From business Week, 2/1/99

   LETTER FROM BROOKLYN
   A Cyber-Community Grows in Brooklyn
   On the fourth night of Kwanzaa in Brooklyn, a storefront gathering of
   four adults and seven kids breaks the Ramadan fast and lights black,
   red, and green Kwanzaa candles. Macaroni and chicken wings are on the
   menu. So are some vital lessons. ''What day is this?'' queries an
   adult, Kibibi Oyo, who observes both Ramadan and Kwanzaa, the
   African-American holiday. She wears the gele turban and kinte-print
   dress of her Muslim faith and Afro-centric focus. ''Ujamaa!'' the
   children call out; it's one of the principles of Kwanzaa. What's it
   mean? The kids fairly shriek the answer: ''Cooperative economics!''
   Elisheba defines it further: ''Working together to earn money!'' A
   boy, Tabari, correctly volunteers a definition for another Kwanzaa
   principle, kujichagulia, or self-determination.
   Elisheba is 6; Tabari, 4. Yet already, they're absorbing the big
   issues facing their religious and residential community, the African
   Islamic Mission (AIM), here in a low-income neighborhood adjacent to
   welfare-dependent Bedford-Stuyvesant. And if at first the
   setting--AIM's ultramodern ''cyberlounge'' with six PCs--seems
   incongruous with Kwanzaa, it ultimately makes sense. For while AIM,
   like other bootstrapping Muslim groups, supports itself selling
   fragrances and books, encouraging blacks to buy and use computers is
   its mission. Indeed, high tech is the key to both kujichagulia and the
   future of these kids. AIM's adults were smart enough to recognize that
   fact--early.
   Oyo knows that not everyone shares AIM's vision. ''Priorities in our
   community are totally screwed up,'' she says with a sigh. She left a
   career in the recording industry to join the mosque and now teaches 6
   of AIM's 22 weekly computer classes and edits its newspaper, Blacks
   and Computers. She tells of a woman who wrote in with ''the standard
   'white man's fault' argument,'' suggesting that blacks should protest
   the lack of computers in schools. ''I'm not down with that
   philosophy'' of blaming whites, says Oyo. And as for protesting, she
   simply told the woman: ''I'm not going to do that.''
   ''DIGITAL DIVIDE.'' That's because African Americans are to blame,
   too. In a predominantly black classroom, ''you will see $2,000, $3,000
   worth of new sneakers; they buy Air Jordans that cost over $160 a
   pair. So if you average 25 kids in a classroom and the average kid
   spends $100 on sneakers, you're talking $2,500. You could get two nice
   computers for that,'' Oyo says.
   She isn't alone among African Americans in her concern over this
   ''digital divide''--the fact that even some blacks who can afford PCs
   don't buy them, don't go online, and don't encourage their kids to do
   so. A 1998 Vanderbilt University study reports that among lower-income
   households ($40,000 or less), 27.5% of whites own PCs, vs. only 13.3%
   of blacks. Even more disturbing: 37.8% of white students without home
   PCs said they had used the Web in the past six months, but only 15.9%
   of black students did--suggesting a major access problem.
   And that's not just because many black families can't afford
   computers. ''If you walk into a home in Bed-Stuy today, you'll see a
   couple of Nintendos, a large-screen TV, cable TV--there's money being
   spent,'' says Pat Bransford, director of the National Urban Technology
   Center Inc. Nor is technological intimidation a factor, sources say,
   judging from all those VCRs being programmed out there.
   This lower rate of computer interest is especially alarming in light
   of a recent Benton Foundation/National Urban League study showing that
   60% of future jobs will require technology skills and 75% of
   transactions between individuals and the government will be
   electronic. Currently, a mere 7% of computer-systems analysts and
   computer scientists and just 5% of programmers are African-American,
   according to the U.S. Office of Technology Policy. John Mack, Los
   Angeles head of the National Urban League, dubs access equity ''the
   civil-rights issue of the 21st century.''
   Oyo and other African Americans are starting to attack that problem.
   In church basements and community centers, groups such as AIM are
   offering computer classes at low or no cost on everything from the
   basics to advanced graphics. And this year's Black History Month will
   feature the first ''Black Family Technology Awareness Week'' on Feb.
   7-13. Church-based activities nationwide will promote computer
   literacy, culminating in a Baltimore ''summit,'' where participants
   will hear speakers, meet groups such as Black Geeks, and learn of
   projects such as Computers in the 'Hood, which finances PCs for
   low-income families. AIM will observe Black History Month with a
   computer careers day.
   Even with such encouragement, obstacles loom. School computers are
   nonexistent or hopelessly old, Oyo says. And the Internet is largely a
   white world, points out David Bolt, the producer of a four-part PBS
   series, Digital Divide, that's scheduled to air next fall. There are
   cultural factors, too, such as black kids ''not wanting to appear
   white''--or geekily uncool. Notes Marsha Reeves Jews, president of
   Career Communications Group, sponsor of the Awareness Week program:
   ''We've got to figure out how to make it sexy.''
   More confusing is the role of family income--or the lack thereof.
   Bransford, whose center operates 40 inner-city locations (including a
   Bedford-Stuyvesant site) using National Telecommunications &
   Information Administration funds, says her group started ''with the
   assumption that we were going to have to come in with a very cheap,
   recycled computer to get people started.'' But, no, Bransford recalls.
   Even families earning $25,000 told her, ''We want the new computer;
   here's $2,000 cash.''
   FASTER ACTION. AIM's six PCs are state-of-the-art. On a Saturday
   morning earlier in December, Oyo is at the cyberlounge passing around
   a modem to five 7- to 10-year olds. ''See these holes?'' she says.
   ''These two holes are where you put the telephone wire. This one
   little piece lets us go on the Internet.'' The children pair up at the
   PCs. Eresha and Antoinette, both 7, play an Edmark Corp. CD-ROM,
   watching as a goose plays a xylophone, then replicating the tune.
   Eresha affirms that she likes the class: ''They teach you things you
   want to know--scary things and sometimes nice things.'' Nearby,
   Carolyn Rogers exults at daughter Kenya's progress with typing and
   with the computer mouse. ''In the near future, that's what the world
   is going to be about,'' she says. Like most here, she has no home
   computer.
   AIM, with the core of its Brooklyn congregation--26 adults and
   children--in two apartment buildings, charges parents $5 a class. Half
   the 35 kids schooled each Saturday can't pay and attend free. Sales of
   AIM's computer newspaper underwrite the classes, software, and most
   hardware. (One computer was donated by the National Urban Technology
   Center's NTIA grant).
   AIM, which is affiliated with five mosques in five cities, was also
   lucky enough to be included among the 35 community groups in Brooklyn
   benefiting from a $50 million ''diffusion'' fund. The fund was set up
   by Nynex, now Bell Atlantic Corp., after a local assemblyman
   successfully sued Nynex for overcharging economically disadvantaged
   neighborhoods. Now, the Brooklyn Public Library and a group called
   Brooklyn Information & Culture are using the fund to design a network
   that will give those 35 groups speedy T1 and digital-subscriber line
   Internet access by summer.
   That's progress, Oyo says, as she turns to watch her young students
   bent over their keyboards. Just two years ago, she and her AIM
   ''brothers and sisters'' took to the streets to sell 300 bottles of
   fragrance to buy four PCs. For her own two children and other Bed-Stuy
   kids, Oyo believes, computers are the equivalent of the encyclopedias
   that her grandmother--who raised Oyo in Brooklyn's tough Gowanus
   project--struggled to buy for her.
   She wants children like Jasmine, 5, to become as enthralled with
   computers as she was with those books. Oyo leans over the little girl
   to see what she's up to. ''This is how your hands should be placed on
   the home row. This big button: Enter. It takes you to the next line.
   Push it and see what happens,'' Oyo says softly. ''Right, yeah. You're
   catching on already. My gosh, you're brilliant.'' Jasmine pushes the
   button, then beams at Oyo. Oyo beams back.
   By JOAN OLECK
   EDITED BY SANDRA DALLAS
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