New York governor said Black kids in the Bronx do not know the word ‘computer’

Al Sharpton gave Kathy Hochul the benefit of the doubt, saying much of the Black community was ‘racially excluded from access’ to social media. Photograph: Erik Pendzich/Rex/Shutterstock

The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has rapidly backtracked on remarks she made on Monday after she came under a blizzard of criticism for saying that Black children in the Bronx did not know the word “computer”.

Hochul had intended her appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California on Monday to showcase Empire AI, the $400m consortium she is leading to create an artificial intelligence computing center in upstate New York. Instead, she dug herself into a hole with an utterance she quickly regretted.