Black and Brown Kids Listen Up! Culture is important in tech.
Nonprofits engage students of color in tech scene by ‘embracing culture’.
Leaders of nonprofit organizations in Texas and California sat down to discuss why it matters to teach minority youth media and technology at SXSW on Monday March 12.
The panel speakers included Laura Donnelly, founder of Latinitas, Dalinda Gonzalez-Alcantar, founder of Border Kids Code, and Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls CODE. The panel was moderated by Daniel Lucio, Community Impact Manager of Google Fiber.
Minority youth who participate in these programs often come from households of lower income families. Therefore, regular access to the internet may not exist for them, the panelists explained. For a student, this is a serious limitation on both their education and opportunities. In an age like today, not having internet access can affect everything from not knowing the latest update on Youtube to having to handwrite homework when other peers turn in polished typed documents.
Donnelly said that although Austin’s nickname is ‘Silicon Hills’, a reference to our booming tech scene like California’s Silicon Valley, Austin’s minority kids are not getting this experience. Kimberly Bryant mentions a similar problem in the Bay area, where college schools just down the street to her organization offers tech scholarships and yet it took over 10 years for one of their students to find out about it and receive the award.
Though we may not have an immediate solution for these problems, these organizations will continue to create programs and empower kids and teens from underrepresented backgrounds. Tech education in the United states is “trying to erase culture instead of embrace it,” states Bryant. This happens when teaching technology becomes the main priority without first considering the cultural ways to connect with the students, the way these three nonprofits are doing. “Culture is important…and that is how we will win in technology,” Bryant said.
Gonzalez-Alcantar shared a phrase of Border Kids Code that can attest to this: “We have a trilingual education program. Our kids know Spanish, English, and Code”.
Valarie Gold is an Austinite filmmaker, editor, and media instructor currently working as a Program Leader with Latinitas. Follow her on Instagram @valariesnoise
