2040 Hinges on US: Remembering Kehontas Rowe and Honoring the Power of Black Tech Visionaries
By Jardana Peacock, Code2040 Director of Development
In 2007 I met and fell in love with Kehontas Rowe. As orange monarch butterflies touched down on our lunch spread under an oak tree in Louisville, Kentucky, Kehontas shared with me, I want to be a movement technologist. I wasn’t sure what she meant. I was a young white activist who was involved in fair wage campaigns across the city, queer youth and racial justice issues on the college campus and beyond. I was enrolled in the Black Studies program at the University of Louisville because I knew something was wrong with the white colorblind approach of my upbringing and the gentrified response of the neighborhoods I lived in throughout my life. Kehontas understood then that tech is critical terrain in our fight for the future, and that technology can be leveraged toward collective, social good.
Building relationships and community have been central to my work for racial justice. As an undergraduate, I felt deeply the passion and honesty my Black women teachers in my middle school and high school imparted, and the care and the trust extended to me by so many Black friends asking me to choose a different kind of whiteness. Throughout my schooling, I was taught white supremacy exists in the policies and culture of the wider world by my Black women teachers and professors, and, importantly, I was also taught about Black joy and brilliance.
I wasn’t sure how tech and social justice were related when Kehontas talked to me almost twenty years ago in the park. I know now there are technologists working for justice across the world on digital security, working to make technology more accessible, ensuring tech is people led, available to all because of rural internet advocacy groups, and so many more.
Fast-forward 20 years and today I am the Director of Development at Code2040, an organization Kehontas would have loved. However, she died in 2020 before she could fully realize her dream of being a movement technologist. She struggled to find her place in tech because of the ways the field mirrors larger systemic oppressions. In her life, she interned at Google, worked with Black girls to learn coding in Oakland and started to bridge the divides between technology and civic engagement in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Despite her dedication and experience, she often was passed over for jobs and promotions because of being a Black queer technologist.
I work at Code2040 in honor of Kehontas’s dream. Code2040 advocates and creates pathways into the industry for early career technologists like Kehontas, and offers a network of support to keep Black and Latinx technologists in their careers and able to create technological change. As in all sectors, without the leadership of Black and Latinx people, we will not imagine beyond the status quo, beyond injustice. Without their full participation, tech will never serve or represent the full spectrum of our society and will, instead, represent a threat to our communities.
I am also concerned, deeply concerned, about the state of our political reality and what that means for organizations like Code2040. Last year, Women Who Code, Girls in Tech, and Hack Diversity closed their doors because of the divestment of companies and tech industry leaders. Recently, Lesbians Who Tech launched a Women Who Code program to revive their decades of work.
This year, Code2040 has been challenged by the changing landscape of institutional funding; where we typically can expect to receive more than 90% of our funding. I believe in the power of community.Code2040 recognizes that people hold the power to change systems, and that change is made possible when we move together. In challenging times, community is a solace and facilitates the changes we all need.
We are launching our spring campaign, 2040 Hinges on Us, because there are so many like Kehontas who are dedicated to holding the door open for Black and Latinx people to enter and stay in tech, and to challenging the tech industry to design toward more free futures. 2040 will be the year when the United States will be made up of mostly people of color. We believe Black and Latinx technologists will lead us into a more just technological landscape.
Our Fellows are committed to opening doors for others, supporting their families and changing the conditions of the places and communities they come from. These young people see work in tech not as an individual accomplishment, but as a collective responsibility, one that serves, connects people to food, healthcare, community care, and a higher quality of life.
I see it as my responsibility, my purpose in the world to change these systems of oppression because they harm us all. I want to be a part of eradicating systemic racism, which leads to unequal distribution of power and hinders access to quality of life. I want to break through pathways of pain and contribute to pathways of healing and dignity. Technology is a powerful site of influence and power in the global world. The work of Code2040 is visionary in a time when Big Tech continues to operate under the rules of eat or be eaten. Code2040 offers a different perspective. Success does not occur in a vacuum. It is only when we open doors together that we will experience the world waiting for us on the other side.
It is vital we support early career Black and Latinx technologists. When I imagine what they will do, I have hope. I give to Code2040 monthly and I invite you to join me. What we do with our dollars, our voices, our time matters. What we give, grows. Join me, and give today. 2040 Hinges on us.