Toward a Critical Race Techno-Literacy: How Black Youth "Talk Back" to Algorithmic Bias and Platformed Racism

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Fifteen
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Black Education Within and Outside of Schools (Table 10)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the experiences of 20-25 Black high students who participated in a critical race technology course called “Race, Resistance and Technology” during COVID-19 and the 2020 global demonstration for Black Lives. The goal of the course was to foster students’ ability to critically examine the ubiquity of anti-Black racism within socio-technical architectures (e.g. code, data, algorithms and interfaces) of popular platforms and digital technologies, and to use this critical conscious to design and dream up algorithmically and racially just counter-technologies. Centering the voices, insights and final design projects of student participants, this paper details the theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of a new type of platform literacy: critical race techno literacy.

Author

• Tiera C. Tanksley, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author