Blacks and the Internet: Power Resides in Interconnectivity
As the euphoria of the dot-com boom fades and investors settle into more traditional businesses, the importance of the Internet as the fastest "highway" to information, entertainment, cultural connections and sales continues to soar. Even staid old Wall Street firms have hefty budgets for updated, interactive and user-friendly Web sites that promote their services. Against this backdrop, a whole new genre of Web sites has appeared to connect people by culture. Web sites catering to African-Americans are proliferating, but many of them are neither black owned nor black operated. America Online, for example, recently set up Black Focus, offering content and information from an African-American perspective. Even so, the number of African-Americans shopping on the Internet remains relatively low and many non-African-American companies are rushing to build sites that they hope will lead to greater use of the Internet among blacks. Blackplanet.com is a case in point.
"We are catching up rapidly, but our problem has to do with education and economics," says Omar Wasow, the New York-based executive director of Blackplanet.com. "To many of us, buying a computer is still not considered relevant or important." Blackplanet.com boasts over 9 million registered members who, in addition to receiving information on job opportunities and education, interact socially through the Web site. "The heart of our site is to make connections," says Wasow. "It's to bring people together to talk as if they were at a dinner party."
BlackPlanet.com is owned by Community Connect Inc., which also owns MiGente.com and AsianAvenue.com. Black web site owners are trying to keep pace with the competition for African-American users. Keenan Davis, who agrees that blacks lag behind other ethnic groups in Internet connectedness, argues that finances are not entirely to blame. "Our digital divide is not about money, given that our youth can spend $300 on sneakers, jewelry and clothes," says the CEO of Unorthodoks Marketing, a New York firm that advises companies on how to attract African-Americans to their Web sites. "They have not yet discovered the impact that having a computer [within] arm's reach will add to their lives. Having a computer at home opens a multitude of avenues to get information on whatever you are interested in," he says.
Davis notes that there are only 12 million blacks online out of a population of more than 30 million. Blacks, as a group, have a spending power of almost $700 million. However, although the most recent U.S. census counts Latinos as the biggest minority, that tally includes Latinos who consider themselves black. In other words, the overall black population and buying power are higher than reported, Davis points out.
A survey commissioned by AOL provides insight into how African-Americans use the Internet. It shows that most African-Americans read online ads and that 46 percent of those who do find these ads informative, compared with 26 percent for the overall Internet population. It also shows that those African-Americans who are online are active consumers, purchasing more clothing and music/videos than the general online market, and that the top three online activities for African-Americans are checking/sending e-mail, accessing news/headlines and playing online games.
The success of websites depends on how well they satisfy their target group. Ownership is a non issue, Davis says. "We are not going to have to fight negative stereotypes because websites are run by the community. People input and respond to the content that they want. That is a lot of power in our hands," he says. "They are more like community forums; the community is the voice of the Web site."
Transitioning to the Internet Age puts African-Americans in a very familiar place, according to Abdul Alkalimat, a professor in the Africana Studies Program at the University of Toledo in Ohio. "We are experiencing the same transition as when southerners moved up to the north and they had to learn to be familiar with the city's running water, electricity, plumbing,etc.," Alkalimat says. "We are now in transition from an industrial nation to an informational nation."
Professor Alkalimat, whose book, The African-American Experience in Cyberspace, will be published in December by Pluto Press, compares the issue of website ownership to the struggle for the creation of black studies programs in universities. "We started black studies because curricula and books did not include our struggles, so we fought to be heard. The solution to having our history passed on accurately is up to us. If you can support a large company by buying their information, do not complain when they misrepresent you, since you didn't put the accurate information about yourself out there," he says.
Professor Alkalimat believes that African-Americans will play a major role in the Internet in the same way that Frederick Douglass played a major role in spreading information through his newspaper. "Douglass created a paper when many African-Americans were slaves and could not read or write, but they were happy to congregate . . . and hear the news from those that could," he says. "We have always found a way to communicate within our community. The Internet is just another mental block we have to get over. We need to get the skills and understand that [the Internet] offers information about us to the whole world."
This was an article by Ines Bebea of The Network Journal that was written a while back in which I, Keenan Davis, was featured.
"We are catching up rapidly, but our problem has to do with education and economics," says Omar Wasow, the New York-based executive director of Blackplanet.com. "To many of us, buying a computer is still not considered relevant or important." Blackplanet.com boasts over 9 million registered members who, in addition to receiving information on job opportunities and education, interact socially through the Web site. "The heart of our site is to make connections," says Wasow. "It's to bring people together to talk as if they were at a dinner party."
BlackPlanet.com is owned by Community Connect Inc., which also owns MiGente.com and AsianAvenue.com. Black web site owners are trying to keep pace with the competition for African-American users. Keenan Davis, who agrees that blacks lag behind other ethnic groups in Internet connectedness, argues that finances are not entirely to blame. "Our digital divide is not about money, given that our youth can spend $300 on sneakers, jewelry and clothes," says the CEO of Unorthodoks Marketing, a New York firm that advises companies on how to attract African-Americans to their Web sites. "They have not yet discovered the impact that having a computer [within] arm's reach will add to their lives. Having a computer at home opens a multitude of avenues to get information on whatever you are interested in," he says.
Davis notes that there are only 12 million blacks online out of a population of more than 30 million. Blacks, as a group, have a spending power of almost $700 million. However, although the most recent U.S. census counts Latinos as the biggest minority, that tally includes Latinos who consider themselves black. In other words, the overall black population and buying power are higher than reported, Davis points out.
A survey commissioned by AOL provides insight into how African-Americans use the Internet. It shows that most African-Americans read online ads and that 46 percent of those who do find these ads informative, compared with 26 percent for the overall Internet population. It also shows that those African-Americans who are online are active consumers, purchasing more clothing and music/videos than the general online market, and that the top three online activities for African-Americans are checking/sending e-mail, accessing news/headlines and playing online games.
The success of websites depends on how well they satisfy their target group. Ownership is a non issue, Davis says. "We are not going to have to fight negative stereotypes because websites are run by the community. People input and respond to the content that they want. That is a lot of power in our hands," he says. "They are more like community forums; the community is the voice of the Web site."
Transitioning to the Internet Age puts African-Americans in a very familiar place, according to Abdul Alkalimat, a professor in the Africana Studies Program at the University of Toledo in Ohio. "We are experiencing the same transition as when southerners moved up to the north and they had to learn to be familiar with the city's running water, electricity, plumbing,etc.," Alkalimat says. "We are now in transition from an industrial nation to an informational nation."
Professor Alkalimat, whose book, The African-American Experience in Cyberspace, will be published in December by Pluto Press, compares the issue of website ownership to the struggle for the creation of black studies programs in universities. "We started black studies because curricula and books did not include our struggles, so we fought to be heard. The solution to having our history passed on accurately is up to us. If you can support a large company by buying their information, do not complain when they misrepresent you, since you didn't put the accurate information about yourself out there," he says.
Professor Alkalimat believes that African-Americans will play a major role in the Internet in the same way that Frederick Douglass played a major role in spreading information through his newspaper. "Douglass created a paper when many African-Americans were slaves and could not read or write, but they were happy to congregate . . . and hear the news from those that could," he says. "We have always found a way to communicate within our community. The Internet is just another mental block we have to get over. We need to get the skills and understand that [the Internet] offers information about us to the whole world."
This was an article by Ines Bebea of The Network Journal that was written a while back in which I, Keenan Davis, was featured.
posted by Daze at 1:21 PM
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