#blacklivesmatter

5 min readJul 9, 2016

by Emily Dowdle

It’s been a rough week.

Let me state the obvious. We at Turing support Black Lives Matter (BLM), support cops and are absolutely horrified at the events of the last few days.

This Is Our Problem

I think the most empowering but difficult part of our democracy is that every problem is our problem. And I mean all of us.

So in these moments — when I feel shocked and confused and sad and worried — I try to focus on what I can do about it.

Jeff posed a question yesterday on Slack: “Serious question: as people of privilege and capability, what are we going to do to end violence? Or will we say it’s ‘not in my backyard?’”

The responses showed the diversity of the Turing community. Here are a few highlights:

“I strongly feel that one of the main sources of this tension is mass incarceration. It only exacerbates our institutionalized society. I looked into the federal prison’s APIs and I think they are depressingly neglected. That could potentially be a good place to start.”
“Perhaps if we individually spend more time and energy cultivating a culture of understanding, patience, and empathy towards one another, even on a very granular level, we might help to reduce some violence. It’s not a recipe to change the world, or to change humanity, but perhaps it might reduce some of the existential frustration which plagues our civilization.”
“In particular, and in no uncertain terms, we need to get the guns off of our streets and out of our country. Remove them both from the hands of the citizenry and law enforcement. It will work, it has been shown to be very effective in plenty of other places around the world. So what can we as privileged, intelligent people do? We can outspend, out-voice, and outvote the NRA, ‘gun rights’ advocates, and the politicians they’ve purchased. That’s what we can do.”
“… the NRA is very good about consistently calling their reps in Congress. Not just after a shooting, but all the time, especially when bills come up. I was thinking about trying to make an app that would just send you email reminders to call your rep (monthly basis or something like that).”
“Yes there are shitty cops out there. Yes, there are racist cops out there and yes, there are cops I wouldn’t trust with a potato gun let alone a real gun and the power to revoke constitutional rights. It’s an imperfect system and I think most try to do a very difficult job to the best of their ability.”

Bias and Privilege

I’m a white woman. Which means I’m pretty good at picking out how men are privileged but not so great at recognizing how I’m at an advantage because of my pale (ghostly?) skin.

But I’ve had a few thoughts.

I was once pulled over for speeding. First of all, I was once pulled over. One time.

I didn’t put both my hands on the wheel as the cop approached my car and I probably reached toward my glove compartment to grab my insurance card before I was asked to do so. The cop didn’t pull a weapon on me.

I didn’t have my insurance card (oops) but wasn’t pulled out of my car, handcuffed or questioned. I wasn’t accused of having drugs in the car or asked to open my trunk. He simply wrote me an order to verify my car insurance within 30 days. No ticket. Nothing. Because I was white.

I’m from DC. There’s a neighborhood in southeast DC called Anacostia, a black neighborhood, that has a reputation for drugs and murder. Now DC’s not so great with road signs. And if you miss certain turns, you have no way of turning around. For miles.

My friend, a white woman, missed a turn while driving at night and ended up in Anacostia. Within minutes, a cop pulled her over. “What are you doing here?” he asked. She responded that she was lost.

Let’s reflect. He assumed she didn’t belong and gave her the benefit of the doubt that she wasn’t there to buy an eightball of crack. He told her she needed to leave and instructed her to follow him out of Anacostia and back across the river.

These have been my interactions with cops. All positive. I wouldn’t hesitate to call 911 if I needed to. Because I think they’d use their guns to protect me, not kill me.

And that right there — unbelievably — is privilege.

What Turing’s Doing

Turing takes diversity seriously. Fridays at Turing focus on soft skills and community. Gear Up, an hour-long small group discussion is an activity meant to challenge us, introduce new perspectives and make us better human beings.

My first week at Turing, Gear Up was on privilege. I thought it was great. But it ruffled a few feathers. And led to months of discussion about gender and race. Other Gear Ups have focused on ageism, microagressions, women in tech and many more difficult topics.

More than anything else, we don’t hide from diversity. We lean into it. We recognize the problem and work toward solutions.

Turing is committed to making our program inviting and accessible to a broad range of people, regardless of academic background, professional background, age, race, gender, or sexual orientation.
We offer 4 diversity scholarships every module.
Turing is making tech more diverse: women make up 27% of graduates and another 27% are people of color. Yay!

We Genuinely Care

When I was offered a spot at Turing, my daughter was 6 months old and I was still breastfeeding. I wrote Jeff an email asking if there was a private place I could pump throughout the day.

What Jeff did next sold me on Turing forever. He turned a bare electrical closet into a welcoming lactation room. He brought in a comfortable chair, two lamps and a table from home. Just for me.

I’ve watched Jeff build a ramp by hand so that Turing could be wheelchair-accessible for another student. Turing has bought groceries for a struggling student and offered to help pay for childcare for a student in a pinch.

That’s putting people before profits.

Help Us Out

A few of us submitted talks to Denver Startup Week regarding diversity. Take a minute to vote.

Emily Dowdle is a Turing alumna and software engineer at Wazee Digital. Originally from DC, she’s a competitive powerlifter and can deadlift 265 lbs.

Emily writes about technology, soft skills and team management at emilydowdle.com and is an embarrassingly poor Twitter user.