>I watch Spike Lee flicks, I listen to dead prez, one of my
>favorite shows growing up was a different world, I read
>Malcolm X and Angela Davis litterature.

I guess the difference is that I don't need to watch or read these things to relate. In my blog I referenced Jennifer González' The Appended Subject: Race and Identity as Digital Assemblage.

"...the appended subject describes an object constituted by electronic elements serving as a psychic or bodily appendage, an artifical subjectivity that is attached to a supposed original or unitary being, an online persona understood as somehow appended to a real person who resides elsewhere, in front of a keyboard. In each case a body is constructed or assembled in order to stand in for, or become an extention of, a subject in an artificial but nevertheless inhabited world."

What do we really represent online? You or I can say we're anything but it really is artificial. I am intrigued by the idea of race online. My experiences as a Black woman are real time, everyday kinds of experiences but who I am online is based upon how I want others to view me. This goes for everyone. How am I supposed to know who is real or authentic on a discussion board? Does it even matter?

In this country and other parts of the world the African diaspora is the appended subject, their expressions in form or in movement represent a certain consciousness, class, or gender of the individual or group. González also writes about the appended subject as the colonized subject perceived by an imperial nation such as the United States in the 16th-20th centuries and even the present. This subject is an appendage to the centralized state. Unless you belong to the oppressed group how can you really know what their struggle is like except for what you read or hear? You'd have to include that history, the legacy of slavery, and Jim Crow...all of this makes up the consciousness of the African diaspora. Online it's an idea, a concept...something to discuss but not take to heart.