The Joys And Dangers Of Love On The Internet - includes rules for online dating

Ebony, Feb, 2000 by Kelly Starling

Michael Brown, founder of Blacksingles.com, says he is amazed by the spectacular growth of the site he started in May 1998. Already, Brown has 20,000 registered members who answer questionnaires and post profiles in search of their perfect mate. Still, despite its popularity among some African-Americans, other Blacks worry about the type of people they'll find on-line. When he encouraged a colleague, Dinah Morrison-James, to give it a try, the Georgia woman was skeptical.

"He kept telling me, `Dinah, there are some interesting guys on the site--doctors, lawyers, engineers,'" she says. "I though it was a scary venture, so I kept saying, `No.' Finally, be convinced me to place an ad using a handle--Acirfa (an anagram of Africa). I put down that I like jazz, good food, fine music and thought-provoking conversation and waited."

Morrison-James says she received about 12 responses from Black professionals--a writer, teacher, businessman and engineer among them. She says while you must use caution when meeting people on the Internet, fears about meeting pedophiles and stalkers are mostly unfounded.

"You have to be careful," says the 41-year-old mother of two girls. "I wouldn't give out my identity or my phone number fight away. Take it slowly and chat with them for a while and get a sense of their personality and their true self."

Morrison-James corresponded with Melanin Man, Toronto engineer Paul James, for three months before they met when he relocated to Atlanta in search of better job opportunities. Before that time. they had not spoken on the phone or even exchanged photos. In fact, Morrison-James canceled their first date at the advice of friends who worried for her safety. But when they finally met at an Atlanta bistro, the network administrator says she was smitten.

"When we first met, there was this incredible realization that we're finally here," says Paul James, a 38-year-old England native and father of two boys. "We got over the awkwardness in about 20 minutes and were conversing as easily as we had on-line. After that first meeting, I soon realized that I wanted to see her again soon and this was something special."

The couple moved to Stone Mountain, Ga., and married in September. Though not all people on-line are the marrying kind, most are a mix of people you encounter every day.

"They tend to be the same people we see in our offices and in our social clubs," says Cooper. "Some are hard bodies; some are pleasingly plump. Some are handsome; some are not so handsome. When this all started, a lot of Blacks feared finding some maniac with an eye in the middle of his forehead. Although the Internet is not nirvana, we've found by and large that men and women on-line are nice people who only want to meet people of like interests."

The demographics of the typical BlackVoices.com user are telling. Six of every 10 of Cooper's members are women. More than 80 percent attended college. They range between the ages of 25 to 55. "They are affluent and well-educated and it lot of them feel that a man who is on the Interact is at least moving in the right direction," he says.