An Examination of the Black Community Online (Part 1)
According to a November report conducted by e-Marketer, a group that conducts market research and trend analysis on the Internet, African-Americans comprise almost 11 percent of Internet users. That figure is expected to increase to almost 12 percent by 2011, making the number of African-Americans online total almost 26 million users. Though the number of whites online more than quadruples the number of black Web users, the latter audience is growing and that means more news and information outlets on the Web need to cater to the black community.
My blog, “Other America,” focuses on issues concerning the black community. Topics include finance, education, politics, and race relations, among others. In recent weeks, I’ve written about the disparities in crack cocaine sentencing, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and high breast cancer mortality rates for black women. My goal was to write about issues that extend beyond popular culture. There are many entertainment sites, such as BET and MTV, which younger African-Americans visit on a regular basis, but sites are scarce that focus on the politically and socially conscious members of this demographic. Dr. Ray Ausetkmt, who is a member of the Yahoo Group Club Black Web and a number of other black online communities, referred to these people as the “black intelligentsia.” Ausetkmt said these people are academic scholars, professors, legislators, college students and others who have been able to share their ideas and mobilize online.
“The Internet changed the reality for black people, globally,” Ausetkmt said. “People are connected together that have never previously known much about each other. There’s an active live connection, a sharing of information, a development of resources, and in some cases, an enlightenment that takes place from one group to another one simply because there is that open sharing permitted by the Internet.”
The term “black intelligentsia” may have certain class implications, but I’m using it in this framework as an expedient way to describe people who use the Internet to gather and organize with others who share a similar consciousness.
Though the black community online and offline is not a monolithic one, it has certain uses for the Internet that are not typical of other online communities. The 2000 Pew Internet and American Life Project found the online behavior of blacks very different from that of whites. Sixty-five percent of blacks use the Internet for school research compared to 54 percent of whites. Thirty-eight percent of blacks use the Internet to chat online versus 23 percent of whites. Sixty percent of blacks have used the Net to play an audio or video clip.
The African-American online community is broad. The people I intended to target range in age from 21 to 40, but anyone above this age range who has similar interests could be a member of this community. I interviewed Dr. Ray Ausetkmt, a 52-year old researcher and Ph.d holder in African religion; Jason B. Green, a 21-year old college senior at Nova Southeastern University and creator of the Facebook group 1,000,000 Black students; and Horace Coleman, a 65-year old Vietnam veteran and moderator of Thinktank, an African-American discussion forum.