One Internet, Two Nations

        By HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

           C AMBRIDGE, Mass. -- After the Stono Rebellion
            of 1739 in South Carolina -- the largest uprising of
        slaves in the colonies before the American Revolution
        -- legislators there responded by banishing two forms
        of communication among the slaves: the mastery of
        reading and writing, and the mastery of "talking drums,"
        both of which had been crucial to the capacity to rebel.

        For the next century and a half, access to literacy
        became for the slaves a hallmark of their humanity and
        an instrument of liberation, spiritual as well as
        physical. The relation between freedom and literacy
        became the compelling theme of the slave narratives,
        the great body of printed books that ex-slaves generated
        to assert their common humanity with white Americans
        and to indict the system that had oppressed them.

        In the years since the abolition of slavery, the
        possession of literacy has been a cardinal value of the
        African-American tradition.

        It is no accident that the first great victory in the legal
        battle over segregation was fought on the grounds of
        education -- of equal access to literacy.

        Today, blacks are failing to gain access to the new
        tools of literacy: the digital "knowledge economy." And
        while the dilemma that our ancestors confronted was
        imposed by others, this cybersegregation is, to a large
        degree, self-imposed.

        The Government's latest attempt to understand why
        low-income African-Americans and Hispanics are
        slower to embrace the Internet and the personal
        computer than whites -- the Commerce Department
        study "Falling Through the Net" -- suggests that income
        alone can't be blamed for the so-called digital divide.
        For example, among families earning $15,000 to
        $35,000 annually, more than 33 percent of whites own
        computers, compared with only 19 percent of
        African-Americans -- a gap that has widened 64
        percent over the past five years despite declining
        computer prices.

        The implications go far beyond on-line trading and chat
        rooms. Net promoters are concerned that the digital
        divide threatens to become a 21st century poll tax that,
        in effect, disenfranchises a third of the nation. Our
        children, especially, need access not only to the vast
        resources that technology offers for education, but also
        to the rich cultural contexts that define their place in the
        world.

        Today we stand at the brink of becoming two societies,
        one largely white and plugged in and the other black
        and unplugged.

        One of the most tragic aspects of slavery was the way it
        destroyed social connections.

        In a process that the sociologist Orlando Patterson calls
        "social death," slavery sought to sever blacks from
        their history and culture, from family ties and a sense of
        community. And, of course, de jure segregation after the
        Civil War was intended to disconnect blacks from
        equal economic opportunity, from the network of social
        contacts that enable upward mobility and, indeed, from
        the broader world of ideas.

        Despite the dramatic growth of the black middle class
        since affirmative action programs were started in the
        late 60's, new forms of disconnectedness have afflicted
        black America. Middle-class professionals often feel
        socially and culturally isolated from their white peers
        at work and in the neighborhood and from their black
        peers left behind in the underclass. The children of the
        black underclass, in turn, often lack middle-class role
        models to help them connect to a history of achievement
        and develop their analytical skills.

        It would be a sad irony if the most diverse and
        decentralized electronic medium yet invented should
        fail to achieve ethnic diversity among its users. And yet
        the Commerce Department study suggests that the
        solution will require more than cheap PC's. It will
        involve content.

        Until recently, the African-American presence on the
        Internet was minimal, reflecting the chicken-and-egg
        nature of Internet economics. Few investors have been
        willing to finance sites appealing to a PC-scarce
        community.

        Few African-Americans have been compelled to sign
        on to a medium that offers little to interest them.

        And educators interested in diversity have repeatedly
        raised concerns about the lack of minority-oriented
        educational software.

        C onsider the birth of the recording industry in the
        1920's. Blacks began to respond to this new medium
        only when mainstream companies like Columbia
        Records introduced so-called race records, blues and
        jazz discs aimed at a nascent African-American market.
        Blacks who would never have dreamed of spending
        hard-earned funds for a record by Rudy Vallee or Kate
        Smith would stand in lines several blocks long to
        purchase the new Bessie Smith or Duke Ellington hit.

        New content made the new medium attractive.

        And the growth of Web sites dedicated to the interests
        and needs of black Americans can play the same role
        for the Internet that race records did for the music
        industry. 

        But even making sites that will appeal to a black
        audience can only go so far.

        The causes of poverty are both structural and
        behavioral.

        And it is the behavioral aspect of this cybersegregation
        that blacks themselves are best able to address.
        Drawing on corporate and foundation support, we can
        transform the legion of churches, mosques and
        community centers in our inner cities into after-school
        centers that focus on redressing the digital divide and
        teaching black history. We can draw on the many
        examples of black achievement in structured classes to
        re-establish a sense of social connection.

        The Internet is the 21st century's talking drum, the very
        kind of grass-roots communication tool that has been
        such a powerful source of education and culture for our
        people since slavery. But this talking drum we have not
        yet learned to play. Unless we master the new
        information technology to build and deepen the forms of
        social connection that a tragic history has eroded,
        African-Americans will face a form of
        cybersegregation in the next century as devastating to
        our aspirations as Jim Crow segregation was to those
        of our ancestors. But this time, the fault will be our
        own.

        Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the
        Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard
        University, is co-editor of Encarta Africana