The minority youth trainers at The South End Technology Center of Boston are the future leaders of the New Civil Rights Movement.
by Jasmine Rose-Olesco
photo courtesy of Chris Connors via Flickr and edited by Grace Molteni for The Riveter
“You can’t work in technology; you’re not a male, white, or Asian. They’re the only people who can get rich off of that,” my father expressed to me one morning as I shuffled into my parents’ Subaru, buckled my seatbelt, and closed the car door. I was 12, and we were embarking on our early morning commute to a 122-year-old private school that I attended for four years.
I frowned at his words. My fingers shook after the seat belt snapped into place, and I sat back further into my seat. I remember wishing that I had the ability to physically shrink myself or time-travel to the moment before the warning escaped his lips.
At the all-girls school I attended, I greatly benefited from the message of female empowerment instructors injected into the lessons. But I was one of few students of color, and meanwhile, throughout my life, I learned about the social stratifications of race, class and gender, three classifications that caused me to be born at a systematic disadvantage. First, I’m a woman. Second, I was born into a low-income household. Third, I’m from an immigrant family of color. As a result, I was constantly fielding outside messages about what society believed I couldn’t achieve.
I never expected one of those naysayers to be my father. I understood that, perhaps, his experience with racism and ethnocentrism in American society influenced the phrasing of his words that morning. He very well could have meant, “Entering into a technological field would be difficult for you because of sexist and racist gatekeepers.”
As I wrote in a piece published on Time.com, families of color often have conversations about social stratification with children at an early age, in an effort to prepare them for what Audre Lorde calls, “The racist, sexist and suicidal dragon.” While my mother informed me that, “There are people in this world who will underestimate you. They’ll say little things. They’ll doubt that you’re smart, they’ll doubt that you’re kind, some will even treat you like less than a human being deserves,” my father took on a more “tough-love” approach to this discussion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help how I interpreted my father’s words: you are not smart enough because you’re black and you’re a girl.
At 12 years-old, I needed an outlet to express to myself (and to my father) that my interest in science would help me reap rewards. I needed mentorship, educators, and dedicated volunteers. I needed a program like “Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn,” or programs like BlackGirlsCode.com, GirlsWhoCode.com, or “Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution (IGNITE).”
I didn’t yet know that, in two years time, I would play a part in using technology to propel the new Civil Rights Movement, given the disappointing statistics of women and people of color in the tech industry. In “Tech: Where the Women and Minorities Aren’t,” USA Today reports that only 1 percent of Google employees are black or African-American, 2 percent are Latino, and 83 percent of Google’s international tech staff is male. Recently, prominent voices in technology and activist movements have stated that it’s time to use technology to support the Civil Rights Movement’s next phase.
In The Root, writer Julie Walker reports that Donell Creech, founder of MVMT50 (pronounced Movement 50), a “coalition of black tech thought leaders,” believes “the continuing civil rights movement for parity and justice over the next 50 years should be influenced by the hallmarks of innovation and creativity that drives technological advancements.” Walker reports that it was Rev. Jesse Jackson’s work through his ‘Rainbow PUSH Coalition’ and ColorOfChange.org that made technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and eBay, publicize the racial makeup of their employees. The data showed that African-Americans were approximately 2 percent of the employees in the tech industry. As a result, Creech is fronting the tech industry’s fight for civil rights with the hope that “blacks in the tech world [will] be able to connect…and form a pipeline that will help rising black entrepreneurs get the support they need.”
According to a report on BlackPressUSA.org, the use of social media is also helping build momentum for the New Civil Rights Movement. In Black Press USA, scholar Avis Jones-Deweever said, “We [black people, millennials, especially] tend to be overrepresented on a lot of these [mobile] platforms, on Twitter especially, but others as well. I think it’s amplifying those activists who were already there, already in the trenches, already doing this work…but it’s also…motivated others to become involved and become change agents themselves in a way they hadn’t really thought of.” Navarrow Wright, president and CEO of the “Close The Divide Project” also tells Black Press USA that he received news about Ferguson by watching reports on Vine and Twitter from Ferguson demonstrators and residents. Wright believes that the power social media gives users helps further the movement with regard to racial solidarity and justice.
Decatur, GA teens Caleb, Asha, and Ima Christian, 14, 15, and 16 respectively, are helping to further the modern Civil Rights Movement. In an effort to combat police brutality, they created and built the application, “Five-O.”The Huffington Post reports that the mobile app enables users to “to record and store data from every encounter with law enforcement.” Ima Christian explained to Business Insider that, “We’ve been hearing about the negative instances [of police brutality] in the news, and we always talk about these issues with our parents.” The siblings learned to code using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s web programs, including +K12, Scratch, and AppInventor, according to The Atlantic’s CityLab, in order to create the application that allows users to rate and document both negative and positive experiences with law enforcement.
More than ever before, technology allows users to solve problems, including threats to our civil rights, low access to education, poverty and fewer avenues to the tech industry for women and people of color.
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In the city of Boston, where I was born and raised, The Department of Youth Engagement and Employment sponsors the “Boston Youth Fund” program. Their mission: “To meet the needs of young people [aged fifteen to eighteen] by connecting them to a variety of opportunities, resources, and free or low-cost events in the city.” Specifically, the “Boston Youth Fund” allows teens to work for a maximum of 25 hours per week for a wage of eight dollars per hour. At 14 years old and as a member of the “Boston Youth Fund” program, I applied to an appealing job placement that I’d seen advertised on a flyer at a local community center. Titled “Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn,” the announcement called for Boston teens interested in computer science and engineering to become youth leaders for a community of like-minded peers. After two years of feeling inadequate because of my father’s statements, I found the opportunity that I’d been seeking. With an interest in being able to play games for real money and applications like Photoshop, Hyperscore music composition, Gimp photo creation, Scratch Animation programming, and PICO Robotics programming, I applied for the job with the hopes of learning useful skills, earning money, and proving to myself and my naysayers that I am capable of learning about computer science, engineering, and technology. It helped that my mother expressed during the application process, “If given the opportunity, you can be just as successful as any rich white man, even with your pronounced lips, your natural hair, your skin color, and your [petite] height.”
Unfortunately, at the time, there were not enough representations of people of color who were making great strides in the technology industry. In recent years, publications like The Root, Essence.com, News One, Mashable and Clutch Magazine have publicised the work of black innovators in technology, including Ursula Burns, the chairwoman and CEO of Xerox, and Tiffani Bell, a 2014 Code for America fellow and the founder and former CEO of Pencil You In, “a site where people can book salon appointments online, making the process much easier for customers and businesses.”
I sought to become the representation that I wanted to see in the world by applying to “Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn.” After a rigorous application period, I learned that I was one of the teens selected to receive training on a variety of topics: graphic design, game/animation programming, robotics, electronic inventions, digital design and fabrication, alternative energy technology, and music composition.
What I didn’t know at the time was how beneficial this opportunity would prove to be for me and so many of Boston’s youth. “Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn,” founded in 2002 by civil rights activist Mel King in partnership with the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, not only pays its teenage employees competitive wages to undergo training from MIT students (and others), but the program allows teens to spread their newfound knowledge to children aged 8 to 13 years old across community centers in the city. The program employs 25 to 30 youth who then instruct more than 400 elementary and middle school-aged children from the city of Boston in various topics pertaining to the field of technology. Additionally, employees of the program spend significant time forging teams that attempt to solve a social issue, including pollution, poverty, homelessness, and under-age drinking, using technology. In this video, my former team members and I demonstrate our project to combat car accidents and reckless driving: a programmed Lego car that slows down when it approaches traffic, a pedestrian, a yield sign or a stoplight.
“Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn” also helps push forward racial solidarity and anti-brutality movements, as staff member Susan Klimczak illustrates in her article, “Making Justice: Youth Restoring their own Humanity and the Humanity of us All.” In the piece, she reflects on a time when activist Mel King called upon program participants to write a poem about why their engagement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) is so important. Jammy Torres, a 17-year-old youth leader at the time, wrote in response, “Let’s show them we, [people of color], too, can create. We, too, can transcend above the world. So, let’s show off! Let’s diminish the misconception of us and the life we live.”
Greater Boston, a metropolitan area with a sizable minority population, is a tech hub of students and intellectuals—from those over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to tech companies like Hubspot and Wayfair. And, while a host of resources and opportunities exist for people who are interested in technology and science, especially in a city like Boston, those who are afforded these opportunities are largely white and male. In Boston, students are at risk for dropping out of school, because of the need to balance financially supporting their families and their schoolwork. Additionally, there are few jobs in the vicinity of low-income neighborhoods.
A program like “Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn,” then, attempts to increase access to technological education for women and people of color. The program’s approach is simple: reach as many people as possible by training highly-dedicated youth in these fields, who will then spark an interest in technology and science in the hearts and minds of younger students. The children who go to these community centers attend the lectures led by “Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn” youth leaders for free.
A report from The Washington Post finds that underrepresented minorities tend to perform better in academic fields when they are taught by people of the same ethnicity or race as themselves. Certainly, having teenagers of color teach their younger counterparts of color not only increases representation in technology, but it also inspires the next generation to do the same.
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Jasmine Rose-Olesco is a Boston-based freelance writer, speaker, and activist. Her work has appeared on Time.com, xoJane.com, Refinery29.com, Luckmag.com, Femsplain.com, HelloGiggles.com, and is forthcoming from The Billfold. She currently serves as a Featured Contributor for the fem-powered content community Femsplain.com. A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Jasmine is a student at Boston College in Chestnut Hill. Follow her on Twitter or visit her on Tumblr at arosethatgrew.tumblr.com.
