Author:
Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser.
Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io
Systematic racism, a look at the prison system
I recently watched 13th and learned a lot including about ALEC (plus the companies which have dropped support) and the effect of systematic racism on the crime & punishment systems.
Some quotes to think about…
Prison industrial complex, the system, the industry, it is a beast. It eats black and Latino people for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I think a beast is exactly right. The beast no one wants to talk about?
Police violence, that isn’t the problem in and of itself. It’s reflection of a much larger,brutal system of racial and social control known as mass incarceration, which authorizes this kind of police violence.
Exactly what I’ve been saying. This isn’t about the police, its about the system which encourages excessive force as black lives don’t matter.
People say all the time,
“I don’t understand how people could’ve tolerated slavery. How could they have made peace with that? How could people have gone to a lynching and participated in that?
How did people make sense of the segregation, this white and colored-only drinking…
That’s so crazy.
If I was living at that time, I would have never tolerated anything like that.”
And the truth is, we are living at this time, and we are tolerating it…
Its a quote which sums it up. Its hard to see how the status-quo is the problem when you are in it.
Updated
Just today John Oliver from Last Week Tonight, makes clear the threat of Covid19 and people stuck in Jail and Prison where social distancing isn’t an option and nor is soap! As most people in American prison’s are people of colour, it doesn’t take a lot to realize how devastating this virus is in a prison.
Well worth watching if you have access to HBO or a VPN.
Systematic racism
I think this says so much…
Black communities have been telling the nation, for more than a century, that they have been targeted, beaten, falsely accused and killed by the police and other institutions meant to protect them.
They have not been believed until recently, when the rise in camera phones and social media finally enabled them show and disseminate proof.
Even after the video of George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, there remains defensiveness and denial among white Americans and institutions—a defensiveness that prevents change to the root of the problem: systemic racism. In this video, eight powerful voices share perspectives on blackness in America, and why white inaction and white politeness must end.
To learn more about what you can do to end the racist status quo, educate yourself and take action. Here is Robin DiAngelo’s list of resources: https://robindiangelo.com/resources/
How to make people of colour’s life a little easier
I saw this piece from Vice and was shaking my head in agreement going through the list.Heres some key ones for me…
2. Don’t assume that all people of color share the same views. We are not a monolith.
Absolutely… Can’t tell you how many times people assume they know what my views are simply because of my race
6. Oh, and rest assured that literally no person of color ever wants you to get back from holiday, show off your tan and excitedly exclaim, “Look, I’m almost as dark as you!” Cease and desist.
I always find tans super strange, especially when people compare them to my skin. Stop doing it…
20. Understand that some days are even more mentally exhausting for people of color thanks to the news cycle. Try not to badger us for our opinions on the latest atrocity that has occurred. Leave us to grieve.
I generally ignore the news cycle as I know it doesn’t help my mental health. If you want thoughts on news items, let it sink in first and see what other people of colour are writing.
22. Share articles relating to the everyday experiences of race and racism written by people of color.
There is the hashtag #everydayracism, use it, repost, retweet and retoot. Just like there is #everydaysexism. More people see it the more peopel will realise.
23. But don’t be that person who is weird and sycophantic and loves to demonstrate their wokeness constantly to the people of color around them. Be thoughtful.
You don’t think I notice when you say Yo to me but not to anyone else? We notice
26. Have a critical eye when watching TV and movies. How are they portraying people of color and why? What purpose does it serve?
Just like the Bechdel test you should check out the DuVernay test
31. If you have kids, buy them dolls of color and books with characters of color.
I don’t have kids but I was very happy when a friend bought his daughter a black doll. That child will hopefully grow up being much more comfortable with people of colour
42. People can be Black and gay and disabled and trans and middle class. Blackness is expansive. It doesn’t look one way. Keep this in mind.
Indeed! This is why we need to start thinking much more intersectionaly.
48. Never try and pull any uninvited “race play” shit in the bedroom. Seriously, what the fuck?
I had quite a few times while dating, discussions about never having sex with a black man. Its massively upsetting and is like number 50, being called exotic! If this happened in the bedroom it would be over in a heartbeat.
59. Look around your workplace—are the only people of color cleaners or assistants? What can you do to change that? (The answer is almost never “nothing.”)
One of my biggest problems, companies who have a diverse workforce but all the people of colour are cleaners, security guards, assistants, etc.
70. Don’t? Vote? For? Racist? Politicians? Can’t believe I need to say this one but it seems like possibly, maybe, some of y’all did not get this memo.
Its simple, don’t vote for those who make their views clear about which side of the fence they sit. People seem to forget this when election time comes around.
78. If you have ever thought a phrase like “Black lives matter” is too assertive, consider why you’re so uncomfortable with Black people standing up for our humanity.
Absolutely… You need to check your white fragility because people of colour of dying
90. Care about race on the 364 days that aren’t Martin Luther King Jr. day.
Black history month is something which bugs me, I get there are seasons but it feels so insulting that everything is held to then or not bundled together because of that month.
96. Understand that nothing in your life has been untouched by your whiteness. Everything you have would have been harder to come by if you had not been born white.
Its hard to discuss but we are getting closer to the point when we can finally have those conversations. That is progress
99. Recognize that fighting racism isn’t about you, it’s not about your feelings; it’s about liberating people of color from a world that tries to crush us at every turn.
The problem is systematic racism, we need each other to make things better for everyone.
NHS sees sense and adopts the decentralised model
After all the discussions about the NHS’s contact tracing app being centralised (you would have thought Germany’s decision would convinced them), what on earth did they think they were doing, finally they have changed their minds. I’m sure the pressure from the likes of the open rights group had something to do with it.
As I heard they had worked on two apps and of course the centralised one was a logistical flop. Now the government had to make the painful U turn.
Ouch! What a joke…!
Well at least they didn’t see the joke through to the bitter end.
Racial microaggressions I have heard in the past
I found this on the black leaders facebook network which I was invited to a while ago. I have had at least a couple of these thrown at me in the past. Usually with people who just met me. I do tend to look up thinking here we go again…
Most minorities face microaggressions. If you are woman, LGBTQ+, have a disability, are neurodiverse, etc.
Its tiresome and the people who say it just don’t think. But its certainly time to start making super clear its not alright by playing the question back on the other person.
Re-watching the Watchmen TV series
Spoiler alert!!!
If you have not seen the Watchmen the TV series, Do not watch the explainer above. Instead watch this one,
I can’t tell you how amazing the TV series is and its excellent follow up to the excellent film.
I’m watching it again because although its amazing, and I needed to watch it all again to understand it all. However I also wanted to watch it during the black lives matter protests for its extremely strong race in America storyline and references. This is how I found out about Tulsa in 1921.
Clearview AI GDPR request submitted
There is so much to say about Clearview AI. If you never heard of them, well put it this way…
They have amassed a database of peoples faces by illegally scraping the likes of facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, flickr, etc, etc… All the companies have sent legal cease and desists but Clearview don’t seem to really care too much. Recently they were hacked allowing exposing all those pictures and training data to attackers.
Because of this and my experience with the IBM Dif project, I wanted to know if I’m in the database and the best way to find out is to send a GDPR request. This all follows my GDPR request from Houseparty just recently,
I think they have gotten serious about the EU and the UK because I didn’t need to send my usual email. I filled in the form using my junk mail and used my Estonian digital ID for verification.
Look forward to seeing what comes back. I’m expecting quite a lot.
Of course IBM, Microsoft and Amazon have backed away (for now) from their facial recognition systems because the huge amount of bias of the datasets have against black people. We will see how long they will keep this line over the year and next year?
Update
In my inbox from for the two requests…
EU/UK/Switzerland Data Access Form Request
EU/UK/Switzerland Data Objection Form Request
This e-mail is to confirm that we have received your EU/UK/Switzerland Data (Access/Objection) Request. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Team Clearview
Changes due to #BlackLivesMatter
There is a lot happening around black lives matter and sometimes its worth celebrating some of small things as we move closer to a much more antiracist stance (don’t get me wrong I know its a long long way off, but hearing some news it feels closer than ever)
BLM supporter speaks out after carrying counter-protester to safety
When I saw the picture on twitter I was blown away, I read the story and then found the channel4 interview.
Reddit’s co-founder resigns, asks to be replaced by black candidate
This happened quite soon after the first set of protests and I was surprised. Reddit has had its problems in the past and this could be actually a genius move.
Removing slave and master from openZFS, GitHub abandons ‘master’ and ‘slave’ and theres been moves to remove terms like whitelist.
I remember the first time I learned to build a PC being faced with the IDE/UDMA bus with master and slave devices. It bugged me but just lived with it. Its about time it was changed because it can easily be called something else. Its only legacy which has kept it as it is.
A number of movies and TV shows have faced up to their bias and racist prejudice. This of course has upset people but they will likely return with a content warning.
List of companies supporting black lives matter (at least on social media channels)
A nice list with a archive which will be very useful to look back in 6, 12, 18, 36 months time.
A friend (thatgirlvim) shared with me this fundraiser for a research study into Diverse & Equal Black Tech
Finally another good friend floated this lecture series to me recently. Modernity + Coloniality A free online summer course on coloniality and decoloniality. Looks really good but I’m not so keen on the open zoom, after my experience of zoombombing.
My Houseparty GDPR data dump
During the start of the Covid19 lockdown, I was convinced by friends to try houseparty and decided it was pretty crappy so stopped using it as mentioned in a previous blog.
After many emails I finally got my personal GDPR data copy. From Hotel Charlie!
I can’t tell you how much hassle its been… even when they sent me a horribly long link (we are talking about 300 characters long) to the zip file, it would expire a few hours later on their Amazon S3 bucket.
<Error>
<Code>ExpiredToken</Code>
<Message>The provided token has expired.</Message>
<Token-...{very large token}...</Token>
</Error>
Finally once I got it… It was a zip file with a index.html and 5 different folders.
- room_visits / room_visits.html
- profiles /profile.html
- photos / 216A9AAE57194410901F8BA7981E63AB (a png file)
- interactions / interactions.html
- friends / friends.html
All the .html files are horrible tables for example here is interactions.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Room Visits</title>
</head>
<style>
table {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
table, th, td {
border: 1px solid black;
}
</style>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>Room ID</td>
<td>Room Visit Start Date</td>
<td>Room Visit End Date</td>
<td>Users</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>e021116-bae-44d6-cc17-9121fbeaccc13</td>
<td>
2020-06-45T21:23:11Z
</td>
<td>
2020-06-11T21:16:41Z
</td>
<td>
<ul>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
The data isn’t that interesting but I think thats because I wasn’t using the app just my Chromium browser. I also only friended one person, so its all pretty slim on data.
Not that interesting but I’m very sure theres lots they have on me, however I requested my account is deleted. There is no way to delete your account if you are using the browser and the Android app from within the system. You have to request deletion!
My next GDPR request is for Clearview AI!