kiss my black ads: Report: African-American Adoption of Broadband Surges; Antoine Dodson overjoyed!

Although the percentage of Americans using broadband at home increased just slightly from last year, the number of African-Americans reporting access to broadband at home surged by 22 percent, a report said Wednesday.
According to a report compiled by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 66 percent of Americans said they had broadband access at home in 2010, versus 63 percent in 2009. Ethnically, 67 percent of whites reported home broadband; English-speaking Hispanics reported 66 percent; and blacks reported 56 percent.

A year ago, however, 46 percent of African-Americans polled by the organization reported broadband at home, a gain of 10 percentage points, or 22 percent in absolute numbers.

Pew polled 2,252 adults by phone between the end of April and May, including 744 reached via a cell phone. Users were asked to state whether they connected to the Internet via a dial-up landline, or with some form of broadband, including a cable modem, DSL, or wireless, according to Aaron Smith, research specialist with Pew.

When asked why African-Americans reported such a large jump, Smith said that Pew's research didn't examine the reason. "But we've been picking up on it for a couple of years now; not necessarily with broadband, but with higher levels of engagement with the Internet in general," he said.

Pew began noticing higher levels of engagement within the African-American community since the 2008 election, Smith said; since blacks hadn't embraced broadband as quickly as whites, the lower baseline allowed a more dramatic increase, he added.