Prometheus 6

Sunshine for the Virtual Town Hall
By Tom Grubisich
Monday, May 14, 2007; A15

These days we want "transparency" in all institutions, even private ones. There's one massive exception -- the Internet. It is, we are told, a giant town hall. Indeed, it has millions of people speaking out in millions of online forums. But most of them are wearing the equivalent of paper bags over their heads. We know them only by their Internet "handles" -- gotalife, runningwithscissors, stoptheplanet and myriad other inventive names.

Black folks know they can suffer retaliation in their real lives if anything remotely pro-Black is associated with their name. Strange thing for me to say since I've never been anonymous, but there you are.

You would think Web sites would want to keep the hate-mongers from taking over, but many sites are unwitting enablers.

It's the WITTING enablers you should be sweating.