OPINION: Detroit has a new redlining problem: Digital redlining

Redlining is an unfortunate and impactful part of our state’s history. Throughout the 20th Century, the discriminatory practice of deeming predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods in Detroit as “too hazardous for investment” is well-documented. While legislative action like the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was taken to help address this despicable policy, it is sadly still happening in a more modern but equally insidious form: “digital redlining.” 

This practice entails telecommunications companies installing technology upgrades in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods while depriving poorer, more diverse communities of these same upgrades.

Here in Michigan, the best demonstration of digital redlining is carried out by AT&T. In 2017, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a nonprofit aimed at closing the digital divide, analyzed the provider’s network buildout in Wayne County, and found a direct overlap between neighborhoods where AT&T chose not to install newer fiber technology and those with poverty rates of 35 percent or more. The most recent mapping of its fiber deployment in Detroit tells the same story: whether intentionally or accidentally, AT&T is clearly neglecting lower-income neighborhoods, which are disproportionately made up of Black and Brown families and not providing them with its best services. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it abundantly clear that lacking internet access has  profoundly negative impacts on people’s lives. We’ve seen this in many sectors — from not being able to access telehealth, literally not having the bandwidth to work from home if that was an option for an employee, to education, which may have seen the most dire impact. Low-income students that lacked the necessary digital resources to learn remotely fell behind, causing an already concerning “homework gap” which impacts nearly 17 million students to widen. This gap has most negatively impacted communities of color. According to McKinsey & Company, students in majority-Black schools ended the 2021 school year six months behind in both math and reading, while students in majority-white schools ended up just four months behind in math and three months behind in reading

Whether a child is put in a conducive learning environment should have no relation to whether a corporation views fiber deployment in their neighborhood as a good return on investment. The same principle applies to the countless Americans in low-income communities that could use high-speed internet for telehealth services or employment opportunities.

Digital discrimination is a choice — one that can and should be changed, especially by corporations that claim to be striving for an equal and just society. The return on investment of connected communities that will improve their access to improved health, economic advancement, and education must be as valuable as what is listed on a balance sheet. That is why it is incumbent upon our elected leaders to stick up for the vulnerable communities that they represent and do a thorough investigation of unequal broadband deployment practices here in Michigan.

I urge Attorney General Dana Nessel and my colleagues in the state Legislature to get an explanation from digital redliners about why Michigan’s low-income communities are not worthy of the same services that our state’s most wealthy areas are and how they’re going to rectify this business choice that is causing too much harm to too many of our residents. 

We need to treat the internet as the necessity that it has become and that starts with corporate accountability and making broadband access equitable and affordable