Black Tech Ecosystems: How Black Adult Learners Use Computer Code Bootcamps for Liberation
By Antonio Byrd
Copy edited by Annie Halseth. Cover design by Than Saffel. Book design by Mike Palmquist.
Black Tech Ecosystems reports on a year-long ethnographic study of low-income Black adult learners attending Clearwater Academy, a nonprofit computer code bootcamp that teaches coding literacy to help end racism and poverty. While Clearwater Academy offers pathways into a lucrative career that promotes Black social mobility and a diverse tech industry, Antonio Byrd describes a more complicated story. The core challenges of weak social-support networks, embedded cultures in tech, financial strains, and racism persistently present roadblocks to Clearwater Academy’s Black adult learners’ success. However, through this experience, Black adult learners develop new knowledge and frameworks that change their relationship with coding literacy and labor. Instead of solely focusing on learning computer programming for work, Black Tech Ecosystems describes a liberatory and transformative use of computer programming that centers Black lives instead of the tech industry.
Table of Contents
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Chapter 1. The Work Ethic of Black Women Coders
Chapter 2. Finding Access Points to Carework for Coding Literacy
Chapter 3. Coding Black Functions for White Software Programs
Chapter 4. Coding Literacy Echoes in Black Lives
Conclusion: Falling Through the Leaky Pipeline?
About the Author
Antonio Byrd is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri Kansas City, where he teaches courses in professional and technical communication, multimodal composition, composition pedagogy, qualitative research methods, and Black digital rhetorics. His research focuses on how the legacies of using literacy for liberation carry forward into present day Black digital literacies and media features. His work has appeared in Composition Studies, College English, Technical Communication Quarterly, and College Composition and Communication. In 2021, his article “‘Like Coming Home’: African Americans Tinkering and Playing toward a Computer Code Bootcamp” received the Richard Braddock Award for best article in College Composition and Communication.
Publication Information: Byrd, Antonio. (2025). Black Tech Ecosystems: How Black Adult Learners Use Computer Code Bootcamps for Liberation. #writing. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/WRI-B.2025.2360
Online Publication Date: April 28, 2025
Print Publication Date: Pending
ISBN: 978-1-64215-263-0 (PDF) | 978-1-64215-264-7 (ePub) | 978-1-64642-782-6 (pbk.)
DOI: 10.37514/WRI-B.2025.2360
Contact Information:
Antonio Byrd: antoniobyrd@umkc.edu
#writing
Series Editors: Christopher D. M. Andrews, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi; Chen Chen, Utah State University; and Lydia Wilkes, Auburn University
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). It will also be available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado.
Copyright © 2025 Antonio Byrd. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. 230 pages, with notes, illustrations, bibliography, and index. This book will be available in print direct from University Press of Colorado, or at any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. It is available in digital format for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holder.