5 Lessons from 5 Years of Creating Economic Opportunity — Lesson Five: Hearts and Minds Matter Most

As All Star Code closes out its Fifth Anniversary celebration year, here is the final reflection in a series on how I successfully developed the concept that became a leading computer science education organization focused on young men of color. To read previous lessons from this article series click here.

Changing hearts is how you change minds…

… and changing minds is how you change actions.

In order to change the way institutions act, you need to change the minds of the people within them. Presenting facts alone won’t necessarily provide this, but provoking emotions will. Broadly speaking, to see the change you seek, you need to make people care.

LESSON FIVE: HEARTS AND MINDS MATTER MOST

When All Star Code first began, programmatic results were the focus. As mentioned before, branding was not a priority. There was no public announcement, there was no press release about my intention to do something. I was under the impression that I should only advertise when I actually did something. My original philosophy was “don’t promote ideas, promote results.”

However — people didn’t know there was a problem.

This was a huge surprise. It never occurred to me that the extent of the greater world was not paying attention. The girls’ tech initiatives were booming. Kimberly Bryant had founded Black Girls Code in 2011, and Reshma Saujani had begun Girls Who Code shortly after in 2012. At the time, the initiatives were young, untested, and fighting for traction among tech companies and computer scientists.

But no one was focusing on boys and young men of color.

The culture of technology was dominated by a concept of black/white thinking of an engineer. The most prestigious engineers were thought to be self-taught and had naturally come to computer science during puberty or before (even engineers who came to computer science in school are deemed less prestigious — and this needs changing). This group was predominantly made up of white men and (more recently) Asians. Although Asian-Americans were doing very well in the field, they still faced a “yellow ceiling” where they were less likely to be promoted into an executive position/senior leadership.

I looked at it and saw a disaster for people of color, where the steward of the industry/gatekeepers did not highly value the education pipeline. College degrees and graduate degrees, are still the pipeline into better lives, and moving out of poverty. As one of my first major donors said, an African American, with a large investment bank, “they’re moving the goalposts on us. First they won’t let us into the school, and now here we are all degreed up and now they say school doesn’t matter.” When he said that — I realized he was seeing the world the way I was.

Guys, wake up call. They moved the goal posts on us.

In making change, the secret to success is understanding the problem well enough to pick the right problem to solve. The gatekeepers of tech didn’t even know that this was a problem ergo they were doing nothing to solve it. They thought that their system was completely fair, but people of color were not occupying the highest level of computer science. That’s why at the time, nothing was happening. The focus was more so on addressing the digital divide among youth, making the Internet and computer science principles available to everyone, (i.e. computers and faster internet in public schools), strengthening online-only curriculums and making them free.

We needed to also empower young men of color to be successful in tech.

Data can convince people but it is important to include anecdotal data. A single powerful story, that’s three-dimensional enough, distills why your issue is important. Here’s our origin story as Fast Company reported in 2013.

How do you change hearts and minds? Raise awareness from the very beginning. It allows for movement building, and narrative change which is the beginning of the impact you seek to see. If you change hearts and minds, you can change the world.

All Star Code creates economic opportunity by developing a new generation of boys and young men of color with an entrepreneurial mindset who have the tools they need to succeed in a technological world.

All Star Code envisions a country where all young men of color have the access to the tools of success, and where the ability to thrive is available to all who are willing to dare greatly.