No equity without a permanent broadband benefit

For America’s Latino community, education has long been the engine of generational advancement and prosperity. But the digital divide threatens to grind these gears of progress to a halt. Before the pandemic, more than one-third of Latino families and nearly 30 percent of Black families lacked a broadband connection at home. That’s part of the reason why Black and brown students lost the most ground during remote learning. We cannot increase equity for marginalized communities across the United States without ensuring universal access to the internet. Just as our society — the wealthiest nation on Earth — provides at least a minimal level of nutrition, education and health care, an internet connection, and the basic digital skills needed to use it, are also necessities in the information age.

As the Senate prepares to vote on a massive $65 billion broadband proposal, the road map for closing the digital divide is twofold: building out broadband infrastructure to reach the entire country, including rural America, which is 8.6 percent Latino and 7.8 percent Black; and making sure the broadband end product is affordable for all. We cannot “Build Back Better” or tackle our nation’s most odious and pressing inequities without first ensuring the most marginalized among us can connect to the internet at home — because digital rights are human rights.

[Brenda Castillo is President and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.]