Click the image to watch the complete BACKtalk conversation about equity, justice, and technology for social change.

What would happen if Black children learned to see technology as a tool for changing their communities, not simply as something they consume?

That question is at the center of a BACKtalk conversation between Successful Black Parenting Magazine publisher and host Janice Robinson-Celeste and Drew Martin, who helped lead the Social Change Hackathon through WE in the World.

Their conversation explores the difference between equity and equality, the barriers that shape opportunity, and the ability of children and adults to use technology to propose solutions to problems involving education, healthcare, transportation, racism, sexism, and economic inequality.

Equity and Equality Are Not the Same

Equality means giving everyone the same thing. Equity considers whether people began with the same access, resources, protection, and opportunities, then addresses the barriers that prevent fair participation.

Imagine giving every student the same laptop. That may appear equal, but students still may not have equal opportunities to benefit. One child may have reliable internet service, a quiet place to work, a parent who understands the software, and computer science classes at school. Another may share one internet connection with several family members, lack technical support, or attend a school that does not offer foundational computer science.

Both students received the same device, but they did not receive what each needed to use it successfully. Equity asks what additional support would make meaningful participation possible.

Equality gives every child access to the door. Equity asks what may prevent a child from reaching it, opening it, and being welcomed once they enter.

Why Equity Matters for Black Children

Black children are not lacking creativity, intelligence, ambition, or potential. However, families do not all encounter the same schools, technology infrastructure, networks, mentorship, transportation, healthcare, or financial resources.

When institutions treat unequal starting conditions as if they are identical, existing gaps can become more difficult to overcome. Equity-focused work attempts to identify those conditions and design solutions that expand meaningful access without lowering expectations.

During the interview, Martin describes his own transition into higher education and the importance of receiving support while learning to navigate an unfamiliar environment. His story illustrates why access alone may not be enough. Students may also need guidance, mentoring, community, and the confidence to understand that they belong.

The DEI Landscape Has Changed Since This Interview

When the episode was recorded, Janice and Martin discussed state institutions and universities dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Since then, opposition to DEI has expanded at the federal level and across numerous institutions.

In January 2025, the U.S. Department of Education announced actions to eliminate DEI initiatives within the department. Colleges, universities, government agencies, and private employers have also restructured, renamed, reduced, or closed some diversity-related programs.

Supporters of these changes argue that institutions should avoid racial preferences and treat individuals without regard to race. Critics warn that abandoning equity-focused work can obscure ongoing differences in access, discipline, hiring, funding, health, education, and representation.

For parents, this debate is not merely about terminology. The practical questions are whether children receive fair access to advanced courses, experienced teachers, disability services, safe learning environments, mentoring, technology, and opportunities to develop their talents.

What Was the Social Change Hackathon?

A traditional hackathon brings people together for a limited period to create or prototype technology. Despite the name, participants are not breaking into computer systems. They are working intensively in teams to solve a problem.

The 2024 Social Change Hackathon adapted that model to community concerns and did not require every participant to be an experienced programmer. The event invited people to develop prototypes addressing structural racism and inequity in areas including healthcare, education, social services, and transportation.

According to the event announcement from WE in the World, participants could use collaborative, no-code approaches to explore solutions. That lowered the technical barrier and made room for people with community knowledge, lived experience, design skills, research ability, storytelling talent, or subject-matter expertise.

Children Do Not Need to Be Expert Coders to Participate

The word “hackathon” can make parents assume that only advanced programmers belong. In practice, a strong team may need many different abilities.

• Problem identification: What is happening, who is affected, and why does it matter?
• Listening: What do people closest to the problem say they need?
• Research: What evidence helps explain the problem?
• Design: How should the solution work and feel?
• Storytelling: How can the team explain the idea clearly?
• Technology: Could a website, app, map, database, chatbot, or other tool help?
• Testing: What could fail, exclude people, or create a new problem?
• Advocacy: Who has the authority or resources to put the idea into action?

A child who notices that families cannot find local tutoring, safe transportation, food resources, or disability services already has a starting point. Technology becomes one possible method for organizing information or connecting people with help.

From Technology Consumers to Creators

Black children need more than unrestricted access to devices. They need opportunities to understand how digital products are made, whose assumptions shape them, what data they collect, and how technology can reproduce bias as well as challenge it.

The latest State of AI and Computer Science Education data allows families to examine access to foundational computer science and participation patterns by state, district, school, race, gender, disability status, and other categories.

Parents can also use Code.org’s school tool to check whether a school reports offering computer science. If a course is missing, families can ask administrators what would be required to introduce one or partner with an outside program.

For age-appropriate ideas at home, read our guide to teaching children technology skills in the digital age.

Why Representation in Technology Matters

When the people designing a system do not understand the communities affected by it, they may overlook important risks, needs, languages, histories, disabilities, and cultural contexts.

Representation is not only about who is hired after a product has already been imagined. It is also about who gets to identify the problem, determine what success looks like, control the data, test the solution, and decide whether the technology should be built at all.

Black youth should be able to envision themselves as programmers, researchers, designers, founders, policymakers, ethicists, educators, artists, and community leaders. They should also learn that technology is not automatically fair simply because a computer produced the result.

How Families Can Create a Mini Social Change Hackathon

Families do not need to wait for a formal event. A child, a few relatives, or a neighborhood group can use the same process at home.

Our children should not only inherit the systems technology creates. They should have the knowledge and opportunity to question, redesign, and lead them.

Teach Children to Build Responsibly

Technology created for social good can still cause harm if teams collect unnecessary personal data, expose vulnerable people, ignore disability access, reproduce stereotypes, or build a product without consulting the community.

Parents can teach children to ask:

• Who benefits from this idea?
• Who might be excluded?
• What personal information would it collect?
• Is all of that information necessary?
• Could someone misuse the tool?
• Would it be accessible to people with disabilities?
• Does it work for families with limited internet access?
• Did we ask affected people what they want?
• How would we know whether the solution actually helped?

Social Change Requires More Than an App

A prototype can make an idea visible, but technology alone cannot resolve every inequity. Some problems require funding, enforcement, policy changes, trustworthy institutions, long-term organizing, and the redistribution of decision-making power.

The value of a social change hackathon is not that every team will produce a finished product. Its value can be found in bringing people together, centering community knowledge, developing young leaders, and showing participants that they can move from identifying a problem to proposing a response.

Why This Matters for Black Families

The future will not be shaped only by people who know how to use technology. It will be shaped by people who know how to question it, build with it, govern it, and connect it to the needs of real communities.

Black children deserve access to those roles. That means giving them technical skills, but it also means nurturing historical awareness, empathy, critical thinking, communication, creativity, and the confidence to challenge systems that do not serve their communities well.

Parents do not need to be programmers to begin. We can ask better questions, help children identify problems, connect them with mentors, advocate for computer science access, and encourage them to create instead of only consume.

That is how a conversation about equity becomes action. It starts by teaching our children that their experiences are valuable, their ideas belong in the room, and they have the power to help design what comes next.