#masshysteria
Politics, Affect, and Performance Strategies
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October 29, 2020 | 3p PST
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Race, Technology & Civil Society panelists share best practices for collaborating with community partners |
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Ruha Benjamin (Princeton) talks about student summer projects at the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. |
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BY PERLITA R. DICOCHEA (CCSRE Staff)
In a trans-disciplinary, trans-sector discussion with over 100 attendees at the first Race, Technology + Civil Society virtual roundtable of Fall Quarter, panelists Ruha Benjamin (Princeton), Rediet Abebe (Harvard) and Matt Cagle (ACLU) shared best practices for collaborating with communities of color and the ways they challenge academic and professional boundaries between science, technology, public policy and racial justice activism.
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Moderator Duana Fullwiley (Anthropology), whose own work interrogates biological notions of race in genomic science, opened the program with a sense of urgency about the need to rehumanize data. “The lives, actions and thoughts that data represent speak to what and who we value,” she said.
For all of the speakers, the lives of communities negatively impacted by exploitive uses of technology is central to their professional work. As Director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, Ruha Benjamin employed students, many of whom lost jobs and internships due to COVID-19, to develop the Pandemic Portal and collaborate directly with community-based organizations on various applied projects.
It’s the kind of work that led one academic to ask Rediet Abebe, “Are you a scientist or an activist?” Deriving inspiration from social justice action, Abebe, who is co-founder of and faculty advisor for the non-profit Black in AI, explained, “The process is not different and not less technical. It’s just a matter of what one’s work is applied to, not how.” She continued, “If I’m going to stand out anyway, I may as well try to do [the work] I want with whatever power I have for others to build on.”
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Coming from what he described as a very privileged organization, Matt Cagle acknowledge his positionality as a white male attorney working on racial justice and tech policy within the ACLU. Cagle explained how the ACLU incorporates community partners at the onset of organizing a push for policy change, including discussing the goals of projects jointly, how to achieve them, and
what the red lines would be in the negotiating process. “Together we reflected on how exactly the law should effect the community,” Cagle added.
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Rediet Abebe (Harvard) speaks about the false binary between scientific work and racial justice activism. |
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The City of San Francisco’s ban on facial recognition technology in May of 2019, Cagle noted, is a prime example of the ACLU’s approach that involved many ongoing conversations with community partners to strategize on the effort together.
Reflecting on the discussion, attendee Bethan Cantrell, a privacy strategist for Microsoft, said, “It’s critical to understand how systems affect people’s privacy and agency, especially marginalized people. When experts like these panelists free up time to share their insights, it’s a real opportunity.” One of the points that was particularly striking, Cantrell furthered, was Ruha’s discussion point on predatory inclusion and her statement that “Racism is productive,” having always relied on forms of inclusion.
Joining the webinar from South Africa, attendee Ramila Patel shared, “Having grown up in the UK during the 60s, 70s, and the 80s, systemic racism only made sense much later as I grew older. It makes even more sense now and I particularly appreciated the links [made in the discussion] with how we now depend on digital communication daily and its impact on our lives.”
“I hope that people in attendance were inspired to think deeper about how important it is to see the diverse lives behind the data. In so many fields there is a danger in ‘abstracting’ human life into data points,” Fullwiley said, adding, “Our panelists reminded us of how crucial it is to avoid committing acts of violence, large and small, that range from social exclusions to the forced inclusion of individuals and whole populations into ‘actionable’ data for studies or interventions.”
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CCSRE Annual Report
2019/2020
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Explore the Latest from CCSRE
The Center's Annual Report provides an overview of key programs, events, and initiatives for the 2019-2020 academic year as well as feature stories and photos.
Click on the image for the full report.
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CCSRE CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Due October 31, 2020
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RACE + TECH PRACTITIONER FELLOWSHIPS |
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Deadline: October 31, 2020
The Race + Tech Practitioner Fellowships at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and the Digital Civil Society Lab (DCSL), supported by Stanford HAI, provide structure and resources to social sector leaders as they develop ideas, projects, and prototypes to advance justice at the intersections of race and technology.
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SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY LECTURE
The Intersections of Race, Racism & Scientific Practice
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October 21, 2020 | 4p
Daphne Martschenko is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Center for Biomedical Ethics. Her research identifies ethical, legal, and social considerations arising from genetics research and clinical practice and related policy recommendations to address these issues. Her work advocates for and facilitates cross-disciplinary research efforts that promote socially responsible communication of social science genomics research findings.
Rachel Watkin's (Anthropology, American University) focuses on the biological
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and social history of African Americans living in the 19th and 20th century urban US. She began this journey studying the health consequences of poverty and inequality through skeletal and documentary data analysis, with a focus on the W. Montague Cobb skeletal collection, made up of DC residents who died in the city between 1930 and 1969. She is currently taking a broader look at how Black bodies are positioned as social products in biological anthropology.
This event is limited to Stanford faculty, students, and staff.
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Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation
A conversation with Suzette Shipp
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Suzette Shipp has a master of science degree in cell and molecular biology and works as a Life Science Technologist in the Lorry Lokey Stem Cell Research Building. She is a lifelong pursuer of racial justice in the Kingian Nonviolence tradition. She is passionate about the application of data science for improved health and health care outcomes for people of color. Suzette is the founder of Vibranium Health Equity.
This is an event in the series of speakers for STS 51, a weekly lecture series exploring the intersections of race, racism, and scientific practice
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Hostile Terrain 94
A conversation with Jason de León, Angela Garcia & Students
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November 5, 2020 | 6p PT
Join us for a conversation between Jason De León, anthropologist, curator and faculty at UCLA; Angela Garcia, Associate Professor in Anthropology at Stanford; Jon Ayon Alonso, MFA candidate in Documentary Film and Video; and Ekalan Hou, a junior double majoring in English and Art History. The group will discuss contemporary issues on migration, particularly along the Mexican-American border, through the lens of social anthropology and visual art.
This conversation is presented in conjunction with the forthcoming exhibition Hostile Terrain 94.
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Monuments, Murals & Movements:
Reimagining the Art of Social Justice
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NOVEMBER 13 | 12p PT
Challenges to race, memorialization, and icons of power predominate in ongoing social, cultural, and political action and art throughout the summer of 2020. How have social movements redefined public space, articulated social justice issues in artistic form, and defied long-standing icons and monuments ESPECIALLY on University and school grounds? What is at stake in these movements and gestures and how do art and politics work together to reimagine social space, belonging, and power on campuses?
Presented by the Centering Race Consortium, a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity at Stanford University, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, and the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration at Yale University. This webinar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation.
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
PRISONS, POLICING &
RACIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS
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Have news or events to share? |
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We seek news and stories written by and about our CCSRE community-including from faculty, students, staff, and on and off campus partners-as well as race-centered events to feature in our newsletter and blog.
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