Learning Race & Ethnicity

Three of the main themes in the articles contained in Learning Race & Ethnicity seem to be access, advocacy, and action.

The initial point is who does or does not have access to online media and how is the access being controlled and/or used? This is the discussion of the "information technology divide" and in this book it breaks down around racial lines. However, in the real world I think there is a multiple divide that the book does not indicate except briefly. While racial/ethnic division is truly there, I think that an even bigger divide is poverty. If  you can't afford a comfortable, safe place to live, you certainly don't have a computer and a broadband link. This is particularly true of rural poor who are cut off from many alternatives to access like schools with computer labs, public libraries, and community centers. I taught in a primarily white, rural college spin-off campus in Michigan that was also affiliated with a primarily black, inner city Flint campus. My rural students had more trouble accessing the Internet than my Flint students because they did not have as much access to public sites and they also were more likely to have access only to dial-up Internet than broadband, which limited their internet use. They were also technically less savvy than my Flint students because most of the Flint students were younger, traditional aged students and my rural students were older, non-traditional women. So, I think access has to be thought of as a grid rather than a binary. Access is not just controlled by race & ethnicity, but also by age, gender, and geography.

How can a level playing field be developed? First, public computers in libraries and community centers that serve other than K-8 users should be unfiltered. The American Library Association (ALA) weighed in on this several years ago when they argued against using filters in public library computers. http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/iftoolkits/litoolkit/librariesinternetfiltering.cfm  The second point is that home users need access to cheap and efficient broadband. The ALA has also discussed this: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/telecom/index.cfm  Clinton and Obama have both encouraged this, but it is still far from a reality. One way universal broadband could be accomplished is to take a page from the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 http://www.answers.com/topic/rural-electrification-act that forced electric companies to wire less profitable rural areas. True, wireless is available for a price from companies like Sprint or AT&T, but the cost is still prohibitive for the rural poor, so broadband access may need to be treated like any other needed utility to make sure everyone has equal access.

As universal access is created, we can now go ahead and talk about race & ethnicity. This is really more about the second point, advocacy, rather than access. The question is not who gets access but rather what  people do with it once they get it. This is what the chapters in the book are really discussing. Byrne argues that the social sites related to Blacks, Asians, and Latino/as are more involved in defining who belongs in a community rather than taking any action to unite a community for action. "What is rarely heard or seen in seven years' worth of observations is the sense that 'something can be done' to counter the various hegemonic control participants encounter offline" (p 32). This lack of organizing for action is also observed in another article. Daniels notes that most of the white supremacist sites are more about providing information than about organizing (a good thing!); although they do engage in cyberbullying. His discussion of leaders, members, supporters, and lurkers (p 144-45) helps explain this lack of action. In the face-to-face real world, people tend to be more easily coerced or inspired to take action. But the Internet allows for much more passivity than RL. It is easy to stay in the background and say little or nothing and make little commitment. This may have to do with the voyeuristic nature of the medium itself. One can't really be a rebel sitting at home in pajamas at a computer keyboard. In a way, the pseudo activity of being online makes people less likely to take action in the RL because they think they are already acting just by being online. 

The value in online interaction is that it can be used to engender action in RL. Guins and Sandoval and Latorre discuss moving out of the purely online world. Guins' description of the "hip-hop mogul" and the triangle of artist-activist-entrepeneur moves outside the relm of the Internet into reading lists, merchandise, and changing the dominent culture. Paris' quote, "that you don't have any business being a rapper if you can't talk to me about anything other than hip-hop" (p 76) takes the online dialogue outside of the site and into the community. Sandoval and Latorre's article about Judy Baca's work with LA youth moves even farther outside of the web. The art is not on FB "walls" but on RL walls. Baca takes the RL gang tats and grafitti, moves it through the web culture and brings it back to the streets transformed.

The transformation, however, has to be transparent. This is where responsibility comes in. Everett quotes Gaskins in the first page of her book: "The Digital Divide is not just about putting free computers in the hands  of the underserved. It's about helping people empower themselves using technology" (p 1). Young people may be better at utilizing the technology, but they also need to be taught ways to analyze the information that comes to them through the Internet. This is brought out very well in Daniel's discussion of "cloaked" websites. I was interested in seeing his examples of the two MLK sites. I have used both of these sites in teaching Internet research to my writing classes. There is a useful site from a university library that I've used in the past to explain to my students that everything they see online is not true or free of hidden motives. (The link is in my "links" section.) This is the same lesson I have always taught my research students about books, periodicals, and first sources. What is on the surface may not be the whole message. It bears repeating even more in the age of self publishing on the net.

The best thing about the Internet is that it is the closest to a true information democracy that we have come since the written word. Everybody with access to a computer can join in the conversation. There are virtually no censors and no holds barred. The bad side is that as information consumers we have to become more selective and more wary. This includes looking for underlying messages from the dominant culture, malicious fallacies, and outright stupidities. Becoming an intelligent and educated information consumer isn't easy, but it is a good problem.