PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (April 21, 2022) – Living through a time of large-scale technological innovation can be a heady experience. Somewhat serious but mostly silly conversations about driverless cars or robot butlers are now happening in earnest, moving from late night discussions in college dorm rooms to legislative sessions in the halls of Congress. And it’s not just talk, either. Cryptocurrency and digital wallets are real. Glasses that augment reality are coming to market. Cities are opening their airspace to drones that’ll drop a burger and fries on people’s doorsteps.
But far too often, our excitement about present and future technology gets dampened by ideologies that society can’t seem to leave in the past. We see it time and time again: When predictive policing algorithms discriminate against Blacks; when facial recognition systems turn out to be biased; when social media filters reinforce European beauty standards and digital colorism.
That’s what makes Prairie View A&M University’s Black Digital Futures lecture series so important. With curated conversations between students and researchers that explore how race and justice intersect with things like artificial intelligence, STEM, and now video games, the series is a way to explore all the places that tech can go while making sure those places are equitable, accessible, and representative of marginalized communities.
“We recognized that our students are interested more and more in the ways they can use their educations to be social change agents, and it is our job to give them access to the researchers in their chosen fields who can help them do that,” says Melanye Price ‘95, director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice. “From the first two events, we see that students are energized and excited about the fact that their interests in racial justice and technology can be intermingled.”
Dr. Kishonna Gray
The next and last event in the series, taking place at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 21 via Zoom, will explore the socioeconomic dynamics of gaming. With Black and Hispanic children averaging more hours a day on video games than white children, it’s imperative for them to be able to think critically about the messages around race and power that these games are passively and actively exposing them to. Dr. Kishonna Gray, communications researcher and author of Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming, will be on hand to discuss ways that PVAMU’s future video game developers and content creators can diminish racial harm in the field.
The Black Digital Futures lecture series has been a collaborative effort between the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice and the Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, which came about via a conversation with Fallon Wilson, founder of #BlackTechFutures Research Institute. With the goal of creating a network of scholars researching sustainable local Black tech ecosystems, the institute has established partnerships with HBCUs that have strong tech and humanities programs, like PVAMU, to help train thoughtful, justice-minded, solution-oriented students to address the concerns of the global Black community. In addition to the lecture series, members of PVAMU’s COE will be participating in a summer workshop with other HBCUs to engage more with this work.
By Jada F. Smith
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