Salon.com > Lee Hubbard

Is the digital divide a black thing?

Thu, 02 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

On Thursday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson opens a new office in the heavily black city of East Palo Alto, about 30 miles south of here, which will serve as the Silicon Valley headquarters of his new effort to close the so-called digital divide-- the tendency for African-Americans and the poor to lag behind other groups in computer and Internet use.

But an increasingly vocal group of black technology executives say complaints about blacks falling behind may not help African-Americans -- and may not be entirely based in fact.

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.

Dissing the King

Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Martin Luther King Jr. made the ultimate sacrifice to make America a better place. He wanted America to become a "beloved community" where people of all races would be able to get along and live together. But the "dreamer" would have a nightmare if he knew a Web site bearing his name is being run and maintained by Stormfront, a white supremacy group.

While the opening page of martinlutherking.org may look friendly, its content does not highlight the heroic events in King's life -- such as his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott, his famous "I have a dream" speech at the 1963 march on Washington or the Nobel Peace Prize he won. Instead, it aims to debunk King's character, denying his status as an ordained minister, attacking his academic career, spreading tales of his womanizing and his alleged ties to communist groups. It even attacks his name.

"Well friends, he is not a legitimate reverend, he is not a bona fide Ph.D., and his name isn't really 'Martin Luther King Jr.'" reads a section titled "The Truth About Martin Luther King Jr.: Why he fought and who helped in the fight." It goes on to say, "What's left? Just a sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own."

Hair-brained politics

Mon, 13 Sep 1999 12:00:00 +0000

On July 1, 1998, a pair of undercover police officers posing as husband and wife walked into Braids by Sabrina, a small shop in Compton, Calif. After the store's proprietor, 29-year-old hair braider Sabrina Reece, spent five hours braiding the woman's hair, the male officer handed her $150 for his "wife's" new hairstyle.

The woman excused herself to use the bathroom and came back out wearing a jacket emblazoned with POLICE on the back and a pistol on her hip. At first Reece didn't pay her any mind; black policewomen get their hair braided too. But the next thing she knew, a third police officer came barging in from outside the store, barking orders at her.

"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.

Ebonics II

Wed, 13 Jan 1999 20:00:00 +0000

City Councilman Larry Reid calls it "Ebonics II."

Two years after the Ebonics debacle made the Oakland Unified School District a national laughingstock, district leaders announced plans to sponsor a "teach-in" on the case of Pennsylvania death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal. Spearheaded by the teachers union, the teach-in was endorsed by Superintendent Carole Quan and key School Board members. Storm clouds of controversy gathered -- NAACP President Shannon Reeves blasted the plan -- and the district seemed ready to reprise its Ebonics debacle of two years ago.

Then on Sunday, tragedy struck, and it seemed like it might knock sense into district leadership. An Oakland police officer, James Williams Jr., was killed by a sniper, and the city came together in sorrow. New Mayor Jerry Brown renewed his commitment to crime reduction, and Oakland School Board President Noel Gallo asked that the Jamal teach-in be canceled, in respect for the family of Williams (Jamal was convicted for killing a police officer). Even Superintendent Quan agreed the Jamal teach-in should at least be postponed.