Racial Divide Is Growing in Internet Use

A vexing racial divide is developing on the Internet as America’s blacks and Latinos fall further behind whites in accessing the booming global computer network, the government says.

The Commerce Department’s third annual examination of the Internet across the nation found big increases in the number of Americans going online. But the gap between minority and white households using the Internet nearly doubled from a 13 percentage point difference in 1997 to a 20-point gap in 1998, according to the report, titled “Falling Through the Net.”

Officials said differences in income and education and geographical distances hindered minorities who want to use a global network that is fast becoming an essential communication and research tool.

“While we are encouraged by the dramatic growth in the access Americans have to the nation’s information technologies, the growing disparity in access between certain groups and regions is alarming,” Commerce Secretary Bill Daley said.

The Clinton administration, which has made support of the Internet a key component of its domestic policy, pointed to the report as evidence that much remains to be done to help the poor and minorities get online. The obstacles go beyond money, they acknowledged, since the digital divide has persisted despite falling computer prices and an ambitious, 2-year-old, multibillion-dollar federal campaign to wire the nation’s schools and libraries for Internet access.

Larry Irving, who heads the Commerce Department’s national telecommunications and information agency, said that poor blacks and Latinos who live in rural areas and have little education are the least likely to be wired and benefit from the Internet’s information resources.

Indeed, the government’s report paints a much grimmer portrait of Internet use among minorities and the poor than other independent surveys, some of which have extolled the rate at which Latinos in particular are accessing the network. But Irving defended the government’s work, which is based on U.S. Census data, as being more accurate. Some experts agreed.

“I think the report shows that it’s more than about money, wires and e-mail; it’s also about training and development” and encouraging people to see the value of going online, said B. Keith Fulton, director of technology programs and policy at the National Urban League in New York.