In a recent telephone survey of over 6,000 Americans, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has concluded that African Americans' usage of Internet technology lags behind that of whites. Survey respondents who identified as African Americans trailed whites by seven percentage points in use of the Internet; 87% of whites and 80% of blacks are Internet users. Moreover, 74% of white respondents had broadband Internet access in their home, whereas 62% of black respondents had such access.
Although the Pew survey appears to draw on a representative slice of Americans using careful survey methods, its results may suffer from having answered an inherently misleading question. The survey found, for example, that black and white Internet usage and access is identical once other variables are controlled. Namely, 86% of African Americans respondents aged 18-29 were home broadband adopters, as were 88% of African American college graduates and 91% of blacks with an annual household income of $75,000 or more per year. These figures were not only well above the national average for broadband adoption, but, more to the point, they were identical to whites of similar ages, incomes, and education levels. It follows that Internet adoption has nothing to do with race per se and everything to do with some or all of the factors age, education, and household income. If Internet adoption correlates primarily with household income, as other studies of technology would suggest, then the survey in question does little more than lead us back to the fact that African Americans have a lower average household income than white Americans--a fact which has already been established. Nevertheless, the Pew study is a confirmation and a reminder of the fact that the current income difference between whites and blacks in America is having an impact on African Americans' access to technology and to the benefits that accrue from efficient access to the Internet.