There probably isn’t a day that goes by when we don’t encounter, think about or react to race and racial barriers. While not existing to the physical magnitude of slavery, the divide of opportunity based on what you are and not on what you know can be equally as demeaning.

We are, however, on the verge of a new divide that could set back the struggle for equal opportunity another one
hundred years or so . . . if we are not careful.

First it was those who have jobs and those who don’t. Then it was those who have degrees and those who don’t. The next divide that will cripple our children is those who have information and those who don’t.

The phrase "information superhighway" was so abstract to me when I first heard it. Well, it is here now. It is an active part of the world and how it functions and thrives. Our families need to know how to navigate it or we’ll be left on the curbside once again.

If we own more than one TV in our home, there is no excuse for not having a computer. Yet African American homes are still lagging behind in the national statistics for PC ownership . . . and after ownership or even access comes the kind of computer usage.

I have been to after school centers in neighborhoods of color in Queens that have computer workshops, but the kids spend most of the time playing games. Their counterparts in Bayside and Douglaston are learning how to surf the web, do research, and download information. They are learning about complicated computer techniques that you can only learn by doing and by having contact with people who know about the internet.

Many of our kids can score 50 million points on their Play Station games and they know every single Pokemon character. But when asked who the president of Microsoft is or even what the difference is between a Zip drive and a processor, you’ll get a blank stare.

While kids should be allowed to just be kids and enjoy the pleasures of youthful apathy, these kids will soon be soldiers in the war for jobs in a field filled with technology. Our parents wanted us to go to school, do well, and go on to college. We want the best for our children as well, but today that means that we cannot allow them to be so distracted by the brain-draining, electronic Trojan horses that have flooded our community.

The next time you ride the E or the F, look around. You’ll see headsets, bobbing heads, or fingers flying on some hand held game. They follow a path of cerebral sedation, being led to a cliff by a techno Pied Piper.

Yes, many of their white counterparts are doing the same, but not all and not most. Ten years from now, what do you think will be more important: finding out what new company will launch its IPO online or who were the original members of the Wu Tan Clan?

Don’t get me wrong, I love listening to Method Man and the crew, but for everything there’s a place. I like to play games like anyone else, but I also use any opportunity to learn about the basics of the internet. My kids have a Play Station, but they also practice researching on the web.

Is some of it boring? Yes, it is.

But things that are good for you usually are pretty bland. If your doctor told you, you had to eat oatmeal everyday without sugar to stay alive, what would you do? I think your answer would be to acquire a taste for bland oatmeal.

You may have to force feed this new technology to yourself and to your kids, but you will acquire a taste for it. It will save your economic lives and the ability of future generations to compete and thrive.

In the future, when a larger percentage of commerce, entertainment, and education are conducted through the computer and we are missing out because we don’t know how to get to the information, we will lose one of the last excuses for failure.

The internet and computer technology is virtually blind to race, since you can’t see the color of the fingers typing. Unless, of course, at some point someone does a study on our typing patterns and figures out some way to block us that way. Before that happens, learn the language and the law of this new world, while it’s all too new.

If you knew 20 years ago that MCI stock would have gone from $17 a share to $117, you would have found the money to invest, right? Missing the ramp on this trip could be more than just inconvenient and disappointing.

— Gary Anthony Ramsay is a weekend anchor and journalist on the all-news cable station NY1 and a long-time resident of Queens.