chicago Tribune. But the same query in Blackbird's box will return results from AOL Black Voices and blogs.bet.com."

And that's exactly where they lost me. Why do I need a special web browser wrapped in Africa prints? The product already exists, but someone decided to create a "Separate but Equal" version to sell to a definitively marginalized target audience. It's playing on the emotions and culture of an entire people. Where as BET was a pioneer in a sea of hypocrisy and monotony, this is oh-so-subtle-night. Ideally, information should not have a color, race or creed. But when it does...peddling an "Afrocentric" product only reinforces a stereotype. We are saying that people of color and those of European decent cannot enjoy the same content. 

Remembering my experience when I first moved to Chicago, I cracked a joke on being able to find black Barbers with a bit more ease online using Blackbird. But in all actuality, I think this is a horrible marketing ploy that will ultimately only increase the digital divide. 

This is an epic fail in my book. And come on....Vista?....black people DO USE macs (I blame Pharelle for this).