« Post-Game Summary of My Appearance on Radio Open Source | Main | Talkr: Creating Audio Podcasts of Your Text Blog Entries »
March 31, 2006
Race and the Digital Divide: A Current Snapshot
Today's New York Times features an article about the rapid pace of blacks and Latinos bridging the digital divide. The article paints a picture that minorities have made enormous progress in terms of gaining Internet access in recent years.
Studies and mounting anecdotal evidence now suggest that blacks, even some of those at the lower end of the economic scale, are making significant gains. As a result, organizations that serve African-Americans, as well as companies seeking their business, are increasingly turning to the Internet to reach out to them."What digital divide?" Magic Johnson, the basketball legend, asked rhetorically in an interview about his new Internet campaign deal with the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln Mercury division to use the Internet to promote cars to black prospective buyers.
The sharpest growth in Internet access and use is among young people. But blacks and other members of minorities of various ages are also merging onto the digital information highway as never before.
According to a Pew national survey of people 18 and older, completed in February, 74 percent of whites go online, 61 percent of African-Americans do and 80 percent of English-speaking Hispanic-Americans report using the Internet. The survey did not look at non-English-speaking Hispanics, who some experts believe are not gaining access to the Internet in large numbers.
The article goes on to note that the statistics shouldn't necessarily be taken as totally rosy, offering quotes from the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and myself:
Vicky Rideout, vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which has studied Internet use by race, ethnicity and age, cautioned that a new dimension of the digital divide might be opening because groups that were newer to the Internet tended to use less-advanced hardware and had slower connection speeds."The type and meaningful quality of access is, in some ways, a more challenging divide that remains," Ms. Rideout said. "This has an impact on things like homework."
In addition, Internet access solely at institutions can put students at a disadvantage. Schools and other institutions seldom operate round the clock, seven days a week, which is especially an issue for students, said Andy Carvin, coordinator for the Digital Divide Network, an international group that seeks to close the gap.
As I note above, the article mentions recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that suggests a surge of access, particularly by Latinos. According to their data, a whopping 79% of English-speaking Latinos access the Internet, beating out African Americans and whites - and perhaps even the Nordic countries, which generally have the highest Internet access rates in the world. However, it's worth noting that this 79% represents English-speaking Latinos only. According to the US Census Bureau, there are around 41.3 million Latinos in the US. Of these, nearly 14 million don't speak English well or at all. It's vital we collect better statistics about this community; otherwise, policymakers and philanthropists might hear a soundbyte that says four out of five Latinos are online and assume the problem is solved. Unless we address those who are most marginalized in our society - those that don't speak English - we're not tackling the problem adequately.
Moreover, it's worth noting that the Pew data looks broadly at Internet access, asking respondents if they use the Internet at all, whether at home, school, work or elsewhere. These numbers are generally higher than the numbers of people who have Internet access at home. The US Department of Commerce's NTIA office has collected digital divide data for over a decade. In their surveys, the most recent of which was almost three years ago, they researched the percentages of households that had Internet access. According to their data, white households were far and away more likely to be online than African Americans or Latinos. For much of the 1990s, Latinos fared better than African Americans, but that pattern appeared to reverse in the year 2000, when African Americans surpassed Latinos.
Why does any of this matter? As I suggested in the NY Times story, people may have Internet access, but if it's not at home, that access may be inadequate. Nearly 100% of US schools are online today, which would suggest that nearly all students would at some point or another have Internet access. But if some of them don't have access at home, they're at a severe disadvantaged when compared to their wired peers. Access through libraries and community technology centers are very important, but they don't solve all our problems, given the fact they tend to have limited operating hours and limited capacity. Some libraries are only open one or two days a week, and for a few hours at a time; imagine asking every kid in that community without home Internet access to complete an online course using such limited infrastructure.
So is it possible that nearly 80% of English-speaking Latinos are online? I have immense respect for the folks at Pew, and they don't have a political axe to grind, so I'm inclined to give them the benefit of a doubt. I'm still scratching my head a bit, but they're the statiticians and I'm not. However, it's still important to take into account the value of at-home Internet access, not to mention issues such as literacy, computer skills and the availability of high-quality, cuturally relevant content. Meanwhile, with each new technological leap, we're facing another digital divide, whether it's the broadband divide, the wifi divide, what have you. As long as there are socioeconomic divisions in our society, there will always be haves and have-nots - and the have-nots are the last to get the latest gear and benefit from it.
A note to Magic Johnson, in case he's reading this: You used to be an activist for bridging the digital divide, and now you're saying "What digital divide?" I'd be curious to know what changed your mind. -andy
Posted by acarvin at March 31, 2006 3:16 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
