Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Notable black innovators, inventors and scientists


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was keep and move to List of black inventors and scientists. Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Notable black innovators, inventors and scientists

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Unprecedented list, overall pointless. Wikipedia isn't like a Middle School Black History Month powerpoint presentation. There is nothing *unique* about being Black and being one of these things so a separate article like this is just plain ridiculous. Categories already exist for any relevance here anyway. Usedup 04:06, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep Delete (see the explanation of my change below); unless you want to go after List of Inventors; there is a solid argument at this juncture for a question of WP:POINT. --Mhking 04:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, list of inventors has precedent and reason. It is an occupation like list of physicists or list of film directors. There is no Notable white innovators, inventors and scientists or Notable Hispanic innovators, inventors and scientists because categorization this by race is pretty much overcategorization. There is absolutely no viable comparison between the two. Usedup 04:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment; if you can make a valid case (yes, I realize that is subjective, but bear with me) for removing other List of (Insert Hyphenated Nationality-de jour here) inventors, film directors, scientists, dog catchers, et.al., then I will reconsider my keep vote -- as long as we are being truly even-handed about it. I apologize for my accusation of WP:POINT. --Mhking 14:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, so what argument would persuade you to get rid of this list? I don't know what else I could say to get my point across. Why are lists so necessary? What does this list do that a ethnicity category couldn't? Usedup 01:02, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - Category? Okay. That works for me. I see Category:African American inventors already (which I didn't see previously. Based on that -- and the insistence that other similar lists be transferred to categories, I'll change my vote. --Mhking 03:04, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. What about List of Jewish actors and actresses? Not to mention List of Jewish inventors. -- TedFrank 04:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Try to avoid WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS please. You give no reason for keeping this list, and mass nominations are generally discouraged. Usedup 05:30, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh please! Mass nominations are discouraged?  The good folks trying to kill this list are mass nominating every ethnic list.  See, Articles for deletion/List of Chinese Americans. StudierMalMarburg 22:16, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * OK but I choose not to mass nominate because then it leaves the option open for "keeping" based on that. Usedup 14:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - Encyclopedic content. Article might just help one day with someone's middle school Black History Month Powerpoint presentation.  ◄    Zahakiel    ►   04:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - while I'm still undecided in re: Keep/Delete, I do feel it's important to bring up WP:USEFUL --Action Jackson IV 05:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - I am aware of said essay (not policy or guideline); my reason for voting keep is because of "encyclopedic content." That it also happens to be potentially useful is a contributing factor, but not the main rationale. That being said, I would be in favor of a rename to "List of black inventors" per various comments below.   ◄    Zahakiel    ►   07:16, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment Well, this page isn't very well done, for one thing, I think the name choice is poor. But since Category:Inventors by nationality does exist, I'd say there's no inherent objection to identifying people by race or ethnicity as appropriate. But this page is poorly doing it. I don't know if List of Black Inventors or List of African-American Inventors or what would be the better name to work with though. FrozenPurpleCube 05:21, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - if kept, the article needs to be renamed to remove the words "notable" and "innovators." The former is redundant (anyone with a Wikipedia article has to be notable) and the latter is not objectively definable. Otto4711 05:02, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. I personally think that it is more or less identical to List of Jewish actors and actresses and List of Jewish inventors. Comment on deleting: even if this is to be deleted, it must be done in a professional way, lest we got flagged by NAACP on this. This is a dangerous territory, best to keep it. George Leung 05:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep and move to List of black innovators, inventors, and scientists; might as well bring into line with aforementioned Jewish list(s). --Merovingian ※ Talk 05:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Fear of being "racy" is not a valid reason to keep a list. This, plus vote stackers, is the reason lists like this haven't been deleted yet. Usedup 05:31, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. I personally am leaning towards deletition, though the easiest way to express my reasoning is a reverse violation of WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS (WP:OTHERCRAPDOESN'TEXIST), and as such, I feel it's best to hold off on voting for now. I also think that articles / sections / lists like these are just begging for "counter-article-section-lists" - that is, Notable white innovators, inventors, and scientists. I think it's important to come to some form of consensus on what would happen to such an article, before acting on this one. That said, one statement that I definitely feel strong enough about to bold is, If kept, rename per Otto4711's statement. --Action Jackson IV 05:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment also, it seems the List of Jewish _____ is being thrown around. I will say that there's several distinctions between being "Jewish" and being "Black" - two of which would be the ease of figuring out if someone is black (generally, and yes, there are exceptions), versus the relative difficulty of determining, from sight alone, whether someone is Jewish or not. Additionally, Judiasm is a religious choice. While we can bicker this way and that about determinalism and whether or not people actually "choose" their religion, it all comes down to the fact that it's a lot easier for me to pretend to be a goyim than it was for Michael Jackson to pretend to have light skin. --Action Jackson IV 05:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It's amazing how easily most of these "keeps" were influenced by the fear that deleting this list would be controversial. While List of African Americans which is COMPLETELY precedented will likely get deleted anyway for other reasons..which gives off a way bigger tinge or racism. I wish everyone could just vote on the worth of the article and not on the "social statements" it makes or doesn't make. Usedup 05:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Good call. --Action Jackson IV 05:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Please assume good faith, both of you. My keep vote was influenced by no such thing, nor can the determination be made that "most" of the above were.  I made the comments I did above knowing full well this could turn into a "hot" issue; nevertheless I voted what I believe to be the proper call regarding this particular entry.   ◄    Zahakiel    ►   07:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm just saying I think most of the keeps wouldn't be keeps if it was a different subject matter. Not necessarily that you didn't think this through. Usedup 23:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - upon further review, this would make a better category than an article. The article does seem rather subjective, "notable" is bullshit and "innovators" is worse. Innovators? Why isn't Michael Jordan on there? What about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, inventor of the sky hook? What about Jesse Jackson and his many political campaigning innovations? What about, what about, etc, etc - anyway. Category:African_American_inventors already exists, I see no need for this article. --Action Jackson IV 05:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, we already have Category:African American inventors for this topic, making this list unnecessary. All persons with an article on Wikipedia are already "notable," making that superfluous, and "innovators" and "scientists" is far too broad. Krimpet 06:03, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep A common way of organizing biographies:, . Move to List of black scientists and inventors, dropping innovators as too broad. If scientists ends up being too broad then the article can be moved to List of black inventors.&mdash;eric 06:18, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. As noted by eric above, race-occupation and/or nationality-occupation classifications are quite common and themselves rather intuitive.  The suggested reasons for deletion of "pointless"ness and lack of "unique"ness are subjective and incorrect (or at best, irrelevant).  Articles on Wikipedia need not be "unique" and the fact that dual classifications by race and occupation outside of WP exist attests to the fact that they are not pointless.  That being said, rename to List of black inventors or List of black inventors and scientists per above. -- Black Falcon 06:49, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep but split into List of African American inventors and List of African American scientists. They aren't nearly the same thing. This would fit existing categories better, as well. -- Dhartung | Talk 08:10, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep and rename per above, using "African American" as the adjective since everyone in the list is an African American. The list can provide additional information not found in the category. Note that Category:African American scientists was deleted at Categories for discussion/Log/2007 February 1. The fact that the category exists is not a good argument, but as eric demonstrated above, these fields are notable. –Pomte 09:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - But I agree that this article needs a lot of work and that it needs to be expanded and renamed. The list is far to short and far from comprehensive. "African American" might make more sense for the time being. At some point a "lists of lists" should come in to being. futurebird 11:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete the black/white issue isn't a relevant world view, race is alway debatable, soon enough we are going to see actors that are 1/4 this and painters that are 5/8 that. besides, don't we have categories to provide, hmmmmm, categorization? why the manually updated lists? they are just meant to fall out of date  if not manually kept. Is the person  relevant because he was an inventor? yes.  did his race contribute to that relevance? I think not. and about the other lists, all the other lists, the same applies. if someone realy needs this information, i'm sure using google to search through the site will provide the same result. i'd also like to add that Claude Steele, who is on that list is not even described in his own article as black, but is categorized as such. Galf 12:30, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. I have no opinion on the actual list, but should point out that just because Claude Steele's article doesn't say he is black doesn't mean that he isn't. Other famous African Americans aren't direclty identified as such in their articles (Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson). And at least for the 19th century scientists, their race did contribute to their notability, considering nearly all college and universities in the US were segregated at that time, as were most professional organizations. I would say that becoming a scientist when denied most opportunities to do so is pretty notable. Natalie 19:30, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep and probably rename per eric's rationale. A recent query at one of the reference desks showed that there are readers who might be looking for a compilation of this kind. ---Sluzzelin talk  13:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete because as an European scientist I fail to see the purpose in the American obsession to divide everything into 'black' and 'white'. If it is renamed with 'African American' in the name obviously even scientists from African countries couldn't be listed (and they I would have thought make up the majority of 'black scientists'). But then at least it would be clear that this list is for Americans to divide themselves. Optimale  Gu 13:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Well, as a European scientist you might be particularly unsuited to comment rashly in this discussion because it neither involves your culture nor your expertise in science. And yet you have no compunctions about saying that it's "clear that this list is for Americans to divide themselves." You might want to be a bit more hesitant about assigning motives to people in other cultures not your own. You might also want to refamiliarize yourself with the Wikipedia principle of "assume good faith." As someone from a continent where ethnic tensions in almost every nation from the Atlantic to the Urals are higher than in America, you might want to treat your self-description more as a humble caveat than a credential. Let me educate you: For those of us in a culture where there are many ethnic groups at different levels of social and ethnic power, and where there is a history of those levels constantly changing over time, these lists perform both a practical and emotional purpose: practical in that they can be used by both middle-school students researching reports and graduate students or researchers studying ethnicity; emotional in that particular career fields have widely varying proportions of ethnic groups and it is often useful to people considering entering those fields to find out about the prominent people from that person's ethnic group who have gone before them. Ethnic organizations often refer to members of their groups who have succeeded in various fields, and one purpose of this is to discourage bigotry from outsiders who have said, in the past, that members of such-and-such a group can't do a particular job. It's not as important, but worth noting that it also happens to be verifiably true that certain ethnic groups, for cultural reasons, often predominate in one field or another for a period of time. That is also useful to study, and these lists might possibly help in that in some way. Particularly among ethnic groups where many people live in impoverished neighborhoods, it has been thought useful for children to know about people from that group who have been successful because despair and discouragement can smother ambition. Most of what I've just written are familiar points to most Americans, whether they agree with them or not. I encourage you to bring up the topic with an American, but when you do, try not to seem presumptuous. Noroton 16:58, 11 March 2007 (UTC) (just edited a few words, no change in meaning Noroton 17:02, 11 March 2007 (UTC))


 * Keep - As for those complaining that ethnic and occupation categories don't exist elsewhere (except for jewish), the discussion at Articles for deletion/List of Chinese Americans seems to imply that these lists should, as it makes lists of people by ethnicity less broad and more WP:USEFUL. Depending on what happens to the other lists at that AfD, there may soon be such lists for various ethnicities. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:04, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep and listify according to above renaming proposals. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:29, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete This could be taken care of by a category rather than its own article. Arx Fortis 17:49, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * rename into "African American" SecurID 19:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep for reasons given in my comment to Optimale, above. Noroton 17:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep I simply do not understand the current fervor to attack and delete ethnic lists. There's a disturbing xenophobic undertone to all this. StudierMalMarburg 14:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I wish you would read the reasons why these lists are being deleted before just assuming we're deleting them because we're "xenophobic" white people. Usedup 20:27, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I did read the reasons, I just don't buy it. After all, why are only American ethnic groups targeted?  Why not go after all these listings as well Lists of people by nationality?  After all, by the logic being used here, they too should be deleted.  All I'm saying is that this bandwagon got started because some provocateur created a "List of Caucasian Americans" for no reason other than to get it deleted so he could use it as justification to start the process of deleting ethnic lists.  So regardless of the arguments presented to argue for deletion, I do think, if one looks closely enough, this is being fueled by xenophobes who don't like to see the accomplishments of ethnic minorities listed or highlighted in any way. StudierMalMarburg 22:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you think that the 'provocateur' who created this article did it for the purpose of creating a bandwagon? Or do you think that they don't like to see the accomplishments of Caucasian Americans listed or highlighted in any way? Cloveoil 23:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, StudierMalMarburg makes a valid point about the "List of Caucasian Americans" -- it received over 100 edits by dozens of contributors within hours of being created (over 40 by 8 editors within 20-something minutes). I strongly suspect that list was created only to present a WP:POINT.  -- Black Falcon 06:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Which is? Cloveoil 02:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Encyclopedic, notable topic, subject of multiple sources.--Vsion 07:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Category seems unnecessary (no lists of inventors of other races.) Captain panda   In   vino   veritas  02:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep notable and encyclopediac list.--Sefringle 04:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: There are no List of Asian innovators, inventors, and scientists or List of Caucasian innovators, inventors, and scientists. We separate this by nationality, not race. Why is being black such an exception to this that it merits another list? Nobody has addressed that Usedup 05:24, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Probably for the same reason that there is no article for Music of Caucasian Origin Awards. Cloveoil 13:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Reply. Race (and by extension ethnicity) is highlighted in this case because it is, at least in the United States, a more salient dimension of social and political cleavage than nationality.  -- Black Falcon 20:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.