My first blog post for this course and my listed research interests already give away what I would like to research. To further my knowledge of programming language as literacy I would like to research the rhetoric of the learn to code movement. Specifically, I would like to research two campaigns that target people of color and women–YesWeCode and BlackGirlsCode. But I might turn my attention to lesser known campaigns, too. It seems to me that these campaigns want to ensure people of color participate in the tech industry, but they don’t address issues that have a significant impact on their success in the tech industry, such as the culture of Silicon Valley. They don’t explore why the tech industry is even filled with white straight young men in the first place. These campaigns assume that if you have the skills, you can be a software engineer. Graduates from Howard University, however, demonstrate why this idea doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
