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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.
Picture a coder, what do you imagine? Is it a dark room with rows of blinking screens, a young white man frantically clicking the keys of a desktop as he leans in close, a sudden eureka moment? At Black Girls CODE, that's not how it goes. There are no brogrammers.
Unknown Female Speaker: We're flipping the script because everyone should feel like they belong in tech, and that starts with better representation and computer science curriculum so more girls can get excited about building the skills that can change the future.
Melissa Harris-Perry: The focus of Black Girls CODE is on changing the face of technology by introducing Black girls aged 7 to 17 to fields of technology and computer sciences. Kimberly Bryant founded Black Girls CODE in 2011, and it has since grown from a grassroots initiative to an international organization. Now, last year was a bit destabilizing for the organization, as Bryant departed in an unhappy severance, but still, the core mission of Black Girls CODE remains, and it's just as relevant as ever.
We spoke to Interim Executive Director Sofia Mohammed, about the ways Black girls are changing and challenging the world of tech. As the mom of a nine-year-old, who pretty regularly describes herself as a future "YouTuber," can you tell me what is Black Girls CODE?
Sofia Mohammed: I love that. Black Girls CODE is on a mission to put Black girls first in tech, and we are doing that by introducing them to skills in computer programming and technology.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I know that you all are not just teaching coding in the most narrow sense. For you all, what is coding?
Sofia Mohammed: Yes. The technical term 'coding' is giving a bunch of instructions to a computer so that it can do the things that you want it to do. On a different level, it is also an opportunity for girls to be able to learn problem-solving skills, being precise, practicing creativity and innovation. Our girls do something with coding that interests them because I know when I was 7 years old, or 9 years old, or 10 years old, I was not jumping out of bed to sign up for a one-year course on JavaScript. That did not excite me. I'm sure it may not excite the majority of nine-year-olds out there, but they will get excited if they were drawing their self-portrait through coding, so that's what we try to do.
Melissa Harris-Perry: It's funny, I do remember, at the age of 9 to 11, certainly never jumping up to be excited about learning JavaScript. I can remember that in some of the earlier, let's say, 15, 20 years ago conversations about science and technology, the language around race and gender and equity was the reason that tech and science and math matter is because race doesn't matter in this context, gender doesn't matter in this context.
It can be a level playing field because it's simply all meritocracy, all sorts of your computational skills. Now, a couple of decades later, it's pretty clear that race and gender, and identity actually do matter in this field. Can you help us understand what it means to say that race and gender identity matter in STEM?
Sofia Mohammed: Absolutely. As a former math teacher, I always consider myself a forever educator. I understand in the classroom when teaching how it is so important for students to see themselves in their learning.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, quick pause. More on The Takeaway in just a moment.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back. It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. I'm continuing my conversation with Sofia Mohammed, Interim Executive Director of Black Girls CODE.
Sofia Mohammed: Technology is part of our everyday life, and excluding a large majority of the population from the creation of the technology is a disservice to the potential solutions that could come up for the world. That's why it's important to include race and gender in the conversation around technology.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Black Girls CODE has been around for more than a decade. Which means-- and I love your language of being a forever educator. That once you're a teacher, always a teacher. Of course, the best part of teaching in certain ways are the alum, the folks that come back 5, 10 years later, and now Black Girls CODE has real grown-up Black girls out in the world. What have you heard from some of your alum?
Sofia Mohammed: We've heard from our alum that the experiences that they had with Black Girls CODE has influenced them to make certain decisions in college and where they're studying. In fact, one of our alumni is-- she's a sophomore now at Spelman College, and she comes back at Black Girls CODE, and actually, she's involved in our Code Along series as one of the hosts, the on-camera hosts that does the instruction, so really cool to see her journey full circle.
Melissa Harris-Perry: You mentioned the Code Along series. Talk to me a little bit about it.
Sofia Mohammed: Code Along is a new project that Black Girls CODE launched alongside our partner GoldieBlox. It's really exciting because it's going to be the first time that we are launching an asynchronous program that puts Black girls and girls of color in the forefront of computer science education as hosts and as instructors of a computer science curriculum.
Julian: What's up, beautiful people? It's your girl Julian, and I'm so excited to welcome you to the CODE zone. I'll be your host for this digital series Code Along, coding art with meaning in p5.js, brought to you by Black Girls CODE.
Sofia Mohammed: Imagine, if you right now search coding tutorials on YouTube or on Google, it is not likely that you will see Black girls literally instructing how to do computer science. You might see brogrammers, you might see middle-aged white men on their whiteboard or on their old school computer, but we here are saying, "No, a Black girl can actually be the instructor in this coding tutorial." We're going to give it to you in a friendly, in a very fun, in a very warm way so that girls can be engaged.
Melissa Harris-Perry: A final question for you. For folks who are listening who might have their own young person in their household who they think could benefit from being engaged with Black Girls CODE, how do they get involved?
Sofia Mohammed: If you want to get involved in Black Girls CODE, go to wearebgc.org and sign up for our community portal. That is where we will communicate all the upcoming workshops and all the upcoming events and courses that we're hosting to teach you computer science and to be in community with you. Second is if you want to do computer science education asynchronously in your own time, in your own way, check out our YouTube page, Black Girls CODE, and all the Code Along tutorials will be available for you to view and to follow along. Again, this is something that we have created alongside GoldieBlox, and we're really excited for you to engage with it.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Sofia Mohammed is Interim Executive Director of Black Girls CODE, and a forever educator. Sophia, thanks so much for being here with us today.
Sofia Mohammed: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
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