Sounding the Alarm on Electronic Discrimination

To Dr. Oscar H. Gandy Jr., putting computers and Internet access into the hands of disadvantaged minority and poor Americans falls short of addressing what he defines as one barely recognized version of the digital divide in the United States. Gandy, the Herbert I. Schiller professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has begun to point out the danger that digital technologies pose in making "cyber-redlining" and other types of discrimination a reality.
In one example, a community group in Dallas last year accused Wells Fargo Bank of redlining on the Internet after the bank posted controversial neighborhood descriptions on its Web site. After people complained that the Web site relied upon stereotypes to describe minority neighborhoods, the bank pulled the controversial content from the Internet.
"Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc. has decided to disable our ‘Community Search
Service' link at <www.wellsfargo.com/
mortgage/> until we can determine if the editorial content is compatible with our demonstrated commitment to low- and moderate-income and minority homebuyers," the company said in a statement.
In another case, African American residents in Washington filed a class action lawsuit last year against Kozmo.com, an online consumer product delivery service that promises to deliver items from the Internet to your door in less than an hour. The suit was filed shortly after a news media investigation by MSNBC.com revealed that Kozmo.com was failing to offer delivery to many neighborhoods with high concentrations of Black residents in cities where the company does business. While the company, which recently closed, claimed that it only considered Internet usage when deciding which areas to serve and denied that race was a factor, some attorneys and advocacy groups say that Kozmo.com was guilty of cyber-redlining.
"Kozmo.com has been accused of racial discrimination because its Web-based delivery system appears to systematically avoid serving African American communities, despite their close proximity to the upscale White customers they do serve," Gandy has noted.
What Gandy sees as an overarching problem with digital technology taking over the delivery of the media and influencing public policy is the consumer-driven orientation it brings.
"As a marketplace, logic comes to dominate the thinking of information system managers. It is important to recognize that this is a framework that is increasingly oriented toward shaping and responding to people's interests as consumers, rather than to their interests as citizens and members of communities and social groups," Gandy has said.