- Me and Michael
I’ve often said in starting this nonprofit venture (TechLearnIT) that I’m the wrong face. Given that, I’ve met the challenge and have “faced” the race issue head on.
Born in 1949, I have distinct memories of segregation. I grew up in a small town in West Texas, attended Permian High School (currently featured in the TV show “Friday Night Lights”), married, had a child and moved into the suburbs. Throughout those years, I may have encountered a handful of Blacks. Even in the “burbs” I seldom had any interaction with them. Having lived in New Orleans, Birmingham, Houston, and Atlanta the only issues I experienced with race were when Blacks wanted to move into our neighborhood — on those rare occassions, phone lines would be burning and discussions of whether to flee or stay was a major concern. As late as the 90s, I lost two close friends that did not want to live across the street from Blacks and hurriedly sold their homes. When I returned to school in my late forties at The University of Georgia (1998 through 2004) there were only a handful of Black students in my classes — in graduate school there were even less. I could easily maintain a presence in the “burbs,” work in the area, and still have little contact with anyone from a different ethnic background.
What brought me to this point? Interestingly, it was age discrimination. I acquired my degrees late in life. I was 55 years of age when I graduated. Throughout I applied for several positions. After receiving numerous rejection letters (too many to count), I was forced to seriously reconsider my career options. For a position in higher education, I was too old to obtain tenure. For a teaching position, my doctoral degree was too expensive as a starting teacher. I was unable to compete with younger teachers holding only bachelor degrees. The anomaly of an older face on a person normally associated with someone half my age starting a new career was more than anyone could comprehend. Bottom line, there were no career options.
What next? I resorted to following one of the recommendations for women seeking a new career after a long employment gap. I started volunteering. That led me to working with youth in shelters and mentoring them with their homework. During that time, I experienced the difficulties children had with completing homework assignments using the local library’s computers. These libraries were located in largely Black communities. They were seriously overcrowded causing children and adults to wait for their assigned ticket number to be called. Once called, they were limited from 30 to 60 minutes of computer time. Such restrictions were inadequate for completing homework assignments. My exposure to this environment provided the framework for understanding the degree of disparity between mysellf and the Blacks around me — the chasm of the digital divide that separated the haves and have-nots with respect to Internet access and computer technology.
Although mentoring gave me some insight into the face of race, my actual epiphany occurred when I was asked by this nonprofit to attend a mentoring session. This was at the end of 2006. I said, “yes,” and on that day went to Morehouse College’s Sale Chapel Hall to attend the Atlanta Care’s Mentoring Rally featuring Susan Taylor, the former editor of Essence Magazine. I should have known something was amiss when I drove up to the college and the parking guard started laughing — rather chuckling. I blithely got out of my car and began walking in the direction of the gathering and soon realized why. The place was packed — all of the attendants were Black except for a handful of individuals. Having never experienced a situation where I was in the minority, I was extremely uncomfortable — even anxious. I stayed because Ididn’t know what else to do. After sitting down and seeing Dads and Moms with their kids acting like normal human beings I thought, “OK,” maybe I can handle this.
Then I listened. I had never seen a beautiful, exotic Black female like Susan Taylor. She was riveting — in her appearance, her speech, and her demeanor. Just unbelievable.
However, I was floored emotionally after hearing one of the featured speakers, Judge Glenda Hatchett, tell a story from her childhood. As I recall her stating, she was born in 1949 the same year as I. She talked about the time as a little girl in grade school she was assigned to read a page out of a textbook — every student was given a page to read out loud before the class. The night before she wanted to practice reading and sat down in her father’s lap with her book in hand. She turns to the page she was assigned and starts to read, but the page was missing. As any young girl would, she then looks up at her dad and implores him to go out and get her another book, this one with the page included. Sadly her dad looks down at her and says, ” I can’t do that. You’re only allowed to use the books that have been thrown away in the garbage.”
Until that day, I was never fully aware of the difficulties of being a Black person. A young girl, just like me, was growing up at the same time and was denied access to one of the basic fundamental educational tools — a textbook. At that moment, I caught a glimpse of what it must have been like for Blacks before the Civil Rights movement.
With so many personal changes occurring in my life, I thought now would be an opportune time to consider starting my own nonprofit and addressing the technological needs of minority students and adults without Internet access. Since I was a new researcher and having recently completed my dissertation, I began with a needs analysis to determine if DeKalb County in metropolitan Atlanta was in fact a good target for my services. At first, it was the statistics that drove the project. Sure enough demographics and the high number of kids on the free lunch program validated my early perception of the economic disposition of the area. It was the research which determined that based on race, in all likelihood about 30% of the students would not have Internet access after school.
Armed with my research and a desire to change the status quo, I founded TechLearnIT in late 2007. From there, I opened a nonprofit computer training and learning center in the Decatur area (December 2008) that will hopefully be successful in bridging the digital divide. By offering up-to-date computer training at an affordable price in a safe friendly environment, underserved Black and other minority students and adults will have the opportunity to compete in a global workforce.
With any luck, through TechLearnIT’s programs, we can all face the race issue and try to bridge not only a digital divide but a cultural divide as well.
