I'm spending a lot of my internet time these days at forums, chatrooms, message boards, etc., converned with the very slow and difficult recovery of my city, New Orleans, from the levee failures of August '05.

One of the things I really like about our evolving on-line communities is that, in many cases, you don't know (and don't need to know) who's black and who's white. Indeed, there are some familiar correspondents (who use "handles" or pseudonyms rather than their names) whose gender I'm not even sure of.

You can certainly tell who is a homeowner and who is not, who is living back in town and who's still stuck in exile somewhere, and of course it's easy to see who's articulate and presumably educated and who has difficulty expressing themselves. Most of the people seem to me to be "pretty much just like me," which I might mistakenly assume would include being Caucasian. But I know that at least half of these neighbors are African-American.

The city was 67% black before the storm, including very many educated middle-class homeowner types, so ~ even allowing for the difference of racial representation among income groups, differences in computer access and interest, etc. ~ about half of us who find ourselves in this crazy situation are statistically likely to be black. The folks I meet in person these days at various civic meetings belong to all races, too. Of course, in person, I can't help but see how "dark" a given individual may or may not be. When we "meet" on the internet, on the other hand, pigmentation is not an issue at all, except when specifically under discussion.

Race-related topics do occasionally arise, of course, but when the subject at hand is corruption, broken promises, or on the other hand praise and thanks for volunteer help, etc., etc., etc., it is VERY nice to exist and communicate in a "world" that is truly color-blind.