::: cyberspacing :::

African Americans are engaging in technical and technological endeavors; however, the current misdirecting and problematizing of digital divide issues focuses on certain uses of technology, while silencing other uses.

It is this silencing of technological uses that concerns me. The perceived invisibility of technological uses may not be made visible within the African American community because of the lack of interest, incentive, technology, or time. I suggest, however, that this invisibility occurs because African Americans are not part of the technology policy-making process, and the language used to describe the policy does not reflect a value-neutral stance. The dominant culture's hierarchical social, political, economic, and educational structures present a cacophony of barriers to knowing. When African Americans become invited recipients and makers of the technological policy-making process, they will become a voiced-presence as advocates for their involvement in technical endeavors.

A few resources from which to ponder the default setting in cyberspace:

• Adisa, Opal Palmer. "I Must Write What I Know So I'll Know That I've Known It All Along." Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women 9.2 (1995): 54-7.
• African Spirituality and Philosophy [http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/africanspirit.html]
• African American Web Connection [http://www.aawc.com/aawc.html]
• Barber, John T., and Alice A. Tait, eds. The Information Society and the Black Community. Westport, CT: Prager, 2001.
• Bell, Derrick. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. New York: Basic, 1987.
• Bell, Derrick. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York: Basic, 1992.
• Canagarajah, A. Suresh. “Safe Houses in the Contact Zone: Coping Strategies of African-American Students in the Academy.” College Composition and Communication 50.1 (1998): 36-53.
• Comfort, Juanita R. “African-American Women's Rhetorics and the Culture of Eurocentric Scholarly Discourse.” Contrastive Rhetoric Revisited and Redefined. Ed. Clayann Gilliam Panetta. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001. 91-104.
• Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York UP, 2001.
• Delpit, Lisa. Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New, 1995.
• Eagleton, Terry. Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso, 1991.
• Fairclough, Norman. Language and Power. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1996.
• Foster, Michele. Black Teachers on Teaching. New York: New, 1997.
• Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
• Frankenburg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 1993.
• Fusco, Coco. English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas. New York: New, 1995.
• Gee, James Paul. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. 2nd ed. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis, 1996.
• Gilyard, Keith, ed. Race, Rhetoric, and Composition. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1999.
• Hodge, Robert and Gunther Kress. Language as Ideology. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1993.
• Hubbard, Lee. “Is the Digital Divide a Black Thing?” Salon 02 Mar. 2000. 04 June 2003. <http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2000/03/02/digital/index.html>.
• James, Joy. Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals. Routledge: New York, 1997.
• James, Joy. “Teaching Theory, Talking Community.” Spirit, Space & Survival: African American Women in (White) Academe. Eds. Joy James and Ruth Farmer. New York: Routledge, 1993. 118-35.
• Knadler, Stephen. "E-Racing difference in E-space: Black female subjectivity and the Web-based portfolio." Computers and Composition 18 (2001): 235-55.
• Ladson-Billings, Gloria. Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
• Ladson-Billings, Gloria. The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.
• Latour, Bruno. Aramis or the Love of Technology. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U P, 1996.
• Lippi-Green, Rosina. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge, 1997.
• Mele, Christopher. “Cyberspace and Disadvantaged Communities: The Internet As a Tool for Collective Action.” Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. New York: Routledge, 1999. 290-310.
• Moss, Beverly J. “Intersections of Race and Class in the Academy.” Coming to Class: Pedagogy and the Social Class of Teachers. Eds. Alan Shepard, John McMillan, and Gary Tate. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1998. 157-69.
• Royster, Jacqueline Jones. "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own." College Composition and Communication 47.1 (1996): 29-40.
• Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin that Talk: Language, Culture, and Education in African America. New York: Routledge, 2000.
• Sterne, Jonathan. “The Computer Race Goes to Class: How Computers in Schools Helped Shape the Racial Topography of the Internet.” Race in Cyberspace. Eds. Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman. New York: Routledge, 2000. 191-212.
• Tatum, Beverly Daniel. "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race: A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity. Rev. ed. New York: Basic, 2003.
• Taylor, Todd. “The Persistence of Difference in Networked Classrooms: Non-Negotiable Difference and the African American Student Body.” Computers and Composition 14 (1997): 169-78.
• Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York, NY: Cambridge UP, 1998.
• Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U P, 1991.

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