For someone who calls himself an “evangelist,” Ken Granderson looks little like the local preacher. Wearing a pressed white shirt, paisley tie and round tortoise-shell glasses, he clicks away at a keyboard, making figures flash across one of the dozen computer screens in his cluttered Dorchester apartment. Laptop to his left, Internet on his right, tower of CD-ROMs by the window. So what’s his gospel? The technological word.
Granderson wants to lead Boston’s black community into the Information Age from the second floor of this pale green Victorian near Franklin Park. A self-described “technology evangelist,” he is spreading the news that African-Americans can use computers to “take control of their opportunities and, ultimately, their destiny.” The 35-year-old founder of Inner-City Software develops high-tech products and online services of special interest to communities of color. He says the Internet has the potential to be the “great equalizer” they need.
“We certainly can’t put on commercials during the Super Bowl. But on the Internet, we can compete on a much more even level,” Granderson says. Anyone with a computer, a modem and a how-to book can make their message accessible to millions, he adds. “That offers incredible promise for people who…don’t have a lot of traditional advantages.”
Several recent national studies have found that far fewer blacks own or use computers than whites. A 1996 study by Q.E.D., Inc., a White Plains, N.Y., market research firm, shows that 26 percent of African-American households have computers, compared with 40 percent of white households. Q.E.D. President Mirek Stevenson blames the cost, and the higher number of low-income households in the black community.
Granderson blames the content — something he’s working to change. African-Americans don’t see themselves reflected in much of the material and, therefore, feel alienated from it, he says. “We’re trying to say this is for you, it’s not only for white, middle-class men,” Granderson says. “When you make people feel included, they’re going to warm up to whatever you’re doing.”
Check out Inner-City’s Web site at www.innercity.com and you see what he means. Subtitled “Brains in the ‘Hood,” it plays computerized tunes like “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” or Bob Marley’s “Exodus” each time you visit. Pages are illustrated with orange, green and brown African prints.
Links include 10 sites Inner-City made and manages. “Black Facts Online” can retrieve information on important events from a database of several thousand black history facts. “BreakThrough, The Changing Face of Science in America,” based on a documentary by Blackside Productions, creator of “Eyes on the Prize,” has a searchable database of science-related activities. “Boston Blacks Online” is an electronic discussion group, where several days last fall members recruited people to send off travelers to the “Million Woman March” in Philadelphia.
Then there’s “Inner City Access,” illustrated with cartoon graffiti on a brick wall, created by and for residents of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan. It’s been primarily a place to find information about local businesses, churches and community groups. But Granderson plans to have an update ready later this year with job listings, bulletin boards, local news and reviews of other black-oriented sites.
James Jennings, director of the Trotter Institute at UMass-Boston, has studied patterns of computer use in Boston’s inner city, and says Granderson is a trailblazer doing critical work. “We’re not at a point where we can minimize this issue of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’,” Jennings says. “The black community is still in the ‘have-not’ category.”
Why is it so important to get the community connected? For one thing, the know-how is crucial for any decent job, Granderson says. It’s also a convenient and, after start-up, inexpensive tool for education, especially for mothers at home with kids. Not to mention a great way to meet interesting people too far away to see. “There are kids, especially around this neighborhood, whose whole world is defined by a few blocks in either direction, so connecting to computers as a way to widen their horizons is really, really valuable,” Granderson says. Sure, there’s a lot of junk on the ‘Net, he adds, including some that’s racist or otherwise offensive. But it doesn’t have to overwhelm. The more high-quality content he gets out there, the easier it will be.
Granderson, who grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, graduated from MIT in 1985 and started the company eight years later. Today there’s enough work for himself and four independent contractors (three are part-time), though he admits Inner-City is “just on the edge of profitability.” Now, he hopes to start training local youths to work with him. These days, most people can name a black doctor or lawyer they know, he says. Someday soon, he’d like to see a lot more “techno-vangelists” in the ‘hood. [quote] Can the Internet be a “great equalizer” in the inner city?
