Activism

UC Berkeley, Spelman Alum Ruha Benjamin Among 2024 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award Recipients

The daughter of an African American man and a Persian-Indian woman, Ruha Benjamin is a transdisciplinary scholar and writer illuminating how advances in science, medicine, and technology reflect and reproduce social inequality. By integrating critical analysis of innovation with attentiveness to the potential for positive change, Benjamin demonstrates the importance of imagination and grassroots activism in shaping social policies and cultural practices.

Published

2 years ago

October 21, 2024

Oakland Post

Ruha Benjamin is an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Photo courtesy MacArthur Foundation.

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer. The awardees receive $800,000 over a five-year period. The Post will publish their innovations over the next several weeks, starting with Ruha Benjamin, who received her PhD in Sociology at UC Berkeley.

Ruha Benjamin

Benjamin shares the inspiration behind her work on her website: “I write, teach, and speak widely about the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice.”

“…I arrived here by way of a winding road that has snaked through South Central Los Angeles; Conway, South Carolina; Majuro, South Pacific, and Swaziland, Southern Africa. I come from many Souths, and I tend to bring this perspective, of looking at the world from its underbelly, to my analysis.”

Benjamin’s academic and professional impact is far-reaching. Benjamin served as an assistant professor of sociology at Boston University before joining the faculty at Princeton in 2014. She has since received numerous honors, including the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Science Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. She is also the founding director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab, a space where students, artists, and activists work together to challenge tech-mediated harms.

In People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013), Benjamin examines the persistent gap between those who contribute to new medical technologies and those who actually benefit from them. She uses the California Stem Cell Initiative as a case study to illustrate a persistent problem in medical research: socially marginalized groups engaged for research purposes but not guaranteed access to the treatments that result from that research. Benjamin further investigates the intersection of science and society in Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019). In this work, she exposes the racial hierarchies and systems of social control embedded in seemingly neutral algorithms and automated systems that people interact with daily. These technologies, which rely on biased training data and flawed assumptions, cause direct harm to individuals and communities. Benjamin provides numerous examples of digital systems that perpetuate what she calls the “New Jim Code,” such as marketing algorithms that promote real estate based on “ethnic preferences,” thereby maintaining segregated neighborhoods, and crime prediction software that justifies intrusive surveillance of communities of color.

In her two most recent books, Benjamin weaves together personal experience and social analysis. Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022) is a poignant meditation on how individuals drive meaningful social change. She advocates for the power of grassroots initiatives that prioritize care over control, such as doulas focused on birth equity and tenant organizers fighting the legacy of redlining. In Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Benjamin argues that we are constrained by policies and paradigms that result from the narrow imagination of those who monopolize power and resources and seek to benefit the few at the expense of the many. As founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, she works with students, organizers, and artists to identify, challenge, and transform tech-mediated harms. Benjamin deepens our understanding of the dangers that technological advancements pose to vulnerable populations while reimagining what counts as innovation and who gets to shape our collective future.

Ruha Benjamin received a BA from Spelman College (2001) and an MA (2004) and PhD (2008) from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab (since 2020).

The MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award and the Spelman College web sites are the sources of this report.

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Oakland Post: Week of May 13 – 19, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 13 – 19, 2026

Published

30 minutes ago

May 15, 2026

Oakland Post

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Marin City Public Housing Residents Demand a Voice in County’s Renovation Plans

Representation has been a continuous struggle for the Residents Council, she said in an interview with the Post News Group. In 2014, the tenants took the county to federal court over this issue, and prevailed, resulting in an MOU that was in effect from 2014 to 2024, said McLemore. “Now, they are not responding to our rightful requests to participate. They are not giving us a legal justification for their position.”

Published

5 days ago

May 10, 2026

Oakland Post

The largest housing complex in Marin County, Golden Gate Village residents are for predominantly Black and low-income. Courtesy image.

Tenants say the County of Marin is ignoring federal law requiring resident council participation

By Ken Epstein

Marin City public housing residents say the County is illegally depriving them of their rights to participate in renovation decisions that affect the future of their housing, raising deep concerns over whether the county ultimately will find a way to displace them.

According to regulations established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Marin City public housing residents have the right to organize, elect resident councils, and hold public housing agencies accountable for involving them in management decisions.

Without resident participation, the Board of Housing Commissioners, made up of the five Marin County Board of Supervisors and two resident comissioners, has approved a $226 million project. The plan calls for renovation of the 296 units in Golden Gate Village (GGV) and focuses on interior improvements. The project is scheduled to start in July.

Residents’ concerns have a long history, said Royce McLemore, president of the Golden Gate Village Residents Council and a 50-year resident of Marin City,

With no current MOU mandating training and participation of residents, the legal basis for all the redevelopment decisions made by the county since 2024 is questionable, said Terrie Green, executive director of Marin City Climate Resilience. “We are experiencing voicelessness. If residents had a voice, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” she said.

County decisions include a plan, in line with federal regulations, to convert GGV from public housing to a public-private enterprise that allows for private investment. The Marin Housing Authority has created a limited partnership that includes Burbank Housing – which will renovate the units and manage the property – and Wells Fargo Bank, the investor.

This change in federal policy regarding public housing, which includes a shift to a Section-8 voucher system, has resulted in gentrification across the country, particularly affecting African Americans in cities such as San Francisco.

Shifts in criteria of what is considered affordable could also end up pricing residents out of their living units. At present, low income in Marin County is officially considered $156,000. But the median household income in Marin City is significantly lower at $68,846.

Damian Morgan, a community advocate with Marin City Climate Resilience, questioned why the county is renovating apartments without fixing toxic infrastructure that is impacting the lives of people in GGV.

Morgan said tenants have filed a class action lawsuit because of unsafe conditions at Golden Gate Village.

Residents are also concerned that the County still does not have an adequate family plan for temporary displacement while their apartments are being renovated. Although the County has suggested other community apartments as alternatives, nothing concrete has developed except vacant public housing units that have the same toxic conditions, such as mold and mildew.

Green said it doesn’t make sense. “…Why are we moving people around into temporary housing that’s uninhabitable, when you should be dealing first with the infrastructure, the foundational work, replacing old and rusted water pipes and new sewers.”

Morgan questions the County’s motivation for neglecting infrastructure repairs. “They’re remodeling the units but leaving the decayed infrastructure in place. I feel like they’re just setting this up for it to fail.”

“What slowed it down a little is that GGV is a historic preservation district, but I think what they’re striving for is demolition by neglect,” he said. “The neglect has always been on their part.”

Architect Ora Hatheway said her concern is about cutting corners. “You have to deal with the land issues. You have to deal with grading and drainage, and that’s being brushed under the rug.”

In an interview with KGO TV, Marin County Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters responded to some of these concerns. She said residents are guaranteed the right to return to their homes.

“This is a concern that we take seriously,” she said. “Every resident will move back into their own unit, and we’ve given this to them in writing. Before they leave their unit, we will sign a document together that guarantees their right to return.”

In response to residents who feel left out of the planning process, she said community input has focused on those affected by the first phase of the project. “So other residents may not have heard quite as much or felt like they had as much contact. But if there are residents who have concerns, we’re happy to hear from them. You can contact my office or the housing authority directly,” she said.

While County leaders may be giving some updates to some tenants, they are not sitting at the table with the Residents Council nor giving residents a voice in decision-making, said McLemore.

Without a voice in decisions, tenants are worried that Black people may be forced out of public housing, resulting in gentrification, she said in an interview with ABC 7. It’s still paternalistic, she said. “It’s still that ‘We know what’s best for you.’’’

Several years ago, the Residents Council proposed a land trust plan that would give tenants homeownership rights. Though the plan had broad support throughout the county, it was rejected by the Board of Supervisors

In the final analysis, Green said, for Marin City tenants the fight is not just for decent housing but to maintain their community with dignity under conditions of mutual respect.

“We’re talking about people who came here to work in the shipyards during World War II to bring about peace and safety to this country,” she said. “Look at the discrimination we’ve faced down through the years. Look at the life-span issue of Marin City folks – almost 20 years less than the rest of the County.”

“We want educational equity so our children will have decent schools. We need a land trust, property ownership, so we can have wealth creation. Marin City needs the same quality of life as other communities in Marin County.”