WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE BLACK BLOGSHPHERE???

2006 was the year I became aware of the Blacks Blogsphere.  I began my blog right here in the late summer/early fall of 2006.  I had come to realize that we, black/African American people, were not getting our story told via the mainstream media. Like most I believed I had something of value to say to our people and to act as a voice of our people.  I soon learned I was not alone in this feeling and I soon virtually bumped into the Field Negro.  Soon thereafter I found the Free Slave, Bronze Trinity and Asabagna all online with the same idea to enlighten our people and give them a voice, where we were practically voiceless.  Jet was no longer doing it for us, neither was Ebony.  We need something more.

In late 2006, the idea of banning together and putting forth information from a black perspective sprang forth and we all tossed around ideas.  Soon Asabagna, Bronze Trinity, The Free Slave, Aulelia, Kizzie, Francis L. Holland and a few others brought forward the AfroSpear.  We loved it.  We believed we would be a force to recon with and soon we would find out just how powerful this conglomeration of bloggers would be.  In March 2007 Howard Witt, writing for the Chicago Tribune broke the story of the Jena 6.  The AfroSpear got wind of the story and we all posted information about the Jena, Louisiana case.  Soon,  after we made the story go viral (we didn’t use that term back then) radio personalities Al Sharpton and Michael Baisden began to air it on their national radio programs.  It was due to the constant outcry of the AfroSpear that drove these two to speak.  There would be others, the Shaquanda Cotton case and the most heinous of all was the brutal sexual assault and rape of a woman by youngsters in the Dunbar Village apartments.  Weekly many of us black bloggers posted open letters appealing for justice for the victims. 

We were on fire.  We had influenced each one of these cases on one level or another and we could see we in fact wielded a powerful sword.  Then comes senator Barack Obama announcing his candidacy for president of the United States.  This opened up a plethora of opinions.  There were many for the senator and many, well, not so much against just not on his jock like they were.  Many of refused to drink of the cup of the poisonous swill being leached out by the then senator from Illinois.  The dye was cast and many of us were excoriated by other black bloggers for refusing the cup of the George Town, Guyana verbal cool aid the good senator from Chicago offered.   After the senator won the prize of presidency, this seemed to lull the black blogsphere to sleep.  The fire seemed to be dying out.  Slowly, what was once a haven for new ideas and opinions the black blogsphere began to be a sphere of remixed excrement from the main stream media.  Their boy was in office and that was that.

To Be Continued...