On Racial Equity and Why We Need it Now
By Mimi Fox Melton
It’s an election year, and truth be told, I am concerned about the direction of advancements in technology and the implications for the future we are building. Tech shapes democratic discourse, and in this moment of political hellfire, we must protect against the exploitation of digital means toward destructive futures. If we want to see a future that is more livable and more free than our present, we must empower Black and Latinx technologists and change-makers in the industry.
At Code2040, we approach our work for racial equity as racial justice, movement-oriented work. We are invested in changing not only who is working in tech, but how folks are working in tech, and how tech is being worked. We envision a world shaped by collective human needs, that values life over profits. We aim to shape a tech industry that strives to create life-affirming technology, a tech industry where the good of our collective humanity is centered over profit motives. As an organization dedicated to advancing racial equity in the innovation economy, we affirm our commitments to racial and economic justice. We stand in support of tech workers everywhere who are galvanized by the promise of creating tech for collective, social good.
Around the country, tech workers are rising up, demanding ethical use of their labor and their creative outputs. Yet again, the CEOs and executives at the top are wielding their power to squelch dissent. In the last month, Google fired upwards of 50 workers for their participation in peaceful protest. The tech industry needs worker protections to ensure technologists committed to using tech for social good can raise their voices without punishment.
It’s important to situate this round of firings alongside the tech industry’s full-out assault on DEIB and racial equity work. Why? Budget cuts, layoffs, and direct firings are all silencing tactics, moves made to maintain an uneven distribution of power that favors profits over all else. Gutting the industry of the departments, functions, and disempowering people who are committed to social change within tech is one way the industry reinforces structural racism and maintains the status quo.
Racial equity is about more than racial parity in the workplace. It’s about systemic change, and requires a redistribution of power in the industry. Racial equity policies and practices protect workers and ensure workplaces are operating according to values that will lead toward more possibility and more freedom. Our work for racial equity is about building power with Black and Latinx tech workers who are leading systems change efforts, including creating policies, practices, and ways of being that lead to racial justice in the tech sector and beyond. We must continue to create inroads in the industry for Black and Latinx technologists while simultaneously dismantling the barriers that prevent their full participation and leadership in the innovation economy.
Racial equity work is change work. It’s a way of seeing the world, of recognizing how racist structures shape our present. To me, it’s knowing that racist structures are not absolute and do not define us. There are always Black and Latinx people creating, dreaming, building, celebrating, loving. We create spaces for us to dream, imagine, and be in the joy of community.
Working for racial equity in tech is, in part, a work of refusal; refusing the white supremacist systems that currently exist, refusing the glorification of productivity and perfectionism, refusing to give up hope and commitment to building this world anew. I see working for racial equity as a commitment to living otherwise, and to showing up each day to build with people who are committed to creating technologies for more possibility, more livable worlds.
I work and dream toward a world of abundance, where everyone has enough, where imaginations thrive and where rest is deeply valued. How do we ensure that the industry is designing technologies for creating more livable worlds? If we are going to make change, if we are going to bring in a more livable future, I believe we must grapple with the ways the tech industry innovates destructive possibilities, and is implicated in reproducing racial violence at both local and global scales.
A racially equitable tech industry is an industry that drives toward life-affirming technologies; it’s an industry that is invested in the lives of people globally over profits. Its values are shaped by the promise of a future defined by abundance. A future defined by abundance means people everywhere can do more than meet their basic needs. There’s access to security and stability, leisure, rest, and play. The creativity, dreams, and imaginations of Black and Latinx people are celebrated and invested in across the innovation economy. It’s a future that centers the well-being of people over profit. This is a future where Black and Latinx people are thriving.
Even as we are faced with the constant onslaught of attacks on racial equity, I believe that together, in community, we can create lasting, structural change and transform the innovation economy. The power of being in community is that we stand in the gap for one another, flanking each other as we navigate the inequities and imbalanced distribution of power in our industry. Together, we possess the potential to revolutionize the tech landscape, forging a path to the future that is more equitable; more free; more livable for us all. Become a racial equity advocate and join us in building a more livable future today.