We are at the forefront of a fundamental shift in access and opportunity.
When new technology emerges, marginalized communities must adapt to systems we did not design and adjust to landscapes that would sooner leave us behind than include us in their architecture.
Now, at the dawn of the Artificial Intelligence era, Black America must learn this new language of power. Nobody is coming to teach us; we must do it ourselves.
It is a civil rights issue.
If Black and brown communities are going to compete at the highest levels of industry, then practical AI training cannot be reserved for Silicon Valley boardrooms, elite universities or people with a seat at the table.
It must reach our residents, our clergy, our organizers, our entrepreneurs, our young people and our families.
The National Action Network is putting AI education directly in the hands of the community with an initiative led by AI fluency strategist Susan Hearn. The AI Fluency Initiative’s premise combines the doctrines of racial equity with technology and culture, elevating how access makes AI such a consequential force in determining who gets to shape the next era of American life.
We are not just workers to be displaced and demographics to be reached after AI has already disrupted the landscape. We are purveyors and engineers of this technology and should be considered active participants in its use.
Our initiative seeks to interrupt that sequence, refusing to let us become passive figures in a shift that should be empowering us.
For over three decades, NAN has understood that civil rights advocacy must be practiced wherever inequality shows up. Technology education is included in this conversation because of what it bestows on the communities it reaches.
It is one component of a broader commitment, ensuring that communities historically excluded from emerging industries have the tools to participate fully in the economic and cultural shifts of our future. Economic self-determination is as much a pillar of equity as voting rights and equal legal protections.
For us, access is not meaningful if it arrives after everyone else has already learned the rules. So, we start with the fundamentals. The AI Fluency Initiative is designed as a repeated working session to meet people where they are. Students are introduced to the technology across various use cases, then sent home with usable skills based on the work produced during the session.
AI is the next gate through which the mechanisms of opportunity will pass through. It is quickly becoming part of how people apply for jobs, build businesses and articulate themselves. The use cases are vast, and the adoption has been swift. If these tools are becoming part of everyday life, then access to understanding them must become an element of everyday empowerment. It is paramount to us that Black communities are not only exposed to AI but also at the helm.
We know that progress does not always distribute evenly. Communities must demand access and request inclusion in the infrastructure of change. This self-advocacy is often the only way to ensure that hegemony does not continue to inflict exclusion and disenfranchisement on those who could most benefit from seismic shifts in industry. We must refuse to be told to wait our turn and instead harness the tools of self-education and empowerment.
To be serious about the wealth gap means confronting the technologies reshaping work culture. Closing the academic achievement gap requires us to refuse a literacy discrepancy from arising in the first place. Equity requires preparation, and we are in the unique position to harness these emerging tools so that it is our voices that are heard, our perspectives that are amplified and our communities that are enfranchised.
The AI Fluency Initiative is an access measure addressing an economic gap.
Rev. Al Sharpton is founder and president of the National Action Network.