Prince Quietly Helped Launch a Coding Program For Inner City Youth (qz.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Though many would say Prince changed the world through his music, the artist also took a hands-on approach to changing the world beyond music. The global superstar was the inspiration behind YesWeCode, an Oakland nonprofit, which works to help young people from minority backgrounds enter the tech world. The idea for the program came from a conversation between Prince and his friend Van Jones, who heads Rebuild the Dream charity, following the 2012 shooting of teenager Travoyn Martin. "Prince said, 'A black kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a thug. A white kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a Silicon Valley genius. Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mark Zuckerberg.'" Jones told CNN. The program is aiming to teach 100,000 low-income non-white teenagers how to write code, and was launched at the 20th Anniversary Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2014.

Comments

next needed: "from poor backgrounds"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> young people from minority backgrounds enter the tech world

The whole "special access due to skin color/gender" bit is getting a bit old, when what's really probably needed is "special access to people from impoverished backgrounds." When you've never seen anyone in your family working in a corporate office, it's a little hard to see understand what a career in IT/legal/other-cushy-white-collar-job could be, and there are plenty of "non-minority" kids stuck in that world too.

I like Prince but.

[LWATCDR]

1. A white kid walking around at night in a hoodie looks like a thug also. He does not look like a tech billionaire.
2. All low income kids need help regardless of race.
3. Sure programing and tech can be a good way to make a living but studies have shown that people that go to vocational schools leave school with jobs and little debt.

Re:How the F***

[Anonymous Coward]

But stating that some groups are eligible for something and others are not is not correcting structural racism, it's merely switching the target of it. As long as "correcting" something involves putting somebody else at a disadvantage, there can never be hope of eliminating it.