The digital divide is far more about class than race, they argue, and depicting blacks as hopelessly behind may hurt African-Americans, not help them. Certainly the latest numbers on technology use show that the digital divide cuts many different ways.

Instead of showing a predictable black-white gap, technology research reveals that Asian-Americans, not whites, have the highest Internet and computer use. And while blacks at most income levels lag behind whites and Asians, it’s Latinos, not blacks, who are the least likely to be wired. But no one’s worrying aloud about an Asian-Latino digital divide.

In fact, African-Americans are going online in ever-increasing numbers, boosting their spending on computers and computer-related products by 143 percent in 1999, according to Target Market News. A recent report by the Joint Center for Political Studies found that there’s little difference in Internet usage between upper-middle-class blacks and whites. And at the highest income levels — above $90,000 annually — blacks are more likely to be wired than whites.

“People have legitimate concerns,” says Barry Cooper, the CEO of blackvoices.com. “But if [there] is a divide, it is economic.”

David Ellington, CEO and founder of Netnoir.com, the first major black site on the Web, agrees.

“I don’t feel there is much of a divide anymore,” said Ellington. “The Internet is now becoming relevant in our lives as a result of e-mail and chat sites, and African-Americans are going online in droves.”

So why the agitation about blacks being on the wrong side of the digital divide? Many trace it to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “Falling Through the Net,” which was released in the summer of 1999. The report found that overall, blacks and Latinos were 40 percent less likely to have computer access than whites.

Then a Joint Center report on Internet use broke down the data in more detail (but only for whites and blacks). The overall divide, the center shows, has to do with the larger numbers of African-Americans in poverty. The study showed that 11 percent of African-American households with incomes under $15,000 reported using the Internet at home or work, compared with 23 percent of comparable whites. But the divide closed sharply as incomes climbed. Two-thirds of blacks making between $60,000 and $80,000 use the Internet, roughly the same as whites, while a full 83 percent of those with incomes over $90,000 used the Internet more than whites with comparable incomes.

Still, the rhetoric continues to depict the digital divide as a black-white thing. Vice President Al Gore called it the nation’s “No. 1 civil and economic issue.” And in the wake of the alarmist Commerce Department report, Jesse Jackson met with Silicon Valley execs, and called for action to close the divide, especially more minority appointments on their boards.

President Clinton made the digital divide a main topic in his State of the Union address in January. And a few days later, he unveiled “ClickStart,” a new federal program to subsidize computers and Internet connections for the poor. The program will issue vouchers that poor families can use to purchase the equipment and services they need. But some have called it corporate welfare.

Black technology leaders worry that the emphasis on race in the debate over the digital divide is casting blacks in the proverbial role of victim, when this is far from the truth.

“It (ClickStart) will help to a certain degree to get blacks online, but it can come back to bite us,” said Ellington. He worries it positions blacks “as in need of help, and only through the government can blacks succeed.”

There are 5 million blacks online, and with computer prices dropping to the tune of a little over $500, many of the poorest people are making sacrifices to get computers and online service.

Evidence of the sharp increase in the number of African-Americans online can be seen in the rising number of advocacy and promotional campaigns taking off on the Internet and via e-mail. Many credit the underground success of the film “The Best Man,” starring heartthrobs Taye Diggs and Morris Chestnut, to a virtual campaign that relied heavily on e-mail.

“When we showed the film at Urban World film festival in New York, we told people in the audiences to get the word out by mailings, telephone calls, postcards and e-mail,” said Malcolm Lee, the director of “The Best Man” (and Spike Lee’s cousin). The film earned more than $34 million without any major mainstream media support, and Lee credits a grass-roots e-mail campaign that took off among viewers of his film who wanted to support it.

“I believe that black people have proven that when technology becomes relevant to us, we embrace it,” agrees Ellington. “Just look at the two turntables that helped to create hip-hop.”

It may be hip-hop that ultimately closes what’s left of the digital divide for young African-Americans. A growing number of hip-hop sites have sprung up in the past few years, drawing younger people online to investigate. With more and more original music available online, “hip-hop makes computers relevant to a lot of people,” says Dave (Davey-D) Cooks, the publisher of the Davey-D hip-hop report, and founder of his own Web site.

Cooks thinks blacks need to pay attention to how technology is used, rather than wring their hands about the shrinking digital divide. Asks Cooks: “Do you want to give your power to other people or do you want to take your well-being into your own hands?”

“The officer came into my shop and told me to sign a piece of paper, or he was going to arrest me,” says Reece, who reluctantly signed the ticket, which ordered her to appear in court. She was caught in a hair sting. She was fined $1,000 by the state cosmetology board for violating the law. The Department of Consumer Affairs says that hair braiding in California is illegal unless a practitioner has a cosmetology license, which Reece doesn’t have.

“According to the law, any type of treatment of the hair for pay requires a license,” says Consumer Affairs spokeswoman Nancy Hardaker. But the problem with California’s stance is that braiding isn’t taught in cosmetology school. It isn’t even on the state cosmetology test. Cosmetology licenses require 1,600 hours of schooling and may cost as much as $9,000, of which a hefty share goes to the state cosmetology board.

But hair braiders have argued they should be exempt from the onerous licensing requirements. The politics of hair braiding has reached as far as the California Legislature, emerging as an issue of governmental bureaucracy and regulation vs. cultural tradition. The issues stalled in the legislative process this year, but will be resurrected when the Legislature reconvenes in January.

While the political hoopla may be new, hair braiding is an ancient tradition that can be traced back to Africa and has been handed down from generation to generation. Hair braiding weaves existing hair or fake hair into strands of hair, similar to dreadlocks that can be worn down or in various other styles. Although this process can take hours, black women are attracted to braided hair because it lets them wear their natural hair, and it protects them from chemicals that can damage the texture of African-American hair.

Reece began braiding out of the kitchen of her house when she was in high school, and soon became known as one of the best in the area. Braiding hair is big business, and Reece’s emerging reputation became lucrative. Hair braiders can charge anywhere from $75 to $250 to braid a head. Reece eventually opened two small shops — both called Braids by Sabrina.

As business boomed, she began to attract the attention of women within the black community in L.A. She also attracted the attention of state regulators, culminating in the sting last July for practicing without a cosmetology license.

Cosmetology involves the use of chemicals in hair, which is the primary reason the state licenses cosmetologists. Hair braiders argue that licensing doesn’t make sense for them since they don’t use chemicals.

Hair braiders say that the curriculum for cosmetology schools doesn’t even address braiding, and call it “a waste of time. I went to cosmetology school for 1,600 hours and paid over $6,000 and they didn’t teach one thing about braiding,” says Sheron Campbell, a licensed cosmetologist and owner of World of Braids in Oakland. “I don’t see how the state can enforce something they don’t teach.”

“It is ridiculous that the state is trying to regulate an act of culture,” says Stacy Pyles, director of “Combing Out the Kinks,” a film about hairstyling among black women. “Hair braiding is a cultural bond that is taught between mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces.”

But according to Taalib-din Uqdah of the American Hairbraiders and Natural Hair Care Association (AHNHA), laws regulating hair braiders are prevalent across the country.

“At least 46 states and all the U.S. territories have onerous laws and rules that make criminals out of African-style hair braiders,” says Uqdah, who travels the country fighting hair-braiding legislation.

“These state boards of hair are controlled by a cosmetology cartel that wants to control every aspect of hair.”

Uqdah says the laws create an unnecessary hurdle for African-American entrepreneurs, particularly in the era of welfare reform, with more people moving into the workplace. He called the laws a “restriction (of) the economic freedom of people trying to make use of a valued skill.”

After some intensive lobbying in Sacramento, Uqdah was excited about the possibility of passing legislation that could save hair braiders from the “hair police.” Two bills currently pending in the Legislature would allow hair braiders to work without having to get a cosmetology license.

One of the bills was sponsored by Sen. Ray Haynes, a Republican from Riverside. The other was sponsored by Assemblywoman Carole Migden of San Francisco. Both bills have stalled temporarily in the legislative process.

But a legislative solution may be moot. Last month a U.S. District Court in Southern California found against the state and in favor of Joanne Cornwell, a San Diego braider, who challenged the constitutionality of the cosmetology requirement.

“It is irrational to require Cornwell to comply with the regulatory framework,” the court ruling stated. The federal judge declared that California’s cosmetology laws regarding hair braiders wouldn’t “pass constitutional muster,” and that they rest on grounds “wholly irrelevant to the achievement of the state’s objectives.”

“This ruling is about more than hair braiders,” says Miranda Perry, a staff attorney for the Institute for Justice, a Washington nonprofit law firm that represented Cornwell.

“Approximately 500 occupations have some type of licensing scheme. This ruling is important to all type of entrepreneurs across the country because it makes it harder for the state to pass arbitrary regulations that prevent them from making an honest living.”

Consumer Affairs is pondering its next step. “We got word on the interim decision, and we are reviewing the decision,” says Hardaker.

Hair braiders are also wondering what’s next.

“The ruling nullifies the laws in regards to Joanne Cornwell and people situated like her, but I need to see how it plays out,” says Uqdah.

While the ruling could set legal precedent across the country, as the law stands now, braiding for profit in California is still against the law without a cosmetology license.

“As many crimes that are being committed, it appalls me that they would go to such lengths to set me up the way that they did,” Reece says. “I assume they would rather me strip for a living.”