coding freedom? alondra nelson, columbia university · the future cannot begin. indeed ......

Coding Freedom? Alondra Nelson, Columbia University

Thisisthecivilrightsofourtime:accesstocapital,accesstocomputers,howtomakethem,howtosellthem.–JesseJackson1 Thefuturecannotbegin.Indeed,theessentialcharacteristicofanhorizonisthatwecannevertouchit,nevergetatit,neversurpassit,butthatinspiteofthat,itcontributestothedefinitionofthesituation.–NiklasLuhmann2TheBlackGirlsCODEmissionistointroduceprogrammingandtechnologytoanewgenerationofcoders,coderswhowillbecomebuildersoftechnologicalinnovationandoftheirownfutures.–BlackGirlsCODE.com

Earlier this year, Google announced a partnership with Howard University in which

the parent company of 23andMe and YouTube would bring young, gifted, and Black

computer science students from this Washington, DC campus to its corporate

Mountain View, California one—dubbed “Howard West”—for a twelve-week

summer school. At Howard West, Google engineers will provide coding instruction

to an inaugural class of two-dozen students alongside Howard University

instructors who are also being brought to Googleplex to both teach and learn.

Thetechbehemoth,likeotherSiliconValley“unicorns,”hasastaggeringlackof

racialandgenderdiversity,afactthatcouldonlybesupportedbydataafewyears

agowhenthesecompaniesbegantoreleasedemographicworkforcedatain

responsefrompressurefromconsumersandactivists.3ReverendJesseJacksonand

hisRainbowPushorganizationmadediversityintechnologyaleadpriorityinits

advocacy.FormerNAACPheadBenjaminJealousbecameaprincipalatKapor

Strategies,adriverofsocialentrepreneurship,aftersteppingdownfromthehelmof

Draft - Do Not Circulate without Permission

2

theNAACP.Ontheonehand,theseeffortsextendthejobdevelopmenttraining

workthathadalwaysbeenapartoftheworkoftheNAACP,theNationalUrban

LeagueandRainbowPush—andespeciallythelatter,whichpushedforinclusive

hiringpracticesinthecorporatejobsectordecadesprior.Ontheotherhand,these

effortsrepresentanimportantshiftfor“legacy”organizationsastheyfacethe

centralityofscienceandtechnologyfortheeconomyandthejobsector.

ByGoogle’sownaccounting,just2%ofitsemployeesareBlack,just3percentare

Hispanic,andonly31percentofitsworkforceiswomen.4Forstrictlytechnical

positions,thenumbersatGooglearemoredirestill.The problem of extreme

underrepresentation of women, Black and Latinos is so pronounced that it's a social

disparity with its own hashtags: #techdiversity, #techinclusion and #pushtech

(used by Jackson’s RainbowPush organization).

Howard University, together with other HBCUs, is responsible for producing more

than a third of the Black computer science graduates in the US. From Google’s

perspective, the Howard partnership offered the possibility of a large pool of men

and women of color who might come to fill the company’s ranks in the months and

years to come. But more immediately, this collaboration performed the symbolic

work of diversity.

At first glance, the costs of this ambitious collaboration would seem to fall mostly on

the shoulders of the multinational technology corporation that boasted revenues of


3

ninety billion dollars last year. However, Howard University bears some of the fiscal

costs of this program and their may likely be costs to students as well. As Hallie

Lomax, a former Google intern (and daughter of United Negro College Fund head

Michael Lomax) would write in Medium:

GooglewantstocutthecostofrecruitingfromHowardevenfurtherbyjustgivingupspaceonitsoversizedmaincampusforHowardtoteachclasses — onHoward’sowndime,usingHoward’sownprofessors,underthewatchofGoogleengineers.Thisprogramisonlyopentorisingjuniorsandseniors — peoplewho,atthispointintheireducationalcareers,shouldbegettingpaidinternshipsbycompaniesthatactuallywanttohirethemwhentheygraduatefromcollege — duringthesummer — primetimeforinterning!...IfthisisthelevelofdisrespectGooglehaswhenit’scourtingpotentialblackemployees,Icanonlyimaginehowharditistogetanylevelofrespectonceyou’reontheinside.5

Underscoring this point, Lomax noted that Google’s approach suggests that they do

not think Howard students can do the work and that without the company’s

intervention the future for Black coders—and a more diverse Silicon Valley—looked

bleak. “[T]hey’re treating … students like a bunch of lab rats who don’t even

deserve the compensation or access to resume-ready work experience that would

come with a traditional internship opportunity,” which for many others are a

reliable on-ramp to Silicon Valley work, she added. The USA Today reported, at

Howard West, students will “immerse themselves in coding instruction and tech

culture.”6 Herein lies another rub. “Tech culture” is notoriously toxic and this

experiment will place students of color in the path of exposure.


4

Because, as Lomax suggests, there is not a distinct possibility of employment for the

students who will venture to the Googleplex this summer, Howard West is

effectively a computer-coding academy one that, depending on one’s perspective,

either complements or detours a liberal arts education. It also shares temporal

similarities with other computer-coding academies such as the for-profits General

Assembly, Full Stack Academy, and the aptly named DevBootcamp, which promise

to make you a programmer or developer in twelve, seventeen or twenty-four short

weeksforacostofseveralthousanddollars.

Thelastdecadehasseengrowthofanewsectorofthesociallandscape—non-profit

andfor-profitcodingacademies.Thegrowthofthissectormightbeseenasa

responsetothegenerations-oldyearningfor“theAmericandream”andaresponse

toanowdecades-oldpublicdiscourseaboutthe“crisisoftheSTEMfields.”Itis

certainlyconsistentwithpoliticalrhetoricabouttechnologyandprogress.The

ObamaWhiteHouse’slaunchofitsCSforAllinitiativeproclaimedthatcomputer

programmingandcodingare“skillsnecessaryforeconomicopportunityandsocial

mobility.”

Computercodingacademiesandnon-profitsbegantoemergearound2010toteach

technicalskillstovariedconstituencies. The Kapor Center for Social Impact had

compiled a database of more than 300 computer-coding non-profit and for-profit

organizations in the U.S. alone in a 2013 report, withanumberoftheseidentifying

underrepresentedgirlsandastheprincipalconstituencytheyseektoserve.7 Lesser


5

innumber,butmyriad,arethemanycodinglanguagestheseacademieshopeto

impart.Thechoicesofcodebytheorganizationorthestudentarebetsonthefuture.

Oneday,JavaScriptwillhelpdisadvantagedboystogetatoeholdinthejobmarket;

oneday,SCRATCHwillleadayoungwomantoempowerment.

In 2014, NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz counted fifty of these for-profit programs

across the U.S. and abroad estimated to have collected more than seventy million

dollars in tuition. Speaking to Kamenetz about why it was worth, Marlon Frausto

responded that “[t]he main portion [that attracted me] was the empowerment—

being able to create something in terms of technology… That, and obtaining a

trade.”8 In the same year, journalistandactivistVanJoneslaunched#YesWeCode.

whichbundlestheeffortsofgrassroots,community-based,andfor-profitcoding

initiativesinrecentyears,byservingasanodefordiffuseprograms.YesWeCode—

whosepartnersincludeCodeforProgress,CODE2040andDevBootcampaimsto

“train100,000low-opportunityyouthtobecomehigh-levelcomputer

programmers”whowiththistrainingwill“shiftthetrajectoryoftheirownfutures

[and]transformtheirrelationshipswiththeircommunitiesandtheircountry…

#YesWeCodeisbuildingapipelinesolutiontointroducelow-opportunity,job-

focusedyoungpeopletocareersintechnology.

The Howard West initiative is not unlike another recent Google partnership with

Black Girls Code (BGC), the San Francisco, California-based coding non-profit. Space

andproximityarenewtoolsandtheendeavortoexpandtechdiversity.In June


6

2016, BGC’s headquarters moved into Google’s Manhattan offices. Howard West.

BGC East. (ThisspatialstrategyalsoincludesanewGoogleinitiativecalled

CodeNextforhighschoolstudents—acomputerinnovationlabsitedinOakland.As

onelocalputit,“Googlehasjoinedthecommunity.Nowthecommunitymustpushit

toberesponsivetowhatthosekidsneedtosucceedincomputerscience.”)9

BlackGirlsCodewasanearlyentrantinafieldofcomputercodingacademies.

BGC was founded in April 2011 by African American pharmaceutical manager,

Kimberly Bryant, who had studied engineering at Vanderbilt University. After a

challenging start --in 2012, was BGC was pleased with a successful IndieGogo

campaign that crowdsourced $21,000—10,the organization went on to receive

growing and consistent support from many tech companies. In 2016, BGC received a

$2.8 million in-kind donation—6,000 square feet of prime Manhattan office and

classroom space inside of Google’s New York headquarters—in addition to

contributions from a range of other donors. BGC is an unequivocal success story; so

much so that the organization is sought after as having a program that might help to

address the lack of diversity in the technology sector by building a pipeline to the

future that may place supply women of color with the abilities to address the

#techdiversity problem.

BGC also attracts attention and support because Bryant’s aspirations are bold as

these girls—she wants BGC to be nothing less than the “Girl Scouts of coding.”11 By

2014, BGC has reached three thousand girls via seven chapters in the United States


7

and one chapter in South Africa. BGC now boasts 13 chapters in the U.S. and has

reached 6000 students.12 By 2040, Bryant hopes to have reached one million girls.13

BGC hopes to impart in girls of color an interest in technology and computer science.

It also makes available to the girls new narratives of empowerment and skills-

building, allowing them and their families to speculate on new futures:

Iwanttobesomeonewhousescodinginmyprofession.—NicoleManning,9,NewYorkWhenIgrowup,Iwanttobeasciencetechnologisttohelppeopleallaroundtheworldwiththeirsicknesses.—AlexandraAdams,11,Georgia

IwanttobeanentrepreneurwhenIgrowup.—KimoraOliver,11,California

IwouldliketobecomeacomputerscientistwhenIgrowolder.—AlianaTejeda,17,NewJersey

WhenIgrowup,Iaspiretobecomeaquantumphysicist.—MaiRobison,13,California

BlackGirlsCodehaschangedmyfeelingsaboutmyfutureplansbyseeingtheskyisthelimit.—LoganClopton,12,Georgia14

Thesearenotmerepipedreams.TheU.S.BureauofLaborStatisticsisspeculatingas

wellandsaysthatbytheyear2020thetechnologysectorwillhaveonemillion

moreavailablecomputerscience-relatedjobsthanpeoplequalifiedtofillthese

posts.15Memphis native, Bryant “changetheequationforfuturegenerationsofblack

andbrowncreatorsandleadersintechnology”forwhomtheexpectationof

performingwellincomputingis“low.”16


8

BryantwasconvictedtostartBGCafterbeingdeeplydisappointedwithherthen

ten-yearolddaughterKaiMorton’sexperiencesataStanfordUniversitysummer

camp that taught game development, where she was the only person of color and

one of just a few girls. Bryant was surprised that, although decades had passed, her

daughter’s immersion into STEM culture mirrored her own in its lack of diversity.

“Itwasshockingtome.Icouldn’tbelieveithadn’tchanged,thatitwasn’tchanging,”

shesaid.18Aroundthesametime,Bryantwasplanningtoleavethepharmaindustry

tostartahealthtechnologycompany;inthecourseofherresearch,shemadenote

ofthelackofdiversityinthenewstart-upsector.19“Iwasdoingalotofnetworking

tolaunchmyownmobilehealthcompany,”recalledBryant,“Iwasoftenoneofafew

womenintheroomandsometimestheonlypersonofcolor.”20

BGC began in a community center in the Bayview-Hunters Point community in San

Francisco, with the aim of fostering various computing skills in girls from 7 to 17.

As Bryant put it in April 2011, it is “technical educational organization” that is

“focused on introducing girls of color from underrepresented communities to

technology and entrepreneurship.”21Asthecodingacademycottageindustrywas

emerged,programswerelauncheddedicatedtowomen,girlsandtechnology,but

theconstituenciestendedtobeaffluentwhitesandAsianAmericans.Althoughshe’d

laterfacesomecriticismfromBryantnamedherorganizationtohighlightthefact

thatprimaryandsecondaryschoolagedgirlsofcolorarethespecificfocusofits

effortsanditshopeforthefuture.“Whenyoulookathowfewwomenofcolorthere

areintechtoday...thisneedstobeourfocus.”22


9

Within a year there were BGC chapters in Atlanta and Chicago, in addition to San

Francisco, teaching game design, web design, using tools as HTML or Mozilla

Webmaker, robotics, mobile app development, educational open-source educational

language for gaming and animation like SCRATCH, and more advanced

programming languages such as Ruby and Python, to girls on in no- and low-cost

programs that take place after-school, on a single day, over a series of weekends, or

during the summer. A majority of participants receive scholarship support to cover

any registration fees. The programs draw on volunteers from Google, Microsoft,

Apple, LinkedIn, and other companies and incorporates field trips to leading tech

companies into the curriculum.

Kamau Bobb, director for the National Science Foundation’s computer science

education program recently used the phrase “technical ghetto” to capture the fact

that the future bets that computer coding are making may not yield the hoped for

outcomes. Knowledge of the computing languages Java and JavaScript may place

students of color “on the bottom rung of the tech workforce.”23 Indeed, coding may

soon “be nearly obsolete” as AI is leveraged to build apps and write code cutting out

human workers altogether. 24 Coding academies may help to exacerbate a stratified

tech system of makers and visionaries—the very consumption-production disparity

that led Bryant to start Black Girls Code—creating what Bobb calls a “bifurcation of

pathways.” 25 There is a risk that “students from racial and ethnic groups, and lower

socioeconomic backgrounds, are [being] prepped for work as service technicians


10

and helpdesk agents.”26 In short, coding academies may not actually provide the

tools needed for the long run for all of us.

Neithermayaccesstocodingknow-howcomewithanyorientationtosocialand

politicalissues,issuesofinequality,issuesofandprivacyandsurveillance.Digital

researcherWalterVanninibelievesthat“[i]nsistingontheglamourandfunof

codingisthewrongwaytoacquaintkidswithcomputerscience…Asanyonewith

evenminimalexposuretomakingsoftwareknows,behindaminuteoftypingliesan

hourofstudy.It’sbettertoadmitthatcodingiscomplicated,technicallyand

ethically,”hesays.27Vanniniofferstheblackboxofautomationandartificial

intelligenceaskeytheethicalissuesthatarisewithcomputercoding.

Moreandmore‘decisions’arebeingentrustedtosoftware,includinglife-or-deathones:thinkself-drivingcars;thinksemi-autonomousweapons;thinkFacebookandGooglemakinginferencesaboutyourmarital,psychologicalorphysicalstatus,beforesellingittothehighestbidder.Yetit’srarelyintheinterestsofcompaniesandgovernmentstoencourageustoprobewhat’sgoingonbeneaththeseprocesses...Theideathatcodingoffersanunproblematicpathtosocialprogressandpersonalenhancementworkstotheadvantageofthegrowingtechno-plutocracythat’sinsulatingitselfbehinditsowntechnology.

Theproblempresentedhererevealsthechasmbetweentechnicalknowledgeand

education.Quincy Brown, ProgramDirectorforSTEMEducationResearchatthe

AmericanAssociationfortheAdvancementofScienceandformercomputerscience

professoratthehistoricallyBlackBowieStateUniversity,draws a finer distinction

between “computer science and programming.” Brown argues that coding alone is

“training,” while computer science, which builds capacity in problem-solving skills

and other complex thinking processes is “an education.”28 (However, some tech


11

employers do not believe that a traditional higher education track yields the best

potential employees).29 In the surge to diversify tech through coding, we may be

creating a generation with technical skills to land a job (for a time), but one lacking

the fuller skillset one needs to sustain a career, and indeed, a life.

EvenBGCfounderBryantsharessomeofthisambivalence.With all of the success of

her organization, she admits that she not everyone needs to learn how to code. “I

often hesitate to say that everyone should learn to code and [that] it is the same as

what we would consider basic reading literacy. But it is an important literacy for our

youth of today because technology touches everything… It is a critical literacy that

our kids must learn, but not the only one. It doesn’t replace the basic reading,

writing, and arithmetic,” she said in an interview.30 (Contrast this with Barack

Obama, who history will record as our first technological President--–the “Coder-in-

Chief”31--as much as our Black one, and who in a White House radio address in 2016

would say that coding was “a basic skill, right along with the three ‘Rs.’”)32

Forsomecommunitiestheremaybeadditionalconcerns.Inanethnography a

technology training center for women in upstate New York , STS scholar Virginia

Eubanks, argues that the idea that access to new technology improves one’s life is at

odds with the present experiences and future prospects of poor and marginalized

communities. The women Eubanks encountered lived lives “marked not by

technology lack or deficiency but by technological ubiquity” and feelings of

“ambivalence” about its utility.33 They described their extensive use of computers in


12

the “low wage workforce” doing data entry or working in call centers. They worried

about a dystopian future being crafted from a network of “information-gathering

and surveillance technologies—management information systems (MIS), electronic

benefit transfer systems (EBT), closed circuit television, and biometrics—in wide

use in the social service system.”34 How soon will computer coding work soon

become the retrofuture call centers and data entry theaters of the 21st century? Are

programmers and developers encasing themselves in self-made webs of diminished

liberty?Andwhataboutthefun?

SomeofBGC’seducationalprogrammingengagesgirlsofcolorinthe

creationofmobileappsandwebsites,suchasa2014hackathoninBrooklyn,New

Yorkwiththetheme"LoveIsRespect."Forthisoccasion,BGCpartneredwithBreak

theCycle,anorganizationthatfortwo-decadeshasworkedwithyoungpeopleto

raiseawarenessaboutandpreventdatingabuseanddomesticviolence.35Showing

girlshowtousetechnologytoaddress“realworldissues,”asBryantputsit,has

becomeanimportantpartoftheBGCcurriculum.36AsecondBGChackathonin

Brooklynin2015organizedaroundthetheme“ProjectHumanity”challengedthe

girlstobuildprojectsthatwouldadvancesocialjusticecausesandyieldedtwo

standoutapps—a$2000prize-winningonethathelpsstudentstocollaborate

virtuallyandsecondthatonethatraisesawarenessaboutbullying.Buteveninthese

cases,thereisanimpetustoentrepreneurshipandanorientationtothemarket.

This2014event,forexample,wasoneofseveralinwhichgirlswouldcompetetobe

judgedtohavethebestapp,withthewinningonebeing“developedandsoldby


13

Verizon,whichwilldonate$3,upto$5,000,foreveryappsoldtoanorganization

workingonteendatingviolenceprevention.”37

AsBGChasevolved,itsaddedtheteachingofmoresophisticatedcomputingtools

andcodinglanguagestoitsrepertoire,movingfrombeginner-andkid-friendly

SCRATCHandgraduatingtoRubyandPython.KnowledgeofPythonisamarketable

skill,butthelinkbetweencodingandcreatingworkforsocialbenefitbecomesmore

abstractasthelanguagebecomesmorecomplex.

ANoteonFreedom

GabriellaColeman’sdeftexaminationaglobalcommunityofmostly-male,mostly

whiteDebianhackersdrawsattentiontotheirintertwinedmoralandtechnicallives.

Thisstudymostlycoverstheearly2000sandalthoughcodersandhackersarenot

thesame,oneisstruckbyhowmuchhaschangedinjustoveradecade.Whileallof

thehackersColemanencounteredwerenotexplicitlypolitical(shecallsisa“narrow

politics),theyunderstoodthattheirworkandtheirtoolsbothhadpoliticalvalences

orientedaroundanethicoffreedom.Shedelineatesthreecentralfreedoms:the

libertytoeditanddistributefreesoftware(“referringtofreedom,notprice),the

ideaofcodeasfreespeech,andthe“freedomtolaborwithinaframeworkoftheir

ownmaking.”38Coleman’sworkisaproductivecontrastwiththecomputercoding

movementthatwouldemergeafewyearslaterthatsublimatedlabortoautonomy

andcreativityandpoliticstosocioeconomicmobility.Notably,thehackersColeman


14

introducesustoareoftenself-taughtandoftenmaintaintheirhackervalues

alongsidepaidworkinthecorporateworld.Themessagearoundcodingismore

simplistic:thejobaloneisthedesiredend.

Colemandescribesseveralqualitiesofthatthelifehistoriesofhackersseemto

share.Amongthesearechildhoodorearlyexperienceswithprogrammingthatthey

found“personallygratifying”—akindofcreativeautonomythatshecalls

“craftiness”—andlinkedtothisanunderstandingthatthiscoding“heldaformof

socialutilityand/oreconomicpowerthatsolvedreal-worldproblems.”39As

Coleman’sworkdemonstrates,itistheyokingtogetherofcodingasaformof

creativeexpressionthatallowsoneto“cultivatethetechnicalself”withasenseof

whatthisworkdoesandmeansinthelargerworldandanethicalresponsibilityto

thislargercommunitythatgetsusclosertocodingfreedom.

Atitsbest,thisseemstobetheexperiencethatBGChopestofacilitateforthegirlsit

serves.Butthismaybeputatriskifendingthe“STEMfieldcrisis”andincreasing

#techdiversitytakeprecedenceoverusingtechnicallearningtobuildbroader

criticalcapacities,includingproblem-solvingandcreativethinkingskills.Thisisa

difficultchallengetobalancewhencodingislookedtoasthesutureforthefraying

edgesoftheAmericansocialcontract.

.

Blackgirlscodeandthenwhat?IfCSforallofusisavaluableend,thevaluedoes

notlieinasoleyinstrumentaloutcome.Rather,Blackgirlsandallofusshould


15

graspenoughaboutcomputingthatwecanunderstandthemachinesthat

increasingshapeourworld.Blackgirlsandallofusshouldbetaughttocultivatea

criticaltechliteracyaroundcodingtobeabletodecipherthealgorithmiclogicsthat

liebehind#fakenews,direct-to-consumergenetictestingands0-called“predictive

policing.”Blackgirlsandallofusbringmoretothetablethan#techdiversity.Black

girlsandallofusshouldknowmorethanvocationalcomputingtothatwecanfoster

whatEubanksterms“criticaltechnologicalcitizenship.”40Wewantandneeda

futureinwhichmanyofusknowenoughaboutthescienceandtechnologiesthat

nowformtheinfrastructureofoursocialworld.Butwedonotneedthisonlyforjob

prospects,weneedafuturetobeinginwhichacommitmenttosocialjusticecanbe

unwaveringevenasweenterthroughtheuncertainportalofanotherbravenew

world.

1MeganRoseDickey,“TheFireInsideRev.JesseJackson,”TechCrunch,April28,2016https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/28/the-fire-inside-rev-jesse-jackson/2NiklasLuhmann.1976.“TheFutureCannotBegin:TemporalStructuresinModernSociety,”SocialResearch43(1):140.3JesseJackson,Sr.,“The2PercentProblemandWhatI’mDoingAboutIt,”HuffingtonPost.com,April11,2016.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-jesse-jackson/the-2-percent-problem-and-what-im-doing-about-it_b_9662916.html4https://www.google.com/diversity/5HallieLomax,“’HowardWest,’andEpidemicofBlackScrutiny,”Medium,https://medium.com/@hallielomax/howard-west-and-epidemic-of-black-scrutiny-9377ae8392a2.Emphasisintheoriginal.6GoogleopensHowardUniversityWesttotrainblackcode,USAToday,March23,2017https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/03/23/howard-university-google/99518020/


16

7CODINGNATION:TheKaporCenterCodingLandscape—2013ReportandDatabase.http://www.kaporcenter.org/coding-nation-300-programs-offer-coding-comp-sci-education/8AnyaKamenetz,“12Weekstoa6-FigureJob,”NPR.org,December20,2014,http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/12/20/370954988/twelve-weeks-to-a-six-figure-job9DaveyAlba,“The Google Lab That’s Building a Legion of Diverse Coders,” WIRED, October 6, 2016. https://www.wired.com/2016/10/google-lab-thats-building-legion-diverse-coders/ 10https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blackgirlscode-s-2012-summer-of-code#/11DebraRosenberg,“CouldThisbetheAnswertotheTechWorld’sDiversityProblem,”Smithsonian,November2014.http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/answer-tech-worlds-diversity-problem-180953046/12Mary K. Pratt, “Black Girls Code founder looks to expand skills outreach, challenges CIOs to help the cause,” ComputerWorld, February 11, 2015. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2877211/black-girls-code-founder-looks-to-expand-skills-outreach-challenges-cios-to-help-the-cause.html13Rosenberg,“CouldThisbetheAnswertotheTechWorld’sDiversityProblem.”14Ibid.15C.BrettLockardandMichaelWolf,“Occupationalemploymentprojectionsto2020,”MonthlyLaborReview,January2012.https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/01/art5full.pdf16http://www.blackgirlscode.com/blog/archives/04-201118MarissaLang,“KimberlyBryant,BlackGirlsCodefounder,OpensDoorsinTech,”SanFranciscoChronicle,http://www.sfchronicle.com/visionsf/article/Kimberly-Bryant-Black-Girls-Code-founder-opens-10995066.php19KimberlyBryant,BlackGirlsCODE“SeasonsofCODE,”2012,https://www.changemakers.com/girltech/entries/black-girls-code20KiraTianaFreelon,“BlackGirlsCodeBringsMoreWomenofColortoSiliconValley,”Loop21,November18,2011.https://women2.com/stories/2011/11/18/black-girls-code-brings-more-women-of-color-to-silicon-valley21http://www.blackgirlscode.com/blog/archives/04-201122Lang,“KimberlyBryant,BlackGirlsCodefounder,OpensDoorsinTech.”23MelindaD.Anderson,“WillthePushforCodingLeadto‘TechinicalGhettos,’”TheAtlantic,February29,2016.https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/will-the-push-for-coding-lead-to-technical-ghettos/471300/24Ibid.25Ibid.26Ibid.27WalterVannini,“CodingisNot‘Fun,’It’sTechnicallyandEthicallyComplex”Aeon,September23,2016.https://aeon.co/ideas/coding-is-not-fun-it-s-technically-and-ethically-complexAccessedDecember26,2016.


17

28Anderson,“WillthePushforCodingLeadto‘TechnicalGhettos.”29Jon Swartz, “Tech jobs are thriving nationwide -- up to 7.3M,” USA Today, April 3, 2017. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/04/03/tech-jobs-thriving-nationwide----up-73m/99789502/30HanaBaba,“BlackGirlsCodetrainsyoungwomenofcolorforcareersintech:InterviewwithKimberlyBryantandKaiMorton,”SoundOpinions(KALWRadio),August12,2014,http://kalw.org/post/black-girls-code-trains-young-women-color-careers-tech#stream/031https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-all32“WeeklyAddress:GivingEveryStudentanOpportunitytoLearnThroughComputerScienceForAll,”January30,2016.https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/30/weekly-address-giving-every-student-opportunity-learn-through-computer.QuotedinAnderson,“WillthePushforCodingLeadto‘TechnicalGhettos.’”33VirginiaEubanks,DigitalDeadEnd:FightingforSocialJusticeintheInformationAge.Cambridge:MITPress,2011,xv,10.34Eubanks,82.35https://www.breakthecycle.org/about-us36ContessaGayles,“Blackgirlstakeontech'sdiversitywoes,”CNN.com,June12,2014.http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/10/technology/innovation/black-girls-code-hackathon/37Gayles,“Blackgirlstakeontech’sdiversitywoes.”38E.GabriellaColeman,CodingFreedom:TheEthicsandAestheticsofHacking.Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,2013,1.39Coleman,29.40Eubanks,xx.


coding freedom? alondra nelson, columbia university · the future cannot begin. indeed ......

Documents