Digital Divides, Ethnicity and

Whereas some digital divides (e.g., gender in the United States) have significantly narrowed and even reversed since the 1990s, those attributable [Page 204]to racial and ethnic group membership persist. Within the United States, early adopters of the Internet were predominantly White. Although various analyses of data collected from about 2007 to 2013 show that racial and ethnic minority groups have gained Internet access, they still fall behind Whites.

Studies of racial and ethnic minorities within the United States largely focus on Blacks and Latinos in comparison to Whites. When respondents from other races or ethnicities are available, they may be grouped into an “Other” category because they constitute a comparatively smaller proportion of the respondents in a study. This means that there is relatively little information ...