[LM_NET] Race and the US digital divide: a current snapshot

[Andy Carvin <acarvin@EDC.ORG>]

Hi everyone,

Today's New York Times has a feature story on the state of the digital 
divide in relation to African Americans and Latinos, emphasizing the 
progress that's been made in recent years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/us/31divide.html

The article notes recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life 
project that suggests a stunning 79% of English-speaking Latinos have 
Internet access. This inspired me to blog about the issue, examining 
statistics from both Pew and the US Department of Commerce, which has 
tracked at-home Internet access for over a decade.

http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/03/race_and_the_digital.html

Some samples of what I wrote in response to the article:

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.

Read more here:

http://www.andycarvin.com
permalink:
http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/03/race_and_the_digital.html


-- 
------------------------------
Andy Carvin
acarvin (at) edc . org
andycarvin (at) yahoo . com

http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://www.andycarvin.com
------------------------------

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