The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has rapidly backtracked on remarks she made on Monday after she came under a blizzard of criticism for saying that Black children in the Bronx did not know the word “computer”.
Hochul had intended her appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California on Monday to showcase Empire AI, the $400m consortium she is leading to create an artificial intelligence computing center in upstate New York. Instead, she dug herself into a hole with an utterance she quickly regretted.
“Right now we have, you know, young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is,” she said. For good measure, she added: “They don’t know, they don’t know these things.”
The backlash was swift and piercing. Amanda Septimo, a member of the New York state assembly representing the south Bronx, called Hochul’s remarks “harmful, deeply misinformed and genuinely appalling”. She said on X that “repeating harmful stereotypes about one of our most underserved communities only perpetuates systems of abuse”.
This backlash seems like an overreaction. Her statement was pretty obviously about how poor black kids are underprivileged with regards to technology and how that’s a problem, and merely using hyperbole for effect.
On a related note, Al Sharpton (as is often the case) managed to be half-correct:
He’s right to give her the benefit of the doubt, but very, very wrong to claim that the benefit of computer access is “using social media,” as opposed to learning to program or do something else actually useful with computers.
regardless of how she meant it, what she actually said was low income black kids don’t know what computers are.
she could’ve said that underserved communities suffer in many ways - and computer literacy is one of them - we have an inclusive plan to assist everyone regardless of background to gain skills that will help in life and the job market.
it takes like two seconds thought not to do a racism.
It comes across as rhetorical hyperbole. “These kids don’t even know the word computer, much less own one.” That doesn’t seem like racism to me, but I’m not black so I’ll pay attention to how black folks react and let them lead.