Samantha Blackmon's "But I'm Just White"

When I first started to read Samantha Blackmon's article, I thought that it was simply preaching about the problem of the achievement gap between different socioeconomic backgrounds, and that we, as teachers, can use technology to help close it. Not that I don't think this is an important issue; on the contrary: I think technology should be used for this, especially because it will help prepare these students for the demands of using the internet in the professional world. However, I was pleasantly suprised to find that Blackmon was offering her ideas about a much more complex issue: the fact that the internet does not provide the equal opportunities that it should, and how culture should be "replicated rather than erased in cyberspace." I guess I never even considered this to be a problem before. I always assumed that the problem with not everyone using technology was because of a lack of funding in public schools and even some public libraries. However, after reading some of the student accounts, it was brought to my attention that the actual world wide web itself can be hindering for minorities who do have internet access, not necessarily to be able to use it, but to be able to express themselves as individuals of a community with which they can identify. For example, on p. 94, the quote from Justin, who is African-American, really struck me as problematic: "At least black people are allowed to even have web sites. I'm sure the Internet world is run mostly by whites, and they have the power to allow and not allow people to make web sites." Now while this particular student may or may not have had much experience surfing the web in the past, I think what is important is that he doesn't even feel he can be a real part of it. We all know that anyone can build a web site and be active on the internet, but if there is a general consensus amongst minority groups that internet technology is targeted for the majority and being controlled by the majority, then that is a problem. I think that when it comes to teaching writing, in this day and age where the internet is a huge part of the academic and professional worlds, it is imperative that students learn tools to use this technology. It's not just about closing an achievement gap (which, again, I do think is very important). Part of closing an achievement gap is allowing all communities to function together, yet in individual ways. Meaning, a person from any given minority group should feel welcome, and should be able to be a part of the WWW community, and it should be a resource for learning and for expressing cultures. Bottom line: we (the teachers) have to show our students all of the resources that we can, so that they can use them, too. Even if we're teaching how to write, which really only requires paper and a pen (or a word processor), we should still incorporate internet technology in the classroom because we are teaching our students to be critical thinkers. If we want our students to learn to write and think about more complex issues, rather than spitting out information they've read on abortion or capital punishment, then we should be helping to enrich their individual cultures on the internet, which in turn will make them want to write about them. Okay, I'm done ranting.