Data, Race, Power and Justice

For more than a century, scientists, policy makers, law enforcement, and government agencies

have collected, curated and analyzed data about people in order to make impactful decisions.

This practice has exploded along with the computational power available to these agents. Those

who design and deploy data collection, predictive analytics, and autonomous and intelligent

decision-making systems claim that these technologies will remove problematic biases from

consequential decisions. They aim to put a rational and objective foundation based on numbers

and observations made by non-human sensors in the management of public life and to equip

experts with insights that, they believe, will translate into better outcomes (health, economic,

educational, judicial) for all.

But these dreams and their pursuit through technology are as problematic as they are enticing.

Throughout American history, data has often been used to oppress minoritized communities,

manage populations, and institutionalize, rationalize, and naturalize systems of racial violence.

The impersonality of data, the same quality that makes it useful, can silence voices and

displace entire ways of knowing the world.