Prince Advocated For Black Youth, Inspired YesWeCode

Prince, who died Thursday at age 57, will primarily be remembered for his countless contributions to music. But the political and charitable artist was influential elsewhere as well, including with his advocacy for black youth in tech.

Prince And YesWeCode

CNN commentator Van Jones first opened up about Prince’s involvement in launching YesWeCode – an initiative to teach underprivileged kids coding – a couple of years ago. “After the Trayvon Martin verdict I was talking to Prince and he said, ‘You know, every time people see a young black man wearing a hoodie, they think, he’s a thug. But if they see a young white guy wearing a hoodie they think, oh that might be Mark Zuckerberg. That might be a dot-com billionaire,'” Jones revealed on the Dr. Drew Show.

He went on, “I said, ‘Well, yeah, Prince that’s true but that’s because of racism.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s because we have not produced enough black Mark Zuckerbergs. That’s on us. That’s on us. To deal with what we’re not doing to get our young people prepared to be a part of this new information economy.'”

Jones, for one, hopes that people remember this often hidden side of Prince, who was passionate about helping low-income children find a path toward a better future.

“People think about him as a musician,” Jones told USA Today after news of Prince’s death broke. “But it’s not just what he did with musical instruments. It’s what he did with his whole life. He helped so many people. Most people don’t know that. He wanted to keep his charitable activities a secret. He wanted to keep his passion for underprivileged people between him and his god.”

“He didn’t talk about set lists. He didn’t talk about compensation. He talked about: How many kids can we help? That’s all he wanted to know. What can we do that will help these kids out here,” Jones added. “And then we did hackathons all across the country in Detroit, in Philadelphia, all of that inspired or outright paid for by Prince.”