Some good news from the New York Times:
African-Americans are steadily gaining access to and ease with the Internet, signaling a remarkable closing of the “digital divide” that many experts had worried would be a crippling disadvantage in achieving success.
Civil rights leaders, educators and national policy makers warned for years that the Internet was bypassing blacks and some Hispanics as whites and Asian-Americans were rapidly increasing their use of it.
But the falling price of laptops, more computers in public schools and libraries and the newest generation of cellphones and hand-held devices that connect to the Internet have all contributed to closing the divide, Internet experts say.
Good news, indeed.
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I’m glad that the digital divide for minorities is closing. My fear, however, is that these sorts of proclamations will lead everyone to believe that the digital divide is dead in the US. I’ve heard very little about the proliferation of computers and/or internet access for the rural poor, especially those in Appalachia, where I live and work. I just hope that this population doesn’t fall through the cracks as it has so many times before.
Laura