Listening to Black Women: The Innovation Tech Can't Crack

Compounding the problem, however, is that Black people have historically been considered neither the authors nor the audience of tech journalism. New platforms like Clubhouse further this model, using the content of Black users while not investing in the infrastructure, to disturbing results.Sydette Harry (@Blackamazon) is a researcher and strategist from Guyana by way of Far Rockaway, New York, desperately trying to put hats on babies and improve how we talk to and about people.Browne’s historical grounding makes the repetitive nature of these missteps all the more stark. Platforms often take weeks to intercept targeted harassment of Black women, to the point where other users simply describing the abuse and delay of intervention are targeted.There becomes a pseudo Overton Window lock: Harmful behavior toward Black women isn’t enough to inspire change until others are harmed, but the original harms are often lost by journalists tasked with covering tech. Most recently the departure of Timnit Gebru from Google exemplifies the schism between the lived experience of Black women and how tech journalism placed them in the world. Gebru can connect her experience to years and centuries of systemic abuse of Black women. I thought of the critical fabulation and how making Black women visible as people is one innovation that tech can’t seem to manage.