The Marathon Continues...in Computer Science: How Black Girl Students Use Technology to Grieve Black Death

• In Event: Keys to the City: Nipsey Hussle, Marathon Education, and the Celebration of South Central

Abstract

This study examines how Girls of Color use computer science (CS) technologies to understand, address and heal from instances of Black death in their communities. The study focuses on a self-directed CS project created by four self-identified Black girls in a ninth grade introductory computer science classroom. The project, which was created two days after the death of rapper Nipsey Hussle, was an e-textile mural aimed at educating the broader community about Hussle’s commitment to community activism. Not only did the project serve as a cathartic process of communal healing during times of racialized trauma, but it was also a strategic attempt to renegotiate the boundaries of what “is an appropriate use of school computers” for Black girls who experience hyper-policing.

This study draws upon Black feminist thought and critical race theory. Two CRT tenets are the focus of this paper: interest convergence and transformational resistance. I use interest convergence to explain why a school that penalized discussions of Nipsey Hussle’s death simultaneously allowed him to be memorialized in a CS project. I then use the transformational resistance framework to showcase how the girls used CS to call out structural racism (i.e., anti-Blackness and the devaluing of Black life in school) and to strive towards social change (i.e., teach about Nipsey’s activism to change the dominant narrative).

This paper also uses two tenets of Black feminist thought: intersectionality and historical embedding. I use intersectionality to explore how Nipsey’s music, activism and public relationship with partner Lauren London impacted the girls and helped them navigate a hostile educational environment. The notion of Intersectionality also aids in my exploration of electronic sewing and e-textiles as a raced and gendered practice that aided in the girls’ healing process. By submerging these practices of healing into a rich historical context, I argue that electronic sewing is a digitized form of graffiti. Similar to street artists, the girls co-opted public property to speak truth to power, to memorialize Black death, and to make their humanity - which was regularly ignored and overlooked in school - undeniably visible.

Data sources included weekly observation field notes from the classroom (September 2018 - May 2019), 3 one-hour, semi-structured interviews with each participant, and student projects. Data sources were coded to surface initial themes and patterns across field notes, interviews, and student projects.

This paper disrupts popular narratives positioning Black girls as uninterested in “doing computer science” while simultaneously highlighting their tech-savvy means of healing from racial trauma in a high school CS classroom. This study stands apart from previous scholarship in its use of a Black feminist technology approach to showcase connections between the tech industry’s reliance upon Black death and schools’ forceful expulsion of conversations about racial death

Author

• Tiera C. Tanksley, University of Colorado - Boulder