MMTC President Calls Progress Slow on Issues Key to Minorities
The FCC, and the federal government in general, have made “very little progress” dealing with the lack of broadband penetration among minority households and other issues critical to the Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC), President David Honig said at the group’s broadband conference. “The digital divide remains as deep as ever,” he said. “Minority employment in media and high-tech companies is in a tailspin, yet FCC … enforcement has collapsed to virtually none.” The commission is moving on diversity, Chairman Julius Genachowski said.
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Minority-owned businesses got almost none of the broadband stimulus money approved by Congress, Honig noted. MMTC has made 72 minority entrepreneurship proposals to the FCC over the past several years, most with broad support, he said. “One has been acted on and it was rejected,” he said:. The others “are gathering dust.”
The National Broadband Plan offered some hope to minority groups when it was approved in March, Honig said. “For the last nine months, after the plan was put out there, all of the air was sucked out of the policy room by net neutrality,” he said. “Nearly every conversation at the commission shifted away from implementing the plan and toward attempting to shape the net neutrality rules."
Recent government data show a 20 percent broadband adoption gap between whites and blacks and between whites and Hispanics. “When controlling for income, education and geographic location … we still have a 10 point gap between African Americans and whites, which is attributable to race … and the impact of discrimination,” Honig said. “This is economically inefficient and it’s unsustainable. But most important to us, it’s morally indefensible.”
Genachowski showed up while Honig was speaking. Genachowski introduced himself, with a laugh, as chairman “of that slow moving agency David was just talking about.” Genachowski noted that the FCC recently rechartered its diversity committee. “There are a number of diversity committee recommendations that we have moved on or are moving on,” he said.
Genachowski said going to the Consumer Electronics Show drove home to him why the FCC must deal with the digital divide. “Virtually every product on the floor was connected to the Internet, wired or wireless,” he said. “If you had shut down Internet access at the Consumer Electronics Show, nothing would have worked. This is different than the past when the only platform you needed for innovation was electricity."
The costs of “digital exclusion” keep getting higher, Genachowski said. “It used to be that if you were looking for a job you could get a newspaper, look at the classifieds, send your application by fax,” he said. “Guess what: Job postings now are moving to online only. … If you're not online, you're at a real disadvantage when it comes to finding a job and applying for a job.”