Black Genius ramps up on nation's first dirt bike campus

Engineer, social entrepreneur, and Baltimore native Brittany Young is on a mission to show young people how brilliant they are, so they can be their own geniuses and problem solvers. Via B-360, the Baltimore organization she founded in 2017, Young is addressing two seemingly disparate challenges: the lack of meaningful STEM education and the stigmatization of black youth culture in Baltimore, as embodied in motorsport culture (mountain bikes). Ashoka's Angelou Ezeilo sat down with Young to learn more about B-360's work to unleash the genius of young people, create safe spaces for learning and belonging, and build the world's first all-motorcycle campus. -country land, now with $3 million in new funding.

Angelou Ezeilo: Brittany, you and B-360, the organization you founded and lead, focus on motorsport for several related reasons. One is education and job skills. Tell us more.

Brittany Young: Okay. Cyclists young and old learn mechanical engineering simply by fixing their bikes. It's true! And I say that as an engineer myself. It's better than reading a manual. So not only is the dirt bike ingrained in Black Baltimore culture, its teaching skills can literally pay the bills.

Ezeilo: But mountain biking is criminalized in Baltimore, isn't it?

Young: Yeah, but the reason people ride dirt bikes in traffic is that there's no dedicated space for it. For basketball, you go to a recreation center. For swimming, there is a swimming pool. But for people who ride dirt bikes in Baltimore, there are only the streets. That's why we're excited to build the nation's first educational dirt bike campus in the heart of the city – for which our first federal investment is, a $3 million grant just announced with support from our Senator Van Hollen and Senator Cardin.< /p>

Ezeilo: Good news, congratulations! The announcement also recognizes B-360 as Baltimore's only diversionary prison program. What's the link here?

Young: Well, at the start of B-360, we saw that a lot of our students were being charged with possession of dirt bikes. So I called judges, talked to lawyers, prepared paperwork. Then in 2020, our state attorney's office in Baltimore City contacted us. They wanted to take a new approach to off-road motorcycle offences. From this came the B-360 diversionary program. So now when people are arrested for a non-violent offense they can choose to participate in our programming, for a minimum of 20 hours. Once they complete the training, we submit a letter to that judge and the charges are dropped. Young people can also become employed with B-360 to develop transferable skills.

Ezeilo: You said there are some 122,000 STEM jobs in Baltimore that don't require a four-year degree. How do you associate black students with these jobs and what barriers do you encounter?

Young: If you say to a student, "Hey, read that physics book," they'll say, "Why should I care?" But if you say, "Hey, you're wheeling down the street at this corner, and you have to figure out how long it takes to get there and at what time," that's actually a distance equation - which is physical. And now you're talking about Newton's second law. Now, we also need the dynamics of educational institutions and workplaces to be culturally competent, because access is not the only obstacle. For example, I grew up knowing that I wanted to get into STEM. I went to number four high school for STEM in the country and got great grades. But when I got into the industry, people had never met a black girl from Baltimore who worked in chemical engineering. The culture in many STEM institutions is a white male-led or white-led period. You may be ready for STEM,...