How We’re Building a More Inclusive Future: Code2040’s Principles on Race and Equity

by Karla Monterroso, VP of Programs, Code2040

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

-Toni Morrison

I’ve been thinking about this Toni Morrison quote so much lately. I probably don’t need to say this but: We live in scary times.

The physical and emotional toll of our public discourse makes it increasingly difficult to focus on, or even imagine, a better future. When today requires so much of us, who has time think about tomorrow?

But ignoring the future — specifically the kind of future we want and the steps we need to take to get there—makes us even more vulnerable. Without a vision, a path forward, and a community committed to seeing it come to fruition, we may never dismantle the structures and systems that keep us living in fear in the first place.

It used to be that when we spoke of community at Code2040, we spoke intimately: I could tell you the name, face, and life story of each community member. Now, there are 5,000 of us and what we have lost in intimacy we have gained in strength, and nothing could bring us more inspiration and joy. Now, as we move ahead and continue to grow, we are committed to making sure that this community is not one that is constantly put in the position of justifying ourselves or our belonging, nor one that spins its wheels addressing the symptoms of segregation in and exclusion from tech. Rather, we are committed to making sure this is a community that is loud, proud, and that deals with the causes of systemic exclusion head on. If this issue stays tied to data releases and sexual harassment charges — as valuable as shedding light on those pieces are, we will never move forward. We have signed up for the deep work.

For that reason, at Code2040 we recently wrote a set of operating principles on race and equity that clearly lay out our beliefs on race equity work and how we operationalize them. We believe that building a clear set of principles for ourselves and our community will allow us to help each other grow, hold each other accountable, and answer the many questions that come with setting our ambitious goals to close the wealth and opportunity gap for Black and Latinx communities.

We’ve been doing this work for five years. While there are common questions that we get asked—Why do you focus on Black and Latinx people? Why tech?—we want to be sure that we not only address those, but an oft-unasked yet much bigger question:

What does it look like for more and more of us to work towards racial equity?

What tools do we need? What conversations must be had? Where and how should this work take place? We explored these questions and more as a staff and with our community members. After months of revision, the final version is below and has two parts: The first explains why we center our work on Black and Latinx people. The second lists our five guiding principles and how we put them into action.*

We’re sharing this information so that as our community grows, our approach is clear. We hope that by providing clarity and transparency on our very specific commitments to racial justice, our framework can serve as a guide to those in our community engaged in the day to day challenges and triumphs of equity work. Over the coming weeks, we’ll go deeper into how and why we developed each one, and share in a dedicated publication we’ve created. We’re excited to be in conversation with you about each of them. We hope this can help those of you starting out in this conversation and those of you already in the thick of it. Together we can be in the deep work so needed in this moment.

Read our principles and why we focus on Black and Latinx people.

With excitement, compassion and solidarity,

Karla