By Chris Levister –

When Riverside Community College students Shelia Wellington and Daniel Garrett purchased Christmas gifts for friends and loved ones last week, they escaped the parking lot hassles and holiday crowds at local malls.

Rather, they completed their holiday shopping over a steamy latte at the local Starbucks.

“All you need is Wi-Fi, a mobile device and a credit card.” That’s Daniel Garrett, about to make a major holiday purchase using his cellphone. “Okay I’m on Best Buy’s website. Go to the TV section, click on the one I want to buy, plug in my credit card number and walah! I just spent $682.92 on a Sony flat panel television,” says Garrett. “Christmas Day that baby is going be under my mom’s tree.”

“Goodbye wireline, hello wireless,” says Wellington. “When I want to access the Internet my iPhone is all I need.” This weekend she text messaged her Christmas shopping order from her phone to Victoria Secret.

“The whole process took about 12 minutes. They’ll holiday wrap my order and ship it in time for Christmas.”

Wellington and Garrett are part of a new generation of consumers, particularly young African Americans and Hispanics who are using cell phones, PDAs, smart phones and other hand held devices to access the Internet.

African-Americans are steadily gaining access to and ease with the Internet, signaling a remarkable closing of the “digital divide” that many experts had worried would be a crippling disadvantage in achieving success.

Civil rights leaders, educators and national policy makers warned for years that the Internet was bypassing African-Americans and some Hispanics as whites and Asian Americans were rapidly increasing their use of it.

Once thought to be on the wrong side of the Digital Divide African Americans and Hispanics are “leapfrogging” over wire line technology and instead using wireless devices in unprecedented numbers according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project study.

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