Google recently announced that it will provide internet service–Google Fiber–but many disadvantaged minority communities that would be eligible for it may not get it.  In the article “In One City, Signing Up for Internet Becomes a Civic Cause,” John Eligon writes about digital and socioeconomic divides in Kansas City.  The company requires locals to signup in advance to ensure coverage, but many predominately black areas may go under-served because not enough residents pre-registered.  Eligon cites data and analysis from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge.

For generations, Kansas City has been riven by racial segregation that can still be seen, with a majority of blacks in the urban core confined to neighborhoods in the east. Troost Avenue has long been considered the dividing line, the result of both overt and secretive efforts to keep blacks out of white schools and housing areas and of historical patterns of population growth and settlement, said Micah Kubic, with the nonprofit Greater Kansas City Local Initiatives Support Corporation.

Nearly three in four people living east of Troost in Kansas City’s urban center are black, according to an analysis of 2010 Census data by Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York City.

As recently as 15 to 20 years ago, black residents said, they did not venture west of Troost for fear of harassment from the police. Today, they complain that their schools are failing, crime is rampant and infrastructure is dilapidated…

As of Sunday evening, only about 32 percent of people in the neighborhoods that qualified for Google Fiber were black, while just over 54 percent were white, according to Mr. Beveridge.

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