What the Future Holds for the African American Class of 2020
Lesley Slaton Brown, Chief Diversity Officer, HP
Alicia Jackson, Dean of the Albany State University (ASU) College of Business
Lesley Slaton Brown, Chief Diversity Officer, HP
For college seniors, the last few months have been difficult. They’ve been forced to leave their campuses early, stripped of the chance to celebrate graduation with their peers, and missed out on a final chance to network, job hunt, and prepare to start their careers.
But not all students have been impacted equally. The pandemic has had a devastating impact on Brown and Black communities across the nation. In states like Georgia, where African Americans make up roughly 31% of the population, they account for more than 80% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. It has been a stark reminder of the deep inequities that have persisted for generations along social, economic, and racial lines.
For Black students in many rural communities, they face the added difficulty of spotty internet and intermittent cellular coverage. Imagine trying to land a job or an internship, while you’re also lending a hand to take care of your family and make ends meet. When you do manage to land an interview, you have to worry about how your video quality will affect how you are perceived by the hiring manager, in addition to the other, well-documented, daily biases related to your skin color or hairstyle.
And when it comes to bias and discrimination, COVID-19 is just the tip of the iceberg. The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have finally opened the nation’s eyes to another kind of pandemic that’s just as brutal – one of systemic racism in communities of color, where innocent lives are too often taken and families destroyed.
All of this is reason for anger, sadness, and anxiety. But that can’t be the extent of the emotions we feel right now. This is also a moment for reflection and resolve. A time to reflect on the problems that remain a stain on our society – and the resolve to do something about them.
We believe it’s also a time for optimism. Optimism that the class of 2020 will turn this moment into a movement for meaningful and lasting change. And it’s up to us to be their allies and advocates as they begin the next phase in their journey.
The Class of 2020 at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) need our help. Amidst fears that recent events – including the current economic climate and a 39% drop intern hiring -- will begin a downward slide into what some are calling a “lost decade” for this year’s graduating class, it’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s up to us instead to turn this into a decade of progress.
We know that when business and academia team up, great things can happen. In years past, the National HBCU Business Deans Roundtable teamed up with companies to launch programs like the HP HBCU Business Challenge and nearly 300 students accepted the challenge from 44 HBCUs over the past three years. There is an enormous appetite for real-life work experiences, and more importantly, some of these engagements turned into internships and jobs. This summer, to address these internship losses, HP is hosting a new digital development experience called "HP Summer Scholars," open to all students.
These are just two examples, but the sky is the limit in terms of what we can do together for this generation. Now that we’ve learned that almost everything can be done remotely (training, mentoring, brainstorming) let’s use our collective imagination and our empathy to create something new, better than before, and offer these young people a chance to start their professionals lives on the right foot.