Mimi Fox Melton is the CEO of Code2040A national non -profit organization that seeks resources and mobilizing the largest community of racial technology equity.
Hanna Barakat & Cambridge Diversity Fund / Best II / IMA Images / Colossal harvest / CC-by 4.0
So far, 2025 has been marked by the confluence of white supremacy and technology industry. Flanked by Oligarchs Including Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos, and Billionaire Tech Entrepreneur and Trump Patron Elon Musk, The Trump Administration has moved Swiftly, signing numerous executive orders that target groups such as immigrants And transgender and policies and organizations such as Government programs DeiTHE Paris Climate Agreementand the World Health Organization. These movements endanger the most vulnerable of us and will codify systemic racism more and justify racial violence in the United States. While we lose ground on the measures of racial equity in technology, it is urgent that we recognize “the economy of innovation” as a critical field in the fight for the future.
As CEO of Code2040, a non -profit organization dedicated to the progress of racial equity in technology, I often conversed with technologists and majors in computers of blacks and Latinx at the start of my career. They remind me that a fairer technological future is possible. Even if we are faced with increasing white supremacy and fascism, scholarship holders code2040 maintain a commitment to imagination, creativity and innovation for a more habitable and freer future. At our last meeting of the 2024 board of directors, just before the Trump administration took office, a scholarship holder invited us to consider what we hope for the future of technology outside the limits of what We probably think.
The reality is that we are faced with unprecedented ecological devastation,, inequality of income as massive as that of golden age, and extreme racial inequalities on a global scale. Technology, for a long time as the answer to our social problems, has proven to be a Important driver of these problems. Over the past 20 years, Silicon Valley has increased Application contracts of the law of DOD and the State and localresulted in high costs of life, Moved scores of blacks and brown of their long -standing houses, and Decimated working class jobs. Many of us collectively come to understanding that if we are not starting to manage technology, technology will continue to manage us. We owe resources to creative and imaginative technologists which include both the negative impacts of racial iniquity in technology and which imagine the possibilities of a fairer technological future.
The scholarship question has slowed us down and invited us to consider that there are reasons to imagine possibilities beyond what we can see in current circumstances and constraints. The question that comes from it, a young future technologist confronted with an uncertain political and ecological future, reminded me of the need to turn to people rather than on AI or other technological solutions to solve our social problems The most pressing. We need black and Latin technologists to acquire and occupy positions of power in industry. The Code2040 scholarship holders are the future of technology, and they need us to introduce us to support them, create ways for them to enter the industry and offer them the community that will maintain them through their careers.
Our scholarship holders see technology as a tool to create connections and as a bridge through differences. As current students, they can consider technologies that are not inhibited by the limitations imposed by productivity and profit requirements of companies. I remember years ago, a colleague presented a technology that could translate English into Spaniard and Spanish in English in real time to fill a communication gap for his immigrant parents. Today, this technology exists.
Blacks and browns have been at the forefront of innovation for centuries. Each schoolgirl learned George Washington Carver and his inventions inventions, but we also have Ida B. Wells, Which can describe as a first scientist of data, and countless nameless stylists who define fashion trends on very low budgets before Tiktok is even a sowing of an idea. We solve societal problems that we have not created and invented ways to live, prosper and inspire in a country with systems that encourage our disappearance.
Tackling systemic racism in technology is more urgent than ever, and it is the way of advancing technological innovations that will improve life for everyone. At the same time, unemployment in technology is high, giving technological companies a competitive recruitment pool. From the technological industry It is only recently to diversify, Many black and brown technologists are at the start of their career and are transmitted for older talents, often white with longer employment history. A toxic political environment combined with a technological labor market that promotes employers and a sector where Dei efforts have been funded Add a third political rail to advocate. These conditions find the disruption of the status quo to modify the IA trajectory: the technologue’s jobs feel unsatisfied, they are easily replaceable and companies have clearly explained their position on social and political issues.
So what can we do? It’s time to go back to the basics. We must create spaces for collaboration and bring various sets of voice and views. We must prioritize the prospects of black and brown people who intimately know that technology can be used to establish connections and create more possibilities, but that it can also be exploited as a tool to propagate white supremacy and racial violence.
Progress is not always linear, so we can expect and prepare when the efforts towards equity feel larger. As the guest speaker of our meeting of the Board of Directors encouraged us to do so, we can choose to see the truth of the moment and to practice a Discipline of Hope. Technology reflects the reality of our world, which is why we see algorithmic racism and why a set of Experts fear that AI will determine that the solution to our most urgent social problems is to destroy the human species. But what would technology look like if there was more joy? If everyone had secure housing, enough food for eating, leisure and access to health care? If we used it to build a world where our elders and children were supported and supported? What could we create if we favored connection, creativity, imagination – and bodily security – which makes these things possible?
The human capacity of innovation is absolutely incredible. We must exploit the power of imagination towards our social good and far from an imprudent will of profit that destroys the planet, fueling war and decimating our creativity. While we are faced with a year when technology, including AI, will undoubtedly lead the economy and our political landscape, we must see the technological industry as a critical field in our struggle for the future. What could we build in the innovation economy if black and Latin technologists have a commitment to create more free and more habitable worlds were appreciated as estimated leaders and occupied positions of power in the industry of the technology?
We are at a critical moment for the technological industry and, very frankly, for the future of humanity. It is clear that technology will play a role in training this future and that the technological industry is THE The industry makes us move forward. We must ask ourselves who we want in the driver’s seat and take movements to bring these people there. We want egocentric And eugenists Underline innovation, or do we want the ethical leaders who strive us to move in a way that aligns their integrity and which are devoted to technological innovation as a means of creating more possibilities for all of us? I certainly want people who are engaged in collective social good, to make the worlds more free and fairer in leadership roles and have decision -making power – these leaders are the Code2040 Fellows.
We believe that industry can design more habitable future and that black and Latinx people can and should be leaders in these efforts. That’s why we are Building energy with black and Latin technological workers To direct the efforts to change systems, in particular the creation of policies, practices and ways of being that have led to racial justice in the technological sector and beyond. The role of the technological industry is to help society evolve how we establish connections, share information and strengthen resilience. Together, we can hold the responsible technological industry and build a movement to transform the economy of innovation: our collective future depends on it.