A professional review of Black Girls Code

A professional review of Black Girls Code. Do Black Girls Code Promote Racism? Is Black Girls Code an affinity scam that preys upon young women of color and corporate donors who naively believe that dollars are assisting young African-American women write "computer-code"? Alternatively, is Black Girls Code a legitimate non-profit organization that complies with I.R.S. regulations that specify how funds must be used when accepting general donations from the public for a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization? We hope that this article will address these concerns.

According to Kimberly Bryant, the stated objective displayed on the website of Black Girls Code is that "By launching Black Girls Code, I hope to provide young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills to at (sic) a time when they are naturally thinking about what they want to be when they grow up." Note: Grammatical errors have not been edited, and are re-printed AS IS. Source: the website of Black Girls Code..

In writing this article, I will address two specific areas of concern. First, I will address whether or not Black Girls Code is a Scam and whether or not Black Girls Code is a racist promotion. I am not privileged to have any prosecutorial powers, or tangible evidence proving or disproving that Black Girls Code is a scam, and therefore any statements made hereon are purely a matter of opinion and should not be relied upon as facts.

FundRaising Techniques by Black Girls Code

Black Girls Code relies upon numerous Internet-based promotions. For example, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are means which Black Girls Code uses to solicit donations. Black Girls Code also relies upon generous free publicity from local San Francisco-based publications, certain womens' groups, as well as digital publications such as the Huffington Post. Another method used by Black Girls appears to be controversial chains-style tyoe letters that are form letters apparently used by Black Girls Code with instructions for its various members and/or supporters to re-send the scripted letter to prospective donors.

Funds are being solicited based upon the stated mission of helping black-girls learn coding, and specifically programming languages such as Scratch or Ruby on Rails. Generous free publicity by digital and main-stream publications such as the Huffington Post, Scientific American, local San Francisco newspapers, and several others have also helped Black Girls Code. With this free publicity, and keen race-based marketing, “Black Girls CODE” now claims to have reached 2,000 students through chapters in half a dozen cities, including New York, Memphis, Detroit, San Francisco, Atlanta and Johannesburg, South Africa. Web-based traffic is no doubt being generated by off-line free publicity, and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter.

Black Girls Code Offers No Tangible or Specific Support to African-American boys

"We need to prepare underrepresented populations to fill those positions, create technologies that serve their communities and lead us into a future that serves everyone. We can't afford as a nation to let a generation of students be left behind by the wave of innovation. If we want to succeed as a nation, we NEED your help to secure the future of these bright young minds. The world needs Black Girls who CODE! "--Kimberly Bryant

Note: Notice how the promoter emphasizes black girls and appears to deliberately omit black boys. Notice how the promoter fails to qualify the omission of other races. Apparently, Kimberly Bryant does not believe that the world needs any Black Boys who code, and neither is her organization apparently affiliated with such an organization that supports Black Boys who code.

Very little mention in the Black Girls Code marketing literature mentions, references, or even cites statistics related to the serious issues affecting young African-American men; or, even poor working-class "white-girls"

True to myth, it should not be any surprise that Black Girls Code offers NO support to African-American boys, and neither does the organization even acknowledge the existence of the black male youth, and that such young African-American males require support.

Black Girls Code appears to be a divisive effort to supplant black girls over black boys in-order to justify racial myths and to lesson the threat of an educated African-Male--R. Jones, A Black male

Technical Critique of the website of Black Girls Code

The desktop website of Black Girls Code is programmed in an old version of .HTML instead of the more advanced .PHP or HTML5. I consider it inconsistent to be promoting a subject like Black Girls Code when the principal website of the promoter is programmed in an inferior language that is more than 20 years old. Very few advanced programmers are programming their website in the old version of .HTML

Upon examination of the programming code of the Black Girls Code website, it is apparent that the programmer (whom I suspect to be Kimberly Bryant) used a cookie-cooker HTML authoring tool (/cdn2.editmysite.com/) that is designed for novice or beginner website programmers. No professional website coder uses something as basic as a site-builder web programming tool. However, according to Kimberly Bryant the money that her Black Girls Code is soicitig is used for "programming." The fact is that you do not need $100,000 to use a $30.00 site-builder application.

The desktop website of Kimberly Bryant and her Black Girls Code has many other suspicious signs, and tell-tale signs of unprofessionalism. It would appear to me that a person promoting a concept like Black Girls Code and mobile app development would at least either pay a website professional to create a custom website, or have the ability to design a professional-looking that does not use cookie-cutter, site-building, scripts. Having raised over $100,000, in a few short days, certainly Ms. Kimberly Bryant can afford a professional website and an assistant for her Black Girls Code.

The central message of the website is "donations" and efforts to market t-shirts. There are no form requests for businesses or direct emails for consumers or businesses to reach out to one of the over 2,000 black girls that Black Girls Code has allegedly trained and educated to develop custom websites, or mobile apps.

Technical Critique of the Mobile website of Black Girls Code

The mobile website of Black Girls Code is quite different than the desktop website, except that both websites emphasize the call for DONATIONS more than what has been allegedly produced WITH the DONATIONS.

The mobile website of Black Girls Code appears to be single mobile landing page. The dominate message is the call for DONATIONS. There are no links to mobile apps or mobile websites designed or published by a single "black girl." Moreover, I tested the mobile website of Black Girls with an Android operating system, and the it became almost impossible to leave the mobile website. Perhaps, it was a programming error on the part of the mobile site creator. It is not uncommon for unscrupulous website promoters to lock a visitor into a website and refuse to release the lock until a favorable action is executed by the site visitor. I have no evidence that the mobile website of Black Girls Code is an unscrupulous website, and neither is it suggested herein. I am merely relaying my personal experience that it was difficult for me to exit the mobile website. I am sure that there is a logical explanation.

Summary of Black Girls Code Review

In 2013, I do not believe we need to be creating more race-based organizations that divide male, and female by race. It is incomprehensible why we, as Americans, need to create more race-based groups. If a black boy and black girl both showed up at the foot-steps of a corporation, asking for donations to help each group write computer code, which group should the corporation support? According to Kimberly Bryant, the donation should be given to the Black girls because the world needs Black Girls who code.

I have no records that Black Girls Code is a scam per se. However, neither have I examined their Form 990 tax returns. Based upon an examination of their marketing literature, statements of Black Girls Code, and the historical reservations of educating African male youth even in times of slavery (preference was provided the Negro (black) girl because she was more susceptible to control and manipulation), I have serious doubts and suspicions about the motives and intentions of Black Girls Code. I also have serious reservations about the motives and intentions of the companies that are sponsoring this cause because no similar effort is apparently being directed at young African-American men and youth.

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