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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
As Jesse Jackson opens his Silicon Valley office, some black tech execs say the issue is class, not race.
Mar 2, 2000 | On Thursday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson opens a new office in the heavily black city of East Palo Alto, about 30 miles south of here, which will serve as the Silicon Valley headquarters of his new effort to close the so-called digital divide-- the tendency for African-Americans and the poor to lag behind other groups in computer and Internet use.
But an increasingly vocal group of black technology executives say complaints about blacks falling behind may not help African-Americans -- and may not be entirely based in fact.
The digital divide is far more about class than race, they argue, and depicting blacks as hopelessly behind may hurt African-Americans, not help them. Certainly the latest numbers on technology use show that the digital divide cuts many different ways.
Instead of showing a predictable black-white gap, technology research reveals that Asian-Americans, not whites, have the highest Internet and computer use. And while blacks at most income levels lag behind whites and Asians, it's Latinos, not blacks, who are the least likely to be wired. But no one's worrying aloud about an Asian-Latino digital divide.
In fact, African-Americans are going online in ever-increasing numbers, boosting their spending on computers and computer-related products by 143 percent in 1999, according to Target Market News. A recent report by the Joint Center for Political Studies found that there's little difference in Internet usage between upper-middle-class blacks and whites. And at the highest income levels -- above $90,000 annually -- blacks are more likely to be wired than whites.
"People have legitimate concerns," says Barry Cooper, the CEO of blackvoices.com. "But if [there] is a divide, it is economic."
David Ellington, CEO and founder of Netnoir.com, the first major black site on the Web, agrees.
"I don't feel there is much of a divide anymore," said Ellington. "The Internet is now becoming relevant in our lives as a result of e-mail and chat sites, and African-Americans are going online in droves."
