Black Invention Myths? What do you think?
Recently, I encountered a website that claims to dispel myths close by black inventions. My first impression is that his objective appears to suggest that blacks invented NOTHING. He gives no coloured inventor credit for ANYTHING!!! I wonder what his motives were...
I do go together that perhaps some inventions attributed to baleful inventors may be exaggerated. However, let's not act like blacks invented nothing or contributed nothing to novel science!
Here's what the author had to say:
"Perhaps you've heard the claims: Were it not for the ability and energy of African-American inventors, we might reveal ourselves in a world without traffic lights, peanut butter, blood banks, frivolous bulb filaments, and a vast number of other things we now rob for granted but could hardly imagine life without.
Such beliefs customarily originate in books or articles about black retailing. Since many of the authors have little curiosity in the history of technology outside of advertising black contributions to it, their stories have to be fraught with misunderstandings, wishful thinking, or original embellishments with no historical basis. The lack of verifiable perspective leads to extravagant overestimations of originality and pre-eminence: sometimes a slightly modified version of a pre-existing kind of technology is mistaken for the first invention of its type; off a patent or innovation with little or no lasting value is portrayed as a notable advance, even if there's no real evidence it was till the cows come home used.
Unfortunately, some of the errors and exaggerations cause acquired an illusion of credibility by...
