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Critical Race Theory and the Digital Divide: Beyond the Rhetoric

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Leigh, P. (2002). Critical Race Theory and the Digital Divide: Beyond the Rhetoric. In D. Willis et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2002 (pp. 384-388). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/10039.

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Conference Information

Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (SITE) 2002
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
2002
ISBN 1-880094-44-4
  Dee Anna Willis, Jerry Price & Niki Davis
AACE

More Information on SITE
Table of Contents

Author

Patricia Leigh, Iowa State University, USA

Abstract

In this paper, the author uses the philosophical lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to shed light upon the vast inequalities in access to information technologies that exists among racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups; a phenomenon that has come to be known as the digital divide. This paper focuses primarily on how the digital divide has played out for African Americans and allows CRT to explain the history of inequalities and why significant differences in educational opportunities have persisted into the 21st century. The author adopts the term 'analog divide' to refer to all the non computer/telecommunications based educational inequities that African Americans have experienced for decades and even centuries. She further purports that one cannot understand or begin to rectify the digital divide unless one is willing to fully confront and attack the problem of the analog divide that preceded it and continues to persist. The three major tenets of CRT that serve to illuminate these divides are the claims that: 1) racism is ingrained in the fabric of American society to the extent that it is invisible to most and racist behaviors and attitudes therefore seem normal to the average citizen, 2) social justice for historically oppressed groups of Americans will only be achieved when such advances also benefit the dominant power holders, and lastly 3) the perspectives and stances of marginalized groups are many times best represented in the form of narratives, storytelling and counter-storytelling. In this paper the author begins in using the third tenet of CRT by presenting the reader with an allegory entitled, Crossing the Great Divide: A Tale of Analog and Digital Inequity. In this tale one finds two groups of trolls, with the two-headed trolls dominating and enslaving the one-headed trolls. As the story unfolds, the reader sees how the oppressed trolls become caught in a cycle of poverty and oppression and stuck in a land that weakens them and deprives them of the energy to cross over the great divide into more fertile fields. The dominant trolls, having given up their brutally overt oppressive ways after crossing the divide into lands where slave labor is no longer needed, soon forget why they had the energy and fortitude to cross the divide whereas the one-headed trolls did not. In fact, because of the hybrid food crop (knowledge) that the oppressed trolls have been forced to ingest, they too have forgotten why they have been left behind and stuck in a cycle of backbreaking work and struggle. The tale ends with a group of concerned but amnesiac trolls holding council concerning ways and means to bring more weakened and impoverished trolls across the divide into the rich soil of the northern region. The author analyzes the tale and suggests to the reader possible means in which educators today might seek to close gaps in access to educational opportunities afforded Black and White Americans. She specifically asks technology educators to own the problem of the analog divide as well as the digital divide and to work in the greater society as well as in their specific field in seeking justice and equality.

Keywords

• Race
• Educational Technology
• Digital Divide

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