Africana.Com Is Gone

Africana Dot Com was started by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Harry M. Lasker III, on Dr. King's birthday, January 1999, to, in their own words, "[to be dedicated to] providing authoritative content about black people throughout the world and, thereby, helping bridge the digital divide." A few months ago, Africana.Com was bought out by Time Warner, which is owned by AOL. 

Since that time, a number of Black observers of the media have considered and commented on when Time Warner would kill the Black focus of this Black web portal. Well, just look at Africana.com now. It adds nothing of significance to Black web dialog. It, in short, has become AOL—white, as we knew it would do. 

But this changeover has come much more quickly than we had suspected it would come. Usually, the big conglomerates operate as Viacom did with BET—they keep important figure-heads on for a year or two to guide the metamorphosis and to justify/rationalize the changes in the name of Black progressiveness. 

But Time Warner would have none of that. They have taken Africana.com straight into Whiteness and have sifted the Blackness out of it, even as one sifts wheat. This seemingly is the wave of many web portals that speak to Black issues. 

A writer who interviewed Bob Johnson, founder of BET, stated that Mr. Johnson [a billionaire through the selling of BET Holdings to Viacom and the spin-off airline he received] is first of all a businessman interested in procuring and amassing capital. That also seems to be true for Dr. Gates and his co-founders at Africana.com. 

The year is only half over; let’s see what the balance will bring for consolidations and takeovers on the Black web front. []