Jorge Rivas

Two years ago, Michael Ibarra’s “Big Brother” helped him get a scholarship to a private school by researching options online. But during the first half of sixth grade at the Clairbourn School in San Gabriel, California, Michael couldn’t keep up. His grades were slipping. The scholarship he got with the help of the Internet was taking him only so far because he didn’t have online access at home. 

Michael lives with his 77-year-old grandmother, Margaret Ibarra, whose $1,400-a-month income doesn’t lend to extravagance, and paying for a high-speed Internet connection would put them over the top of their strict budget. “I know he needs [the Internet] desperately,” she says. “Yesterday, he was crying because he had a project that he had to do. Most of his homework comes through the network.” Thankfully, Michael’s Big Brother recently stepped in again, paying temporarily for the pricey Internet connection.

These days, if you’re not online, you’re not just out of luck—you’re also without access to education, jobs and much-needed tasks like online banking. Without the Internet, Michael, like 20 million other Americans, was being left behind.

People of color struggle to get online for homework, jobs and more.

According to the Census Bureau, more than 40 percent of all homes are not connected to the Internet or use antiquated “dial-up” technology. Communities of color are disproportionately affected by the digital divide. According to a 2008 report by Free Press, a national media reform organization, only 40 percent of households of color subscribe to broadband, while 55 percent of white households are connected. The nation’s Latino population in particular fares among the worst, with only 35 percent having a broadband connection.

As high-speed Internet becomes increasingly expensive, middle- and low-income families are less able to afford it. According to the same Free Press report, only 35 percent of homes with less than $50,000 in annual income have broadband, while 76 percent of households earning more than $50,000 per year are connected in that manner. For many Latino communities living on the margins in Los Angeles, paying for pricey broadband service isn’t even a possibility.

Julia Huerta and her 14-year-old daughter Lily live in South Los Angeles and rely on the local community center where Julia works to jump online when the computers are free. Asked what her family would have to give up in order to afford Internet at home, Huerta shakes her head. “We can’t,” she says.

The digital divide extends beyond connectivity; many people don’t have the training, skills or equipment to get online, or they live in an area that has been redlined by Internet service providers who find little incentive to build out to their communities.

Andy Beckers, a 28-year-old Latino living in Azusa, California, was recently laid off after eight years at a shipping-and-receiving job. He’s searching for jobs online, but he doesn’t have Internet access at home. “I was going to buy a computer a long time ago, but I couldn’t afford it,” he says. “And right now it’s even worse.”

Beckers often waits several hours to get his chance to use one of the Azusa Public Library’s few computers. “I could be doing something else right now instead of waiting here,” he said.

Libraries across the country are shouldering the burden of providing Internet access to offline communities. And in Azusa, where a crowd of people rushes through the library doors every morning to find a computer, it’s a struggle to meet the demand.

Albert Tovar, Azusa’s library director, says the problem extends beyond affording computers and finding space for them in the crowded library.

Forty percent of households of color subscribe to broadband, while 55 percent of white households are connected.

“We’re in a 50-year-old building, but yet we’re using high technology,” Tovar says. “Even if I had more money to buy more computers, I’m maxed-out in terms of power. I need to bring in more electricity, or otherwise I’m going to blow out circuits in this building.”

Tovar says the library’s rule that youth must be accompanied by an adult in order to use the computers acts as another barrier. “In this community, both parents have to work,” Tovar says, making young people reliant on both the library’s operating hours and their parents’ work schedule to get online.  

•••