A RETURN TO "SEPARATE BUT EQUAL"?

Read about this new web browser:

For African-American Web surfers who just can't relate to their browsers, there's hope: the Blackbird Web browser.

Billed as "the Web browser for the African-American community," it's a modification of Mozilla Firefox with a different color scheme — black and earthy shades of green and brown — as well as certain built-in features meant to appeal to black Americans.

These include "Black Search," which brings up results tailored to what its backers assume are African-American interests; "Black News Ticker," which does more of the same; and "Blackbird TV," which is "the best of Black video on the Web."

"We believe that the Blackbird application can make it easier to find African American related content on the Internet and to interact with other members of the African American community online by sharing stories, news, comments and videos via Blackbird," reads a press release posted by 40A, the somewhat mysterious firm behind the browser, on the CrunchBase Web site.

Downloads (for Windows XP and Vista only) are free; the project claims to be funded by ads and targeted links.

Reaction from black bloggers, tech writers and commenters has been, shall we say, a bit mixed....

I am at a loss for a printable comment to this one.