It’s been a challenge explaining “net neutrality” to the not so “geeky” persons who don’t understand why it’s important, or why they should care, but here’s the gist…

The more you pay, the faster your connection and download speeds.

It’s simple enough to say “that seems fair enough,” but in order to understand the deeper implications, let’s say that there was a time when most larger corporations were at 2T and 3T network access and the average household consumer could get 2G and 3G network access, maybe even 4G. T‘s were for Terabytes and G‘s were for Gigabytes. M‘s, of course, were for Megabytes, (now known as Mbps), and the smaller of the Big Three Bytes.

Since the FCC, through corporate America and its strongholds, has decided it wants to own and control the Internet -a taxpayer-paid entity from the outset- the average household consumer has been bumped down from nearly all access to Gigabytes and given only access to Megabytes (at far slower access rates) — it not only means slower creepy crawly and too many dropped signals for your connected home devices–be they cellphones, laptops, smart phones, desktops, smart TVs, what have you–but it also means that certain “districts” of households have been redlined (Rosa Parked) just to make it appear that you are getting better and lower prices for just about the same thing you were getting before.

Not.

With this “net neutrality” business, the less you pay per month or per seasonal pay periods, the slower your access — and now, rather than selling just plain Internet access in totality, corporations have found better ways to rip off the general non-attention-paying consuming public by clipping pieces of speed access and selling it off “per byte.”

Don’t get too excited about making more money in your paycheck because of higher profits. If you work for these “big boys” like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or even Sprint … you’re not getting any increased pay in your piddly paycheck because of these increases.

All it really amounts to is business-as-usual … CEO’s getting multi-million dollar bonuses to make sure you get less and less while the consumer ends up with less value for more money. Even worse, a recent experience with AT&T was a lesson in the race-based activity behind corporate America’s internet connectivity.

After subscribing to AT&T U-Verse wifi service, I noticed the speed was incredibly slow and what I can only describe as relatable to consistently bad connections and dropped calls on a mobile phone.

Let’s just say you used to be able to order a combo meal at KFC and get a whole cob of corn, now you get a third of the cob and the prices nearly doubled, and the workers aren’t getting a dime more in pay and benefits than when the prices were lower.

Long story short, I let the U-Verse access linger for close to the 30-day trial period, in the hopes that at such “great” (overbloated) rates per month, it would eventually catch up and click in and everything would be fine. Affordability is always key, even when someone “in the big conference room” has decided that they average consumer is a living ATM machine with or without any net benefit to the American economy.

Three weeks later, the connection speeds were just as slow, if not slower. I discovered that they were getting too much money from me for nearly ZERO in access speed – less than ONE megabyte of connection speed, as a matter of fact.

If you don’t understand how slow that really is, try a speed test and study this site well. Now you will get a better idea of why your Home WiFi connection is choppy and cuts off and forces you to reboot, and why it makes no sense to pay more money for less than what you were already getting just because corporate America decided it wanted to “own” something the taxpayers were already paying for.

After a couple of chats with AT&T, the gist of the conversation was that for even more money, I could get faster speeds. No, I need fast speeds for the rate I am getting now and I don’t appreciate being escorted to the “back of the bus” on the information freeway for my money’s worth.

Furthermore, a quick search of the neighborhood in the local voting records revealed that someone living on the corner next to mine could not only be in a whole different zip code, but even that some homes are red-lined into another voting district.

In other words, the houses “up the street” are having nearly no connection and speed problems, and the houses “down the street,” where the majority are poorer and blacker, were having horrible connection speeds in essentially the same zip code which is cirumstantially located in the “other” voting district.

Yes … even on the Information Highway, the idea is to “rosa park” poorer and more African American homes in the area into the slower speed lanes on the back of the bus – and the good news is, YOU GET CHEAPER PRICES for accepting being tossed to the back of the bus behind the COLORED sign. You are also in a great position to be told to get up and turn your seat over to a whiter family, if need be, even though you pay the same price for your bus fare as the privileged ones who get to ride up front.

In other words, there is nothing “neutral” whatsoever about net neutrality.

Gist: This is what happens when we not only do not pay attention to the laws, rules, and regulations that affect us in daily life, but are also given the “this is why this is happening” speech that we should never have to hear and that the white folks who live up the street likely never hear, or wouldn’t be in agreement with if they did hear it. They’d balk–and with dang good reason; but “we” mostly just accept it without crying “foul play,” and allow it without making a concerted fight to protect what belongs to us because we often believe that we have no say-so whatever over being booted to the back of the bus and ripped off at nearly every corner we turn.

This is why, inevitably, poorer people -particularly those who live in Blacker and Browner neighborhoods- end up paying more money for less quality food in neighborhood stores, higher rates for utilities like water and gas and electricity, and more and usurious interest rates on loans and credit: Not paying attention, being financially unsavvy, and being too willing to acquiesce to “whatever” whenever and however they lay it down.

End Game.