
A day in the life of a young black male engineering “coding” student - bootload
https://storify.com/rodneysampson/adayinthelife
======
andrewstuart
Wow. I expected to hear his challenges in learning to code. It seems that for
some people in the world the challenge is to be treated as a legitimate
person, and AFTER that you get to be stumped by learning to write code.

That is of course assuming your spirit was not broken by the process of
getting to school.

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stephenboyd
Codestart sounds like a great program. This is the description on their
gofundme page:

> #CodeStart is a 13 month coding, entrepreneurship, career readiness and
> financial readiness program innovated by Atlanta Workforce Development
> Agency, TechSquare Labs and Opportunity Hub. Our current cohort includes 17
> disconnected youth and under-employed young adults from neighborhoods in the
> City of Atlanta. Over the 13 month period, the students commit to a 12 week
> fulltime, immersive coding bootcamp in which they learn Java. After
> successful completion, they receive career readiness, culture fit and
> financial literacy training. At that point, we work with the students to
> gain employment as a junior entry level computer
> programmer/developer/engineer. It gets better as the students will then
> participate in a part-time entrepreneurial pre-accelerator and incubator
> program for the remainder of the program. At the end, we aim to create a new
> software programmer and a technical cofounder of a high growth startup. The
> sky is the limit. It gets better. The students receive housing and a monthly
> living stipend.

~~~
lgleason
Here are more details. It looks like it costs $50,000 to sponsor a student for
a year, so the current fundraiser will pay for about 7 students.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/293263194/TechSquare-Labs-
Atlanta-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/293263194/TechSquare-Labs-Atlanta-
Workforce-Development-Agency-Code-Start-School-Partner-Deck#scribd)

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beatpanda
Thanks for sharing this story.

I used to have a job working with poor and homeless people, and the lack of
banking services available to our clients was really frustrating, especially
because on top of getting ripped off by check cashers, homeless people
carrying around an entire benefit check in cash were frequently targeted for
theft.

My roommate runs a company called Bee
([http://www.beecard.us](http://www.beecard.us)) that's working to put check
cashers out of business and provide banking services for people who wouldn't
otherwise have them, and its one of the best uses of technology to solve a
real social problem I've seen.

~~~
Terr_
There are also various proposals to restore somethign like the old US Postal
Savings System [0], where post-offices would (not for the first time) provide
very basic bank-services.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System)

~~~
serge2k
I wonder if you could build a viable bank/credit union with the specific focus
to provide free/extremely lost cost banking to persons who otherwise don't
have access. Perhaps subsidized by patrons with more money.

~~~
bitwize
This has been done. Remember the 2008 housing crisis? That's what the bad
MBSes were: subsidizing those who couldn't make their mortgage payments with
money from those who could, by packaging the bad loans and good loans
together.

I know we're talking about checking accounts. That was tried too -- it was
called Washington Mutual, and they were my bank when I was finding my legs out
in Portland, OR. Free checking account, no questions asked? Sure, I'll take
that.

Biggest bank crash in U.S. history.

So no, such a financial institution is not viable as such. It would have to be
run explicitly as a charity.

There are no easy solutions here. To change the situation will require
multiphasic, multipartite, cultural AND systemic efforts.

~~~
shimn
> I know we're talking about checking accounts. That was tried too -- it was
> called Washington Mutual,

Is there evidence to suggest the "free checking account no questions asked"
was large portion of it being one of the "Biggest Bank crash in U.S. history".
It looks like Washington Mutual crashed for the same reason the others did: it
had all this loans out on people who couldn't pay them. Not because it offered
checking/savings accounts to underprivileged. It's weird you reference the
2008 collapse then fail to mention that being the exact time when WaMu
crashed.

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deepfriedtech
Sad to see this young man treated poorly.

Those check cashing places are notoriously shady. In future, might I suggest
Walmart. They cash any check with proper ID for a mere $3 and won't call the
police because you're black.

~~~
devishard
Nah, they'll just pay their workers minimum wage into accounts with exorbitant
fees, thereby circumventing minimum wage laws. Many of those workers being
black.

I really don't wanna hear about Walmart as a solution to any sort of
inequality, that's ridiculous.

~~~
Retra
It's not being proposed as a solution to inequality, only as a way to cash a
check.

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serge2k
This story is so messed up on a few levels.

First, a question, why money order and not cheque? Naively I think the latter
would be a better system.

Second, why is a place that charges 10+% the best way the (first? best? only?)
option for this person? It's not even a case of not having ID here.

> I stood in amazement watching the police tell this young man that they did
> him a favor by not hauling him off to jail immediately.

Wow, what a god damn favor. The sad thing is, is it even the police' fault in
this case.

> He was livid. I was livid. I literally wanted to break down crying on the
> spot. It took everything in me to stand tall & resolute.

Just depressing.

> Opening more bank accounts. Teaching financial literacy. Teaching wealth
> building.

So here's something I think is sad. I'm pretty awful with my finances. I made
a very good wage and while I'm not over extended I don't tend to save as much
as I should. It's something I work on. But! I have a savings account since I
was about 10, and a chequing account since I got my first job. The idea of
being denied banking access, whether explicitly or by societal issues, is
simply not something I have ever even had to worry about.

~~~
panglott
I was unbanked for a couple months when I first moved to New York years ago,
because I couldn't open a bank account without a utility bill. Eventually the
way I got a bank account was because my employer brought one in to sign up
employees.

Huge numbers of people cash their paychecks at check cashing places. This is
just what it's like to be poor in America. You take 10% off the top to cash
your paycheck, literally everything costs more, and then you get a bunch of
lectures from privileged people about how you need to be more responsible.

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x1798DE
Not saying that this wasn't racially motivated, but aren't a huge proportion
of people who use these check cashing places minorities? Looks like the store
employee was black, too, based on the image.

It's definitely messed up what they did (and completely messed up that calling
the police got the kids threatened with arrest), but I wouldn't be surprised
if this boiled down to the stipend being for more than the normal amount that
they usually see from people in his age cohort.

Either way, it's a good thing he had people he could call to settle this for
him.

~~~
thecopy
>but I wouldn't be surprised if this boiled down to the stipend being for more
than the normal amount that they usually see from people in his age cohort.

I would bet that this, together with the fact that it didn't show up in their
system, was the cause, not predatory racism.

The article is claiming that the student was "being impacted by predatory
racism." I don't see any proof of this. The cops are black, the employee is
black. If everyone would have skin colour $skin_colour, would it still be
racism?

~~~
morganvachon
I think what he meant by "predatory racism" is the very existence of the
check-cashing industry with predatory fees for cashing checks (in this case,
10%, which is actually a low rate for the industry). It used to be payday
loans, but when Georgia ruled those illegal, the same companies simply changed
their names to some variation of "check cashing" and continued to charge
exorbitant fees to teens working through (or instead of) high school and
immigrants, most of whom are minorities, who can't get a bank account because
of their age and/or immigrant status.

Those workers are paid via check, and since they don't have a bank account to
deposit the check into, they often resort to the check cashing robber barons
who will do anything they can to take as much money as possible from their
"clients". Holding a teen's ID and money order ransom because he "fits a
profile" sounds like par for the course when it comes to those morally
bankrupt businesses.

As for the race of everyone involved in this particular case, I take it you've
never been to Atlanta. I live there, and I can say first hand that even black
cops in the city will profile black youth.

~~~
jrnichols
"who can't get a bank account because of their age and/or immigrant status"

Or because of Chexsystems, which bars you from getting an account pretty much
anywhere for 5 years. I was a victim of that years ago, and it really screws
your life up. you have (or had at the time) no choice but to utilize check
cashing services like the shady one in the article. It isn't always as simple
as "go to the bank that the check was written from" either.

It can cost a lot to be poor in the US.

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slackstation
By law the bank issuing the check has to make good on the check.

The non-profit should use a large, well known commercial bank for their
business account, cut the students checks from there and give them a ride down
to the local branch.

Bank of America for instance would take a BofA check, cash it for the full
amount in cash the same day without taking a cut. It's what checks were
originally designed to do.

I've been unbanked before and it sucks but, it's not impossible to overcome.
Also, why are they give young people such large checks and/or money orders?

If it's a money order, you can get cashed at various places for free. All you
need is legal government ID. The whole point of a money order is that it's
pre-secured. The money is already set aside for it. The only thing to be done
is to validate that it hasn't been cashed previously. In theory this is near
zero-risk for the cash issuer.

It's not so much that we need to create more options, those exist. We need to
educate people on this so that you aren't taken for a ride of 10%+ off of
giving out cash for a money order.

People need to be more informed of the market options and understand how the
market works. What the difference between a check and a money order is.

I grew up poor and had to educate myself on these matters. It's incredible
that there aren't even basic financial literacy classes in middle school and
high school.

These ideas contribute greatly to society in helping people become and stay
financially stable which leads to a great number of social outcomes.

10% for cashing your paycheck is a hell of a hidden tax. Taking that 10% and
using it wisely will in aggregate keep people out of poverty longer, let
families be more stable, food secure, etc.

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wpietri
Weirdly, this was marked dead, so I vouched for it. I'd appreciate it if
others could keep an eye on it, as I have to head out for dinner now.

