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Black College Students Lead Movement to Eliminate Bias in Tech

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “Civics of technology derives from a lot of related concepts, but it’s about how we can use technology to further civic engagement, the democratic process, and social justice — especially anything that will galvanize a group of individuals to create social good,” Cierra Robson, associate director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, explained.
The post Black College Students Lead Movement to Eliminate Bias in Tech first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 years ago

December 21, 2022

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By Nadira Johnson | Word in Black | The Afro

From self-driving cars that can’t detect folks with darker skin to keep from running them over, to digital assistants like Siri that have trouble understanding non-White accents, technology is biased, and it is hurting Black folks.

“A lot of people will look toward technology as the end all, be all solution to a lot of social issues, but often social issues are not solved by technology, and technology often exacerbates these social issues,” said Cierra Robson, associate director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab which brings students, educators, and activists together to develop creative approaches to data conception, production, and circulation.

Founded in 2018 and led by Ruha Benjamin, a sociologist and professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, the lab focuses on finding ways to “rethink and retool the relationship between stories and statistics, power and technology, data and justice.”

“Civics of technology derives from a lot of related concepts, but it’s about how we can use technology to further civic engagement, the democratic process, and social justice — especially anything that will galvanize a group of individuals to create social good,” Robson explained.

In her role at the lab, Robson works closely with Princeton students on a variety of projects that look at how technology bias is contributing to bias in all areas of our lives, from healthcare, to labor, and education.

Robson first became passionate about finding solutions to biased technology after learning about how the issue leads to violent over-policing.

“When I was an undergrad at Princeton, I had access to this entire wealth of resources that was kind of stuck in the university,” Robson said. “One of the biggest things that I wanted to do when the labs started in the summer of 2020 was figure out a way to get those resources from Princeton into the community, to people who needed them.”

And people do need this information, desperately, because biased technology is killing Black and Brown folks and contributes to higher rates of incarceration and injustice.

“Predictive policing technologies — there’s a whole bunch of them — but one of the ones I focus on a lot is that it predicts where crime is likely to happen in a given city, and that prompts police to go be deployed in those areas so that they can catch whatever crime might happen there,” Robson said. “What they base that data on is an algorithm that uses data on historic police interaction, but no one really stops to think that those historic police interactions are colored by all sorts of discriminatory processes.”

Robson points out that a recent study conducted by Aaron Chalfin, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found that in Southern cities with large Black populations the homicide rate did not change when more police presence was added. But, more officers made arrests for low-level offenses like alcohol-related infractions, “which are not typically seen as contributing to public safety.”

“The fact is that Black communities are historically over-policed even before the advent of these technologies and algorithms,” Robson explained. “When you feed the data that focuses on arrests only in Black communities into an algorithm that predicts where crime is likely to happen, what you are going to get out of it is that crime only happens in Black and Brown neighborhoods when that’s not true.

“As a result,” Robson said. “Police are deployed overwhelmingly to Black and Brown neighborhoods, and it creates this cycle where more data is being created because there are more police there. This obviously has negative impacts on people’s lives. From the waves of violent policing that we’ve seen for quite some time, it’s evident why you would not want police in your community all the time. There has also been chronic over-policing and under-protection. Just because police are in a neighborhood, does not equate to greater safety in that neighborhood.”

Through her work with the lab and the Civics of Technology conference, Robson hopes to inspire more students to ask critical questions about how data is sourced and how technology is used in Black and Brown communities so that they can use their newfound knowledge to create better practices in whatever fields of work and study they choose to venture in to.

“A lot of them will end up in politics, in the tech industry, as lawyers, doctors, and all sorts of things,” Robson said. “One of the best things that comes out of teaching students of all kinds about this work is that it ripples out in every single environment in our daily lives, whether that be the law, whether that be healthcare, whether that be worker justice and labor.”

Participants in the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab might go on to earn a doctorate degree or work in the tech industry, but that isn’t required. Robson says if they end up working in another industry entirely, she wants students to be “able to take some of the tools that we teach them about — about fair design practices and questioning what it really means to have something be objective or questioning what it really means for something to be data-driven — into whatever area they’re going into in the future. Hopefully, if we can create enough students to do that, we are creating a new generation with a new awareness so that people are thinking twice about the technologies that they deploy and the data that they use in every area.”

To that end, in early August, the student members of the lab participated in Civics of Technology, a free, two-day virtual conference designed to bring the knowledge they’ve acquired while participating in the lab to the greater public.

Technology and education justice

During the virtual conference, Collin Riggins, a junior at Princeton and a research associate at the lab, and Payton Croskey, a senior at Princeton and creative content director for the lab, led “Reimagining Education Justice: Practices and Tools for Tech Freedom Schools,” a workshop which focused on education justice — from early childhood to college and beyond the traditional classroom. Their goal was to determine how technology can be used to promote better education practices for diverse students if it is used properly.

“The theme for this summer’s convention is Freedom Schools,” Croskey said, “Freedom Schools is where all of the research groups and products stem from. We are rooting ourselves in history before we try to build something new for the future.”

Freedom Schools were created in 1964 as entirely new schools specifically designed for the education and advancement of Black students. Supporters of these schools believed in paying attention to and meeting the unique needs of each individual child. Bringing that concept into the present day, Croskey and Riggins say that if we want to eliminate bias in education, we must similarly listen to and respond to the needs of the communities we wish to serve with technology.

We need to shift to “Thinking how we can build technology and community with those that the technology is seeking to serve,” Croskey said. “If we are building technology for young Black students in New York City, and we are saying that this is going to help them learn, then they also need to be part of that conversation and need to be included in that design.

“Technology is not going to be one size fits all,” Croskey said. “Especially in the education field, technology is going to need to be curated for a specific group and specific environments. Not pushing this one model that everyone needs to follow.”

“Although our goals are revolutionary, our work spawns from a long tradition of Black radical education,” Collins added. “We’re looking at the Freedom Schools, which decided in the summer of 1964 to create entirely different schools for Black students so they could learn frameworks for how to resist and how to function in daily life.”

“Across any institution, and even maybe across the world in general, there is a fixed approach to how you engage with technology,” Collins said. “One of the things the Lab does beautifully is allow people from different backgrounds and disciplines to come together in conversation. This has been very radical to me, especially at an institution like Princeton, which is very tech-driven and quantitatively driven. It’s nice to be able to engage with these concepts through art, or through storytelling, or through speculative fiction, and that not only be accepted but embraced. That inclusivity is rare.”

The two students have also used their time in the lab to focus on the use of surveillance in schools, which has significantly increased given the rising rates of school shootings. Although surveillance may prove useful in keeping some students safe from shooters, Croskey worries this will prove dangerous for Black students and students from other marginalized backgrounds.

“There is a lot of surveillance being used these days with the rise of school shootings. There is a lot of data being collected and a lot of tracking done on students who do not have the power to consent,” Croskey said. In addition, there are “Parents who are not being given the power to truly consent because they are not being given full explanations about how this data is being used or where it will be sent to.”

Their hope is that technology can be reimagined in a way that is “curated for a specific group and specific environments. Not pushing this one model that everyone needs to follow,” Croskey explains.

Connecting technological and environmental justice

It’s been a boiling hot summer with historic droughts ravaging the globe, but many people don’t often think about the connections between technology and environmental justice.

“When you look into it, there are a lot of ways that the technologies that we are using can be harmful to the environment,” said Kenia D. Hale, a fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology. During the Civics of Technology conference, Hale, who is also a graduate of Yale University, led “Reimagining Environmental Justice: Practices and Tools for Tech Freedom Schools,” a session that explored the intersection of the two topics.

Hale says that although the energy needed for a single internet search or email is small, there are approximately 4.1 billion people, or 53.6 percent of the global population, who now use the internet, and the associated greenhouse gasses emitted with each online activity can add up. It turns out that the carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet, and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7 percent of global greenhouse emissions. This is similar to the amount produced by the airline industry globally.

“I wanted to figure out ways to challenge the idea that technology is automatically better for the environment and spreading more awareness about the ways it can be quite harmful. People think there is no physical impact, but there is actually a lot of physical impact,” said Hale. “You can’t do anything without a laptop, so this isn’t to shame people into not buying one, but more so to spread awareness. Get engaged with the environmental organizations and activist groups that are in your city. It’s better to be more proactive in getting organized with our communities on how to collectively combat these things.”

Hale says that some questions that folks should be asking themselves when determining the environmental impact of a technological tool are who is mining the materials that go into your car, computer, or smartphone, and does the company that makes this product overly contribute to global pollution?

Learning more about the effects of technology on our lives

To learn more about how to spot technology bias and how to advocate for better data sourcing practices in your community, the lab’s research and resources page lists plenty of useful information.

In addition, the lab’s founder and director, Ruha Benjamin, has written extensively about the connections between technology and inequality. Her 2019 book “Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code” explores how new technologies are framed as “benign and pure,” even though they perpetuate social inequities. The book, which was a 2020 winner of the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award (for anti-racist scholarship) from the American Sociological Association Section on Race & Ethnic Minorities also shares ideas on how we can combat these inequities.

In addition, “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, by Kwame Ture and political scientist Charles V. Hamilton, which defines Black Power, presents insights into the roots of racism in the United States and suggests a means of reforming the traditional political process for the future through technology and other tools.

The post Black college students lead movement to eliminate bias in tech appeared first on AFRO American Newspapers.

The post Black College Students Lead Movement to Eliminate Bias in Tech first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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A Nation in Freefall While the Powerful Feast: Trump Calls Affordability a ‘Con Job’

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — There are seasons in this country when the struggle of ordinary Americans is not merely a condition but a kind of weather that settles over everything.

Published

2 weeks ago

December 3, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

There are seasons in this country when the struggle of ordinary Americans is not merely a condition but a kind of weather that settles over everything. It enters the grocery aisle, the overdue bill, the rent notice, and the long nights spent calculating how to get through the next week. The latest numbers show that this season has not passed. It has deepened.

Private employers cut 32,000 jobs in November, according to ADP. Because the nation has been hemorrhaging jobs since President Trump took office, the administration has halted publishing the traditional monthly report. The ADP report revealed that small businesses suffered the heaviest losses. Establishments with fewer than 50 workers shed 120,000 positions, including 74,000 from companies with 20 to 49 workers. Larger firms added 90,000 jobs, widening the split between those rising and those falling.

Meanwhile, wealth continues to climb for the few who already possess most of it. Federal Reserve data shows the top 1 percent now holds $52 trillion. The top 10 percent added $5 trillion in the second quarter alone. The bottom half gained only 6 percent over the past year, a number so small it fades beside the towering fortunes above it.

“Less educated and poorer people tend to make worse mistakes,” John Campbell said to CBS News, while noting that the complexity of the system leaves many families lost before they even begin. Campbell, a Harvard University economist and coauthor of a book examining the country’s broken personal finance structure, pointed to a system built to confuse and punish those who lack time, training, or access.

“Creditors are just breathing down their necks,” Carol Fox told Bloomberg News, while noting that rising borrowing costs, shrinking consumer spending, and trade battles under the current administration have left owners desperate. Fox serves as a court-appointed Subchapter V trustee in Southern Florida and has watched the crisis unfold case by case.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump told those present that affordability “doesn’t mean anything to anybody.” He added that Democrats created a “con job” to mislead the public.

However, more than $30 million in taxpayer funds reportedly have supported his golf travel. Reports show Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel have also made extensive use of private jets through government and political networks. The administration approved a $40 billion bailout of Argentina. The president’s wealthy donors recently gathered for a dinner celebrating his planned $300 million White House ballroom.

During an appearance on CNBC, Mark Zandi, an economist, warned that the country could face serious economic threats. “We have learned that people make many mistakes,” Campbell added. “And particularly, sadly, less educated and poorer people tend to make worse mistakes.”

Stacy M. Brown

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The Numbers Behind the Myth of the Hundred Million Dollar Contract

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Odell Beckham Jr. did not spark controversy on purpose. He sat on The Pivot Podcast and tried to explain the math behind a deal that looks limitless from the outside but shrinks fast once the system takes its cut.

Published

2 weeks ago

December 3, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Odell Beckham Jr. did not spark controversy on purpose. He sat on The Pivot Podcast and tried to explain the math behind a deal that looks limitless from the outside but shrinks fast once the system takes its cut. He looked into the camera and tried to offer a truth most fans never hear. “You give somebody a five-year $100 million contract, right? What is it really? It is five years for sixty. You are getting taxed. Do the math. That is twelve million a year that you have to spend, use, save, invest, flaunt,” said Beckham. He added that buying a car, buying his mother a house, and covering the costs of life all chip away at what people assume lasts forever.

The reaction was instant. Many heard entitlement. Many heard a millionaire complaining. What they missed was a glimpse into a professional world built on big numbers up front and a quiet erasing of those numbers behind the scenes.

The tax data in Beckham’s world is not speculation. SmartAsset’s research shows that top NFL players often lose close to half their income to federal taxes, state taxes, and local taxes. The analysis explains that athletes in California face a state rate of 13.3 percent and that players are also taxed in every state where they play road games, a structure widely known as the jock tax. For many players, that means filing up to ten separate returns and facing a combined tax burden that reaches or exceeds 50 percent.

A look across the league paints the same picture. The research lists star players in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, all giving up between 43 and 47 percent of their football income before they ever touch a dollar. Star quarterback Phillip Rivers, at one point, was projected to lose half of his playing income to taxes alone.

A second financial breakdown from MGO CPA shows that the problem does not only affect the highest earners. A $1 million salary falls to about $529,000 after federal taxes, state and city taxes, an agent fee, and a contract deduction. According to that analysis, professional athletes typically take home around half of their contract value, and that is before rent, meals, training, travel, and support obligations are counted.

The structure of professional sports contracts adds another layer. A study of major deals across MLB, the NBA, and the NFL notes that long-term agreements lose value over time because the dollar today has more power than the dollar paid in the future. Even the largest deals shrink once adjusted for time. The study explains that contract size alone does not guarantee financial success and that structure and timing play a crucial role in a player’s long-term outcomes.

Beckham has also faced headlines claiming he is “on the brink of bankruptcy despite earning over one hundred million” in his career. Those reports repeated his statement that “after taxes, it is only sixty million” and captured the disbelief from fans who could not understand how money at that level could ever tighten.

Other reactions lacked nuance. One article wrote that no one could relate to any struggle on eight million dollars a year. Another described his approach as “the definition of a new-money move” and argued that it signaled poor financial choices and inflated spending.

But the underlying truth reaches far beyond Beckham. Professional athletes enter sudden wealth without preparation. They carry the weight of family support. They navigate teams, agents, advisors, and expectations from every direction. Their earning window is brief. Their career can end in a moment. Their income is fragmented, taxed, and carved up before the public ever sees the real number.

The math is unflinching. Twenty million dollars becomes something closer to $8 million after federal taxes, state taxes, jock taxes, agent fees, training costs, and family responsibilities. Over five years, that is about $40 million of real, spendable income. It is transformative money, but not infinite. Not guaranteed. Not protected.

Beckham offered a question at the heart of this entire debate. “Can you make that last forever?”

Stacy M. Brown

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FBI Report Warns of Fear, Paralysis, And Political Turmoil Under Director Kash Patel

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Six months into Kash Patel’s tenure as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a newly compiled internal report from a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI agents and analysts delivers a stark warning about what the Bureau has become under his leadership.

Published

2 weeks ago

December 2, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown

Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Six months into Kash Patel’s tenure as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a newly compiled internal report from a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI agents and analysts delivers a stark warning about what the Bureau has become under his leadership. The 115-page document, submitted to Congress this month, is built entirely on verified reporting from inside field offices across the country and paints a picture of an agency gripped by fear, divided by ideology, and drifting without direction.

The report’s authors write that they launched their inquiry after receiving troubling accounts from inside the Bureau only four months into Patel’s tenure. They describe their goal as a pulse check on whether the ninth FBI director was reforming the Bureau or destabilizing it. Their conclusion: the preliminary findings were discouraging.

Reports Describe Widespread Internal Distrust and Open Hostility Toward President Trump

Sources across the country told investigators that a large number of FBI employees openly express hostility toward President Donald Trump. One source reported seeing an “increasing number of FBI Special Agents who dislike the President,” adding that these employees were exhibiting what they called “TDS” and had lost “their ability to think critically about an issue and distinguish fact from fiction.” Another source described employees making off-color comments about the administration during office conversations.

The sentiment reportedly extends beyond domestic lines. Law enforcement and intelligence partners in allied countries have privately expressed fear that the Trump administration could damage long-term international cooperation according to a sub-source who reported those concerns directly to investigators.

Pardon Backlash and Fear of Retaliation

The President’s January 20 pardons of individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6 attack ignited what the report calls demoralization inside the Bureau. One FBI employee said they were “demoralized” that individuals “rightfully convicted” were pardoned and feared that some of those individuals or their supporters might target them or their family for carrying out their duties. Another source described widespread anger that lists of personnel who worked on January 6 investigations had been provided to the Justice Department for review, noting that agents “were just following orders” and now worry those lists could leak publicly.

Morale In Decline

Morale among FBI employees appears to be sinking fast. There were a few scattered positive notes, but the weight of the reporting describes morale as low, bad, or terrible. Agents with more than a decade of service told investigators they feel marginalized or ignored. Some are counting the days until they can retire. One even uses a countdown app on their phone.

Culture Of Fear

Layered over that unhappiness is something far more corrosive. A culture of fear. Sources say Patel, though personable, created mistrust from the start because of harsh remarks he made about the FBI before taking office. Agents took those comments personally. They now work in an atmosphere where employees keep their heads down and speak carefully. Managers wait for directions because they are afraid a wrong move could cost them their jobs. One source said agents dread coming to work because nobody knows who will be reassigned or fired next.

Leadership Concerns

The report also paints a picture of leaders unprepared for the jobs they hold. Multiple sources said Patel is in over his head and lacks the breadth of experience required to understand the Bureau’s complex programs. Some said Deputy Director Dan Bongino should never have been appointed because the role requires deep institutional knowledge of FBI operations. A sub-source recounted Bongino telling employees during a field office visit that “the truth is for chumps.” Employees who heard it were stunned and offended.

Social Media and Communication Breakdowns

Communication inside the Bureau has become another source of frustration. Sources said Patel and Bongino spend too much time posting on social media and not enough time communicating with employees in clear and official ways. Several told investigators they learn more about FBI operations from tweets than from internal channels.

ICE Assignments Raise Alarm

Nothing has sparked more frustration inside the FBI than the orders requiring agents to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reporting shows widespread resentment and fear over these assignments. Agents say they have little training in immigration law and were ordered into operations without proper planning. Some said they were put in tactically unsafe positions. They also warned that being pulled away from counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations threatens national security. One sub-source asked, “If we’re not working CT and CI, then who is?”

DEI Program Removal

Even the future of diversity programs became a point of division. Some agents praised Patel’s removal of DEI initiatives. Others said the old system left them afraid to speak honestly because they worried about being labeled racist. The reporting shows a deep and unresolved conflict over whether DEI strengthened the organization or weakened it.

Notable Incidents

The document also details several incidents that have become part of FBI lore. Patel ordered all employees to remove pronouns and personal messages from their email signatures yet used the number nine in his own. Agents laughed at what they saw as hypocrisy. In another episode, FBI employees who discussed Patel’s request for an FBI-issued firearm were ordered to take polygraph examinations, which one respected source described as punitive. And in Utah, Patel refused to exit a plane without a medium-sized FBI raid jacket. A team scrambled to find one and finally secured a female agent’s jacket. Patel still refused to step out until patches were added. SWAT members removed patches from their own uniforms to satisfy the demand.

A Bureau at a Crossroad

The Alliance warns that the Bureau stands at a difficult crossroads. They write that the FBI faces some of the most daunting challenges in its history. But even in despair, a few voices say something different. One veteran source said “It is early, but most can see the mission is now the priority. Case work and threats are the focus again. Reform is headed in the right direction.”