Please Hollywood, can we have at least the ocasional African raced scientist or inventor. Are there any films from America with a black genius who is played as an intelectual genius (not a nutty professor played for laughs).
Well, there was the black science teacher in Gremlins but he gets killed off fairly early, so I guess he doesn’t count.
It’s TV and not Hollywood, but Dr. Franklin on Babylon 5, the chief medical officer, was black and a genius. And, for that matter, on Star Trek:TNG, LeVar Burton’s character was supposed to be an expert engineer who could do anything if he inverted the polarity of the phase inducers. 
Askia’s Law strikes again!
Joe Morton as Dr. Miles Dyson in Termintaor II, maybe?
He was a brilliant scientist, though not terribly geeky, IMO.
And played as a very sympathetic character, even though at first you expect not to like him. After all, he helped invent SkyNet & all that…
Panthro in the Thunder Cats was an engineer/techie guy. But he was a purple cat, who’s blackness was rather implicit.
Good one Motorgirl I should have said to leave out Doctors and Lawyers which are starting to become reasonably common.
I suppose Morphius (sp?) from the Matrix trilogy might count, but he seems more Charismatic than genius. I also loved Dr. Franklin from Babylon 5 as a breaker of many steriotypes.
This is stretching a bit (and I mention it only to goad Askia) but Don Cheadle played a demolitions genius in Ocean’s Eleven. Does that count?
No love for Steve Urkle?
No nutty professors played for laughs.
…and no. No love. At all.
In Bruce Almighty, God, who is omniscient, is played by Morgan Freeman. Ha! Got in on a technicality!
That implies that something about Urkel was funny.
The key word being played.
A few years back, there was a very good TV series called “M.A.N.T.I.S.” which starred Carl Lumbly as a brilliant scientist who overcomes a disability with the help of a prosthetic exoskeleton which he invented. The first few episodes of the show had a largely African-American cast, but then they started whitening things up. And then the show, having lost a lot of its zip, was cancelled.
Samuel L. Jackson in Jurassic Park. Not a big part, but fits the OP criteria.
I haven’t see The Core, but wasn’t Delroy Lindo some kind of a genius invincible - subterrianian - tunnel - boring - vehicle builder?
Morgan Freeman also played a physicist in the incredibly lame Chain Reaction.
What geek in a movie isn’t played for laughs? I mean a stereotypical geek, not super hot person who just happens to be good with computers. When I read the title, the first thing I thought of was the guy from “Revenge of the Nerds.” Although I don’t know if he was actually intelligent or not.
Samuel L. also played a violin expert in The Red Violin. While it may not fall under your criteria for scientist or inventor, in the course of the movie he had a lot of scientific tests (acoustics, varnish analysis, etc) done on the violin.
Don Cheadle. BAH.
Part of the problem with these scientist types is that a bunch of them DIE.
Let’s take my boy, Mr. Jackson. He’s Dr. Harry Adams in SPHERE is a mathematical genius and the first to figure out how to open the Sphere. His character was also a globetrotting-scientist-millionaire industrialist of a major scientific research center (who once resorted to cannibalism to survive) in DEEP BLUE SEA. He’s seen trying to keep JURASSIC PARK from falling apart in the eponymous film, and is the Africentric geek who’s damned good at figuring out solutions to brainteasers, word games and puzzles under pressure in DIE HARD 3. He’s a biochemist in the 51st STATE who claims to have created the ultimate designer drug. I have never seen the Triple XXX movies – does he invent those gadgets or just provides them?
The aformentioned father of SkyNet, Dr. Miles Bennet Dyson, is played by Joe Morton in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY.
The incomparable Delroy Lindo plays the inventor Dr. Ed Brazzelton of the Earth core ship in THE CORE and the Harlem numbers runner West Indian Archie with total mathematical recall in MALCOLM X.
Of this group of actors only Lawrence Fishburne played a college professor: in HIGHER LEARNING. Oh wait… James Earl Jones plays a law professor in SOUL MAN.
Offhand I can’t think of any black SCIENTIFIC geeks, like in THE GOONIES mode, played seriously in movies. (I can think of a few artistic/street smart ones, though.)
Carl Lumbly plays the best of them – Dr. Miles Hawkins, who becomes the superhero M.A.N.T.I.S. after fashioning an ex-skeleton to cure his own paralysis in a made for TV movie. The movie rocked – the subsequent TV show that followed dropped a bunch of Africentric elements and was thererafter merely “meh.”