This holiday season I’m highlighting Prince’s activism and philanthropy, including the charities he supported. From 2014:
Prince, hoodies and #YesWeCode
by Van Jones
People always ask me how Prince got involved with #YesWeCode, an initiative I helped to found. #YesWeCode aims to help train 100,000 low-opportunity youth to become high-level computer programmers.
The truth is, it was Prince who sparked the idea.
It was right around the time when the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin verdict came out. Martin was an unarmed, black teenager who was shot and killed in a Florida neighborhood in 2012. My immediate reaction to the verdict was “racism won.”
But Prince had an interesting perspective. He said, “When an African-American kid is wearing a hoodie, people think he’s a thug. But when a white kid is wearing a hoodie, people think he’s the next Mark Zuckerberg.”
Prince said the question we should be asking ourselves is this: why aren’t we producing more African-Americans and Latinos who are excelling in technology and helping to run Silicon Valley? If we focused on changing that number, then we could change that stereotype — and empower a whole generation.
That was the moment that the seed was planted for #YesWeCode.
We want to flip the script and give our hoodie-wearing youth the same tools, training and technology that the kids have who are taking over SiliconValley …
So much is possible, if we stop wasting the genius. Youth of color transformed music and sports in the last century. In this new century, that same creative energy must be unleashed to transform the technology sector — creating new work, new wealth and new solutions for communities that desperately need all three.
Out of such an initiative, we could support hundreds or even thousands of Mark Zuckerbergs — with a whole lot of them looking like Trayvon Martin.
To learn more about “YesWeCode or to make a donation to help realize Prince’s vision for our youth, go to http://www.yeswecode.org/
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