Online Communities, African American

The Digital Divide and Identity

People access computers and the Internet in three contexts: at home, at work, and in a public facility. In high-income households of $75,000 or more, blacks are online at rates comparable to their white counterparts. The only general equity for lower-income African Americans is in public access. There are four kinds of public computing centers: government (e.g., in libraries and schools), commercial (e.g., cybercafes and copy centers), community (e.g., churches and community technology centers), and universities. Government and community public computing sites are the most important settings in equalizing Internet access for African Americans.

“Online African-Americans are proportionally more likely than online whites to have searched for information about major life issues such as researching new jobs and finding places to live” (Spooner & Rainie 2000, p. 2). African American women are more likely than men to focus on health and job-related information.

Online racial identities are social constructs, imagined meanings codified into names, related language, and rituals. Stereotypes are translated into “cybertypes,” hence cyberspace is not a utopia free of racism and racial bigotry. On the other hand, cyberspace gives progressive Afrocentric cyberactivists the opportunity to create Web pages promoting their ideology and African American community institutional history.

There is also a difference between the digitization of an actual community and an ad hoc community that is created in cyberspace. Both are social constructs, but one is only digital code (easily changed and manipulated), while the other is based in everyday life.