I want to thank you for letting me know what #blck was... I had no clue...and being a new twitter fan... I can see why that can kinda help...

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When I first heard about the #blck tag, I thought it was a bad idea. This feeling got worse when I actually looked at the messages being marked #blck, as they were simply marking themselves as black, not providing any AA content.

As I said on FriendFeed: "I could say that applying labels in this case is really no better than labeling in any other case. Who is the authority on what is actually #blck? Just because I think the latest Nas album is hot, does that mean it's a #blck thing? If I'm not #blck, am I allowed to use the tag? It just seems like a slippery slope thing."

Some of the use-cases you guys have mentioned seem very cool and I hope things work out that way, but the fact that we have to rely on people to use #blck correctly still bothers me.

@TheJennTaFur - Well said.

@tgrundy - we go back, so I definitely respect your opinion. Now granted, back in the day, a lot of AA bloggers found one another in black blog rings and the like, or just one hipped on to the other.

I guess just what was so weird to me overall, when I first heard about it, is that I'd been on Twitter for eons, as had been a cadre of other AA folks (not to the degree that there is now) and no one ever felt the need to single out their conversations or selves as a tag.

I'm not trying to knock it down mind you, I'm trying to understand it. I feel I can flip talking about Kanye West and php scripts, and the latest gadgets, or whatever without having to identify any of it. So yeah, I guess it was a personal emotional reaction to it first. But as I hear more about it being discussed, I say more power to it. If it's working for folks, so be it.

Now I just gotta get you all off of Twitter on to FriendFeed. :-)

I'm enjoying watching the conversations both pro and con about the #blck tag. I was taken aback at first when I read some folks (you weren't the first Lynne) mention the "separatist" aspect to the tag as from the first moment I saw it that never occurred to me. I think Markus gave an excellent take on the positive benefits of the tag that mirrored much of my own thinking.

I've been online for awhile (maybe not as long as some others, though) and I remember a time when it was damn near impossible to find AA and other people of color on the 'Net. Thankfully those times are receding as each day passes. AFAIC, the #blck tag has proved immediately beneficial since I have found at least a dozen (and counting) POC and their blogs that I am now following and can gain information and insight from. Definitely one of those ideas where I can say, "Gee, I wish I had thought of that first!"

@Lynne d Johnson : I am agreement with everything you have said and even with @Markus. I did not use #blck because I did not like how some people used it without the black context and that is why I was so opposed to it.

But, if it is used correctly then maybe I will reconsider it. My main issue as with others though is that some of us did not want to be targeted by internet marketers for some assume that as a black consumer I may be interested in that product.

I am on the net not as a seller of anything but as an activist in sharing who I am and my interests. I am exchanging thought and only trying to share respect for one another. That is why when I saw the #blck discussion out of context I was becoming infuriated because I felt it was going to be abused.

Therefore, I am thankful for @negrophile and @blackweb20 who always use the black discussion in context and they don't have to use a tag. I know following their twitter streams that I am enlightened!

However like @markus said it helped him find some other cool people who are even McCain supporters. I love knowing stories like this.

Thank you for the explanation from everyone. It has helped me make sense of how some feel too.

Lynne you probably dont remember me from Kokobar but i was the last techie hired there and i used to hang out with Omar W with New York Online before he designed MSNBC.com and BlackPlanet.com and the open mic nights at Brooklyn Moon Cafe....so i was being saracastic about no pundits hehehe like for instance Roland Martin is there and Don Lemon.

We just setup @blck as a user on Twitter to allow @blck to have a Twitterless Account with that we will be able to actually via geo mapping see the Blck Tag users on a map which will be cool. NOT for seperating but demonstrating the community additionally i dont know if you were a part of #JOURNCHAT on Mondays 7-11pm but anyone using the #JOURNCHAT Tag and watching Twitter with http://www.tweetgrid.com/ or http://www.monitter.com it is awesome to watch the conversations and learn all the things Journalists, PR and Bloggers are talking about. With the #blck tag we can do the same thing.

@Markus - That's a really good explanation/perspective. That makes a lot of sense to me.

@Lynne During the elections, I like many others tweeted my opinions of the Presidential Debates. After reading my tweets and my friends tweets, I found that I was not connected to any Mccain supporters. It was kinda sad, because I found that I was limiting myself to the million unique conversations on twitter, because i was only linked up with people with similar perspectives. Long story short: I ended up connecting with some really cool Mccain supporters (yes they exist) who if it wasn't for the elections, my curiosity of their perspectives, and the #election tag I would have never met.

I said all that to say that I think non-blacks wonder what we're talking about, but there's no solid way to expose them to the millions of unique African-American perspectives and conversations we see on twitter everyday. The #blck tag if used correctly helps group some of these conversations together making them easier for interested non-blacks to find.

So rather than looking at the #blck tag as a tool to separate us, I see it being used as a tool that could be used to expose people our conversations hopefully connecting them with people who they would not normally see in their daily tweet stream.

@L Martin Johnson Pratt - There are no black pundits on Twitter? How long have you been on Twitter? Just curious, because this is so not the case.

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To all:

I think I get what the tag is for, but in a way it has me feeling like some sort of separatist movement that I'm not sure we need in this day and age.

This brings up some questions about monolithism in the black community, which begs two very interesting questions: 1) Do all black people only have an interest in black-related content (whatever that means). 2) Do all black people only want to connect with other black people all the time?

Sure, there's not a lot of us on Twitter, on the Web, in the blackosphere (black blogosphere), and that's why there's a feeling of need to connect. But on the other side of things, isn't the Web supposed to be the place where it doesn't matter if you're a man, or woman, or white, or black, or whatever, to be able to dialogue with someone else? And no I'm not naive at all here, I've witnessed and experienced attacks on race and gender on the Web. But I'm saying, for the sake of seeing the other side of things. And of course, we can agree to disagree.

Can't you tell from their photo?