Juneteenth, Racial Equity, and Our Fight for Black Liberation
By Mimi Fox Melton
Juneteenth commemorates the announcement of emancipation from slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865. This occurred two months after the official end of the Civil War, and six months before the passage of the 13th Amendment, which officially ended chattel slavery with a very significant exception: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” As such, forced labor and slavery remain legal as retribution for criminal convictions.
Before it was Juneteenth, this day was celebrated as “Jubilee” a biblical reference to a passage in Leviticus that promises that all slaves will be free, all debts will be canceled, and that the land will be returned to divine authority. In a country designed by chattel slavery and genocide against Indigenous peoples, these promises remain unfulfilled. Indeed, Juneteenth reminds us that slavery did not end with the civil war and invites us to commit to our work for Black liberation by contending with the afterlife of slavery. At Code2040, our work creates economic mobility for Black and Latinx people, redistributes power into the hands of Black and Latinx technologists, and challenges structural racism as it manifests across the innovation economy.
Much of the generational and economic wealth in this country can be traced to chattel slavery, including within the tech industry. Specifically, venture capital funds can be linked to the transatlantic slave trade. Venture capital currently drives much of the tech industry, heavily impacting not only who is leading the industry, but also which innovations earn significant financial support. Using historical records, Erika Brodnock and Johannes Lenhard present* “an evidence-based account that traces venture capital back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, while identifying direct links between the regimes and practices, methods, customs, and traditions developed by enslavers, ship captains, and their financiers and how the venture capital and high-growth entrepreneurial industries still operate today.”* Not only is some accumulated capital within VC linked to slavery, but also the systems of domination, exploitation, and dehumanization that defined chattel slavery inform the structural conditions of the innovation economy.
In addition to the ways the afterlife of slavery manifests as structural racism within the tech industry, big tech relies on forced and low-wage labor, considered “modern day slavery” in producing rechargeable batteries, as an example. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), people work in impossibly harsh conditions, mining cobalt to fuel the batteries in our laptops and smartphones, for the equivalent of a few dollars a day. The conditions of the DRC today, which allow for these practices of forced labor, have everything to do with centuries of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the ongoing plundering of natural resources by Europe and the US.
Abolitionists have long pointed to the links between slavery and our criminal justice system. Indeed, the 13th Amendment notoriously legitimated slavery of those convicted of crimes, which maintained an unpaid pool of labor within the U.S. This reinforced and greatly expanded the convict leasing system, a system of forced penal labor utilized by plantations and corporations. While convict leasing is technically no longer in practice, imprisoned people today continue to work for low wages while being held captive. Minimum wages for incarcerated people vary by state, but all fall under $1/hr, and range from $0 - $0.35. Seven states do not pay incarcerated people anything, and the majority of wages earned go back to the state for various prison expenses, including “room and board,” court costs, and prison maintenance.
Advances in technology are too often carceral, leading to increased police surveillance of Black and Latinx people, and expanded prison populations. Militarized police within the U.S. deploy “predictive policing,” laden with algorithmic racial bias, unevenly targeting Black communities. As AI advances and opens up unprecedented possibilities and threats for humanity, the tech industry is at a critical juncture. At Code2040, we believe it is possible for the industry to design toward more free futures.
Our work for racial equity aims to transform the innovation economy, ensuring that tech is designing life affirming technologies for our collective, social good. Currently, Black and Latinx technologists make up less than 10% of the tech workforce. We know without Black and Latinx leadership in tech, the industry will never serve or represent the full spectrum of our society and will, instead, represent a threat to our communities. Since our founding in 2012, Code2040 has fostered one of the most expansive networks of Black and Latinx technologists within the industry. We’ve served as a gateway for hundreds of Black and Latinx computer science majors into tech and supported 250+ tech companies in redesigning their workplaces to center racial equity. In the last year, our Fellows Program has expanded into nine months of racial equity advocacy training, skills building, industry networking, and community building.
This Juneteenth, we commit to fighting for a world defined by Black joy and life thriving. Our work for racial equity is work for Black liberation. Racial inequity must be severed at the roots. Because white supremacy is at the root of racial inequity as well as of our society’s most unequal systems, institutions, and policies, our work for racial equity is about building a radically different world. Racial equity is ending police violence; it’s ending colonial, genocidal warfare; it’s Black and Latinx people thriving. Our work must do more than bring Black and Latinx people into the tech industry. Our aim is to transform the innovation economy, ensuring that tech is designing more livable, more free worlds for us all.