Hi Folks,
I’m pleased to share the news that a new book has been added to the WAC Clearinghouse (https://wac.colostate.edu). This book appears in the #writing book series, which is edited by Christopher D. M. Andrews, Chen Chen, and Lydia Wilkes.
Black Tech Ecosystems: How Black Adult Learners Use Computer Code Bootcamps for Liberation
By Antonio Byrd
Black Tech Ecosystems reports on a year-long ethnographic study of low-income Black adult learners attending Clearwater Academy, a nonprofit computer code bootcamp that teaches coding literacy to help end racism and poverty. While Clearwater Academy offers pathways into a lucrative career that promotes Black social mobility and a diverse tech industry, Antonio Byrd describes a more complicated story. The core challenges of weak social-support networks, embedded cultures in tech, financial strains, and racism persistently present roadblocks to Clearwater Academy’s Black adult learners’ success. However, through this experience, Black adult learners develop new knowledge and frameworks that change their relationship with coding literacy and labor. Instead of solely focusing on learning computer programming for work, Black Tech Ecosystems describes a liberatory and transformative use of computer programming that centers Black lives instead of the tech industry.
You can find the book at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/writing/ecosystems/. This book, like other books published by the Clearinghouse, will be available in a print edition from University Press of Colorado in the coming months. Thanks to Antonio for his work on the book and for his decision to share it with us as an open-access publication. Thanks as well to the anonymous peer reviewers who contributed to its development.
All the best,
Mike
Mike Palmquist
Publisher, The WAC Clearinghouse
Emeritus Professor and Emeritus Associate Provost
Colorado State University
Email: Mike.Palmquist
