Blacks closing PC, Net gaps
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Despite impressive gains by black Americans, white
Americans are still more likely to own a home computer, to have access to the Net and to
have used the Web. And at lower income levels, the gap is increasing.
Researchers Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak of Vanderbilt University in Nashville
found in a survey that black families with incomes of $40,000 and up are rapidly closing
in on white levels of PC ownership and use. But for households making less than $40,000 a
year, the gap is widening.
"It's discouraging that as we approach the 21st century, we still have a
significant problem with race and education being the significant primary determination of
who has access to technology," says Larry Irving, an assistant secretary of Commerce.
The study is backed by preliminary findings in a Commerce survey to be released next
month, he says.
Access for all Americans is increasing, but it's increasing more slowly for
blacks. In January 1996, 35.8% of whites had Internet access, compared with 31.7% of
blacks.
By spring of 1998, 49.3% of whites had access, while blacks' access had risen
only to 35.5%.
Home PC ownership is projected to reach 50% among white Americans this year,
while it has stagnated at 29% among black Americans.
That's problematic because "the electronic forum is going to become the
most important forum for democratic discourse, and many people are going to be left
behind," says Barry Forbes of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy in New
York.
One good sign: PC ownership rates are much higher among black families with
students, 53.8%, compared with 25.7% for families without students.
That's not surprising, says Bruce Lincoln of the Institute for Learning
Technology at Columbia University, because black families have historically spent higher
percentages of their income on education.
When there is a computer in the home, black and white students achieve parity in
Net access and Web use.
The Vanderbilt study, based on data collected in a Nielsen/CommerceNet survey in
May and June 1998, can be found online at mitpress.mit.edu/UDE/hoffman-novak.rtf.
Asian-Americans and Native Americans were not included because the sample size
of these groups could not be projected to the U.S. population.
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