Empowerment 2.0: Reversing the Digital Divide for the African-American Community

With this week’s passing of Katherine Johnson, I found myself reading about her groundbreaking contributions to the US space program in the face of immense hurdles. Mrs. Johnson developed equations that helped NACA, and its successor NASA, send astronauts to the moon and - most importantly - return safely to Earth. Her story was made famous in the movie “Hidden Figures,” where she and her African American colleagues fought broad discrimination, as women and as women of color,  for the opportunity to help advance the space program using their proficiencies in mathematics. Her "computer" job title at NASA, foreshadows the bourgeoning of an entire industry. It's also a powerful reminder of the long unrecognized milestone achievements and contributions by African Americans and women to the technology sector. 

Reflecting on Mrs. Johnson’s impact prompted me to revisit a topic that I’ve written about before, and around which I have a considerable amount of passion – the digital divide. The digital divide is the significant gap in equitable access to the emerging digital economy, which has been documented across genders, races, ethnicities and countries. To date, the research indicates that we risk widening the gap with the development and widespread implementation of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.

At the same time, business and organizations are reaping the benefits of AI solutions and new technologies by transferring tasks to AI driven machines, enabling employees to focus on more strategic tasks and augmenting human capacity. We expect that, over time, AI will become intrinsic to how we tackle most of our day-to-day activities across the workplace and in our personal lives. We can imagine a not-so distant future, where we no longer talk about “AI,” as it fades into the background and becomes embedded in how things operate.

Routinely we take time during Black History Month to celebrate the advancements that African Americans have made over the years, and to acknowledge the areas that still need collective acknowledgement, attention and activism to bridge the equity gaps that persist. The progress is significant, as I was able to witness first hand last weekend at the 51st Annual NAACP Image Awards in Los Angeles, where a full range of nominees and awardees were recognized for excellence in the arts, music, entertainment, and philanthropy.

However, this February I think about a concept I’ve coined as “Empowerment 2.0,” examining how African Americans are equipped to thrive in and help drive the new digital economy. Can the Civil rights methods used to change legislation and policy in the late 20th century evolve to create opportunity in and around the tech sector?  What is the role of the tech sector in closing the digital divide facing African Americans in the US? Are we faced with a future scenario where people with digital skills thrive in this newly emerging landscape, while those without get left behind? This is especially concerning, when we look at the educational and workplace divides that already exist in the United States, across minority populations.

According to a recent study from the Brookings Institution, while technology companies across the United States have recognized the need to employ more people of color, Black people still remain underrepresented in tech jobs by nearly 50 percent. Black people make up 11.9 percent of all workers in the US, but only 7.9 percent of computers and math workers – and this number is slipping.  Black representation in computer and math occupations decreased from 8.1 percent in 2002 to 7.9 percent in 2016. Research by McKinsey & Company found that women of color have been particularly underrepresented in technology. While making up approximately 16 percent of the general population, women of color account for only around 4 percent of technical roles in tech companies. Unfortunately, the trend is getting worse, with the share of Black, Latina, and Native American women that have received computing degrees dropping by 40 percent over the past decade, to 4 percent, from 7 percent.

One of the main reasons I chose to work at Microsoft, is the company’s mission statement. Our mission is deeply inclusive: to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Together with government, companies and organizations across the country, we need to ensure that our society is preparing today’s students from every demographic, to engage in a digital society, and actively helping adults across every population reskill and upskill, so that we don’t risk furthering a divide that leaves entire populations out of a technology-fueled future. Let the children of every background, circumstance, and life experience look at the accomplishments of Katherine Johnson and dream of the footprint that they will leave on our world. Working together, we can achieve this vision of “Empowerment 2.0” for everyone.