History of Data Disenfranchisement

The history of data disenfranchisement has always been met with resistance and appropriation in which scholars, activists, and artists have sharpened abolitionist tools that employ data for liberation. In my talk at the inaugural Data for Black Lives conference in 2018, I started with an ancestral roll call to draw attention to this legacy. From W. E. B. Du Bois’ modernist data visualizations – dozens of graphs, charts, and maps that visualized the state of Black life80 – to Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s expert deployment of statistics in The Red Record, which illustrated the widespread practice of lynching and White terrorism, there is a long tradition of employing and challenging data for Black lives. But before the data there were, for Du Bois, Wells- Barnett, and many others, the political questions and commitment to Black freedom. Today this commitment continues in the work of numerous organizations that are not content with simply reforming a system that “never loved us,” that is, was designed against us.

An abolitionist toolkit, in this way, is concerned not only with emerging technologies but also with the everyday production, deployment, and interpretation of data. Such toolkits can be focused on computational interventions, but they do not have to be. In fact, narrative tools are essential. In a recent study, a Stanford research team introduced people to shocking statistics about racial disparities in policing and incarceration and found that exposure to the data led those surveyed to become more punitive and less supportive of policies that might counteract the criminalization of Black people.81

Data, in short, do not speak for themselves and don’t always change hearts and minds or policy. To address this phenomenon, the Stanford team encouraged researchers to offer more context, challenge stereotypical associations, and highlight the role of institutions in producing racial disparities. And while this more holistic approach to framing is vital, the problem extends well beyond retooling social science communication. It calls for a justice-oriented, emancipatory approach to data production, analysis, and public engagement as part of the broader movement for Black lives.