Building Anti-Racist Technology & Culture

All Tech is Human Series #1: with Mutale Nkonde & Charlton McIlwain

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Details from the original livestream event put on by All Tech is Human

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Action Items:

1. Everyone: Talk about race

   1. Ask yourself— “what stops you from talking about race?”

   2. Dig into any discomfort you may feel about the topic of race 

2. Technologists: 

   1. Designers / Decision makers:

      1. Think of the role of your technologies

      2. What kind of technology are you helping create? Diverse technology? Anti-racist technology? Tech that acts as a guidepost for interracial justice?

         1. What is the intent versus the impact for each of these choices?

   2. Coders

      1. Learn critical race theory

      2. Think of the unintended consequences of your code

3. Policy Makers:

   1. Endorse and advocate for anti-trust laws: e.g., consider a company like Amazon and its role to sell items to consumers. Should it be allowed to sell facial recognition software to police departments?

   2. Change the incentive for tech companies (capitalism versus societal welfare)

4. Educators

   1. Teach technologists about critical race theory in the classroom (take a look at Charlton’s syllabus)

   2. Interdisciplinary collaboration and discussion, especially in the Computer Science classroom

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Annotated Resources:

1. Charlton (guest speaker from this episode):

   1. Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter

   2. Charlton’s syllabus “Critical Race & Digital Studies Syllabus”

2. Mutale (guest speaker from this episode):

   1. Mutale Nkonde - Advancing Racial Literacy in Tech

   2. AI for the People (Mutale’s website, nonprofit website coming soon)

3. Podcasts: 

   1. Brené on Shame and Accountability (mentioned by Mutale in the livestream)

   2. Reply all episode on NYPD police (Re: how tech can become racist-and how to stop that from happening)

      1. The Crime Machine Part I

      2. The Crime Machine Part II

   3. How White Parents Can Talk To Their Kids About Race (Re: talking about race)

   4. Love, Challenge, and Hope: Building a Movement to Dismantle the New Jim Code with Ruha Benjamin (Re: learning critical race theory)

4. Books

   1. Dark Matter book by Blake Crouch (Re: learning critical race theory)

   2. Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology (Re: learning critical race theory)

   3. 15+ Books by Black Scholars the Tech Industry Needs to Read Now (Re: learning critical race theory)

5. Publications & Media:

   1. Roles of Computing for Social Change (Re: building anti-racist tech)

   2. Roy Wilkins (ex-president of NAACP) 1967 Los Angeles Times opinion piece titled, “Computerize the Race Problem?” (mentioned by Charlton during the livestream)

   3. Coded Bias Documentary (Re: building anti-racist tech)

   4. Gender Shades by Joy Buolomwini (Re: policy & auditing racist tech)

   5. Actionable auditing: Investigating the impact of publicly naming biased performance results of commercial ai products by Deb Raji (Re: policy & auditing racist tech)

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We would love to hear from you! Our goal with this “continue the conversation” page is to build a space together that helps us raise awareness and take action, so the conversation doesn’t stop here. If you have any resources or action items to add to this list, please leave it as a comment below so that we can all collaboratively build this dialogue and take action together.

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This is episode 1 of our Summer 2020 series and partnership with All Tech is Human. Episodes and resource pages will be released every other week.