On Wednesday, March 11, 2020, Coded by Kids CEO, Sylvester Mobley provided testimony to Philadelphia City Council Members, Helen Gym and Isaiah Thomas, during city council hearings on children and youth. The focus of the hearings was on the role that Out of School Time (OST) programs play in the lives of Philadelphia’s children. Below is an excerpt of his testimony:
“The consulting firm McKinsey conducted research to find out what the future of work for black people in America looked like and to determine the role that automation would play.
McKinsey found three things:
- Black people are concentrated in jobs that have the highest likelihood of displacement due to automation,
- Black people are underrepresented in the jobs that will have the lowest rates of expected displacement, and
- Black people are concentrated in slow-growing, low-paying roles even if those jobs survive automation.
To put it simply, the jobs that Black people are in are disappearing because of automation and we are not in the jobs that we need to be in because we are not prepared for them.
If we look specifically at Philadelphia, more than 40% of Philadelphia’s population is black but according to a 2017 report by the workplace data and analytics firm Paysa, only 2.5% of people in tech in Philadelphia are black. In a city where the majority of the residents are black, only 2.5% of us are in jobs in tech. Those are the jobs that will be around, are rapidly growing, and pay high salaries.
Let’s put this in the context of the bigger picture. Every elected official in the city that I talk to sees gentrification as a problem. But what is fueling gentrification in the city of Philadelphia is the growth in the tech and innovation economies. Think about it, if Black people were in tech, we wouldn’t be victims of gentrification and we would be able to reap the benefits of the growth. When we talk about crime and gun violence in the city, it is pretty well understood and documented that in places where people lack access to opportunity you also have high rates of crime and violence. What do you think is going to happen to the city’s crime rate as more Black people find themselves unemployed or severely underemployed?
Coded by Kids works as an OST provider to stop this future from happening. Right now, Coded by Kids is working without the funding or support needed from the City to ensure that our children have access to the opportunities they deserve and need. We work in schools and with nonprofits across the city to ensure that our children have the tech skills to not just be the city’s next generation of tech workers but also the city’s next generation of tech CEOs. We work to make sure that our children have everything needed to not be victims of growth and to not just take part in growth but to drive growth.
Our programs ensure that our children are prepared for the future and are able to be leaders in it.
Think about something. When Martin Luther King was in Tennessee organizing sanitation workers, at the root of it, it was about equal access to economic opportunity. Why, because equal and equitable access to economic opportunity is a civil right. Right now, Philadelphia children are facing a future where they will not have access to economic opportunity.Right now, we are facing a civil rights issue that very few people seem to understand or recognize. Right now, we are facing a future that isn’t the future our children deserve and Coded by Kids is working to give them the future they deserve.
Increased funding and support would provide us with the resources to make sure they get the future they deserve.”
To learn more about Coded by Kids and to support the fight against inequity, go to codedbykids.com.
