While researching the topic of this assignment, I came across an article that was very relevant to our class discussions and the overall theme of this class. This article explained the trends of homeowners owning a computer with Internet access. It concluded that the percent of families owning a computer and utilizing the Internet increases as the households income increased, and that income was the main reason why a family would or would not own a computer. The authors also discovered that African Americans and Hispanics still owned less computers than Caucasians, even if they were making the same amount of money. They explain that this may be due to the fact that Whites have a higher percentage of high school and college graduates than African Americans and Hispanics. In other words, just because one can afford the Internet doesn't mean they have the proper education to know how to use it. The article then goes on to talk about a program called "Computers for Youth" based out of New York, which basically gives out computers and educates inner-city students and faculty about how to use them. This is a very good way to increase the knowledge and use of the Internet, but there is still going to be a lot of work to do before inequality does not exist among everyone who should have a computer, no matter what their race or income is.
http://www.usca.edu/essays/vol112004/kleiman.pdf
Video Reflection
14 years ago
I think one method that could be used to better understand this article is community analysis. To me, it seems strange that African Americans who have the same income as Caucasians would own less computers. To attain a higher income one usually needs more education. Why then would African Americans have less computers? It may be possible to survey the community and discover what activites the two groups do enagage in. This method could reveal why those in the same income group, but different ethnic categories, don't own the same number of computers.
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