Prince remembered as innovator, advocate for Black youth

Prince performing in 1986. The music icon died Thursday. He is being remembered in Silicon Valley as an advocate for Black youth.(Photo: Pascal George, AFP/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO — Prince, the music icon who was found dead at his home ^[1]in suburban Minneapolis on Thursday, is being remembered in Silicon Valley as a social innovator and a passionate advocate for Black youth.

His advocacy often took place behind the scenes, but Prince envisioned a better future for kids of color, inspiring YesWeCode, an initiative whose goal is to teach 100,000 low-income kids to write code.

"People think about him as a musician," Jones, the author and CNN contributor who founded YesWeCode, told USA TODAY Thursday. "But it's not just what he did with musical instruments. It's what he did with his whole life. He helped so many people. Most people don't know that. He wanted to keep his charitable activities a secret. He wanted to keep his passion for underprivileged people between him and his god."

Jones says the idea for YesWeCode took root when he was discussing race with his friend after the Trayvon Martin verdict.

"Every time you see a black kid wearing a hoodie, you say: There's a thug. If you see a white kid wearing hoodie, you say: There's Mark Zuckerberg," Jones told USA TODAY^[2] last year.

"I said, 'That's because of racism. And Prince said, 'Maybe so, or maybe you civil rights guys haven't created enough Mark Zuckerbergs.' "

YesWeCode leader Van Jones (Photo: Christopher Wiggins, USA TODAY)

That challenge inspired Jones to create YesWeCode, a nonprofit working to swing open doors in the technology industry where a tiny fraction of the work force is African American and, despite a recent outpouring of money and resources, progress has been halting in boosting their ranks.

Though they are sharply underrepresented in the tech industry, Blacks aspire to careers as programmers, according to research Facebook conducted last year with consulting firm McKinsey. Half of Blacks say they would be good at working with computers, compared with 35% of whites and 35% of Asians.

Prince promoted YesWeCode by headlining the Essence Festival in New Orleans, where Jones held the organization's first hackathon with Qeyno Labs, an Oakland, Calif. host of coding competitions^[3] for youth from underrepresented groups.

Prince agreed to play the festival in 2014 if it hosted the hackathon, Jones said.

"He didn't talk about set lists. He didn't talk about compensation. He talked about: How many kids can we help? That's all he wanted to know. What can we do that will help these kids out here," Jones recalled. "And then we did hackathons all across the country in Detroit, in Philadelphia, all of that inspired or outright paid for by Prince."

Qeyno Labs CEO Kalimah Priforce (Photo: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY)

Qeyno Labs CEO Kalimah Priforce expressed his gratitude in a Facebook post.

"Our mission to usher in the next generation of developers, designers and innovators is embodied by everything Prince brought to the world. We are saddened by the news, but we are also empowered to carry his spirit of innovation forward," Priforce wrote. "Thank you for believing in us and we will return the favor by teaching all our teen hackers to believe in themselves. Thank you Prince."

Follow USA TODAY senior technology writer Jessica Guynn @jguynn^[4]

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References

1. ^{^} who was found dead at his home (rssfeeds.usatoday.com)
2. ^{^} told USA TODAY (rssfeeds.usatoday.com)
3. ^{^} host of coding competitions (rssfeeds.usatoday.com)
4. ^{^} @jguynn (www.twitter.com)