“So when did you get into tech?” is the unavoidable question flung at me in every tech or startup space I’ve entered in the past 9 months since launching Thurst, a dating app for queer people of all gender identifications. Initially, I took the question as a simple conversation starter, a polite gesture of attempted inclusion. Upon deeper consideration, the mere question begs a larger explanation of :“Why are you here?” and “I need you to justify your presence in this space.” The underlying sentiment is that tech cannot inherently belong to me, a chubby, radical queer black woman but that I am borrowing part of someone else’s world, someone else’s experience.
The idea is that there had to be a pivotal, savior moment for me and my black body to interact with machines and the languages that instruct them. In this notion lies the violence against me, the theft of birthright as a naturally curious and scientific minded young girl who would soon be condensed— then marginalized based on race and perceived gender. Because I am not a white man, it’s assumed that technology is second nature and somewhat alien to me, rather than an intuitive seamless experience. I believe that working in tech is rooted in the core of who I am, and not just because I was able to access a computer at an early age or spend time coding in high school. I think I came to tech because I realized the spans of my blackness and queerness combined with the knowledge that only black folk possess certain perspectives key to solving some of the world’s most critical problems. When I read various works on blackness, as it relates to our common oppression, I often wonder if our collective trauma contains the threads of salvation we have been seeking. When I think about the ideal mind for innovation, whether they be an entrepreneur, student, or designer or any sort, who would actually be able to contend with the world’s most critical issues and solve them, I imagine a queer black person.
My first formal experience with tech as an occupation came when I spent a few months working with some graduate students from MIT on a startup revolving around the nightlife experience. It was incredibly insightful to work with other people of color and see how they modeled and then were able to create their own realities, somehow circumventing the red tape of white institutions that I was used to. Being in tech offered them, and me by association, a pass to spaces and people that would have been normally inaccessible, given that you understand how socioeconomic status and race work to preserve the elite class by simply making it invisible to those who don’t qualify to be apart of it. I remember being young, scared and feeling alone when I decided to leave Northeastern University in Boston and spend the summer in Brooklyn, exploring both Silicon Alley and queer youth culture. I was seeking a community, heaps less racism, and a general location to begin the deeper internal healing and strengthening work that needed to undo the mis-education of white supremacist histories. I used Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr as launchpads for more intentional social building, a trend I see beyond my own circle of friends. I felt my self-acceptance growing with each click, as I realized that because I was blessed to see the world for what it really was, I would potentially be able to create my own networks and digital spaces, loosely linked via pre-existing platforms and groups.
Anyone who identifies as anything other than straight knows how integral social media usage is in order to do what our heterosexual counterparts certainly take for granted — let alone trying to identify safe spaces for qtipoc and non-binary folks. For many that I know personally, access to various tech platforms is akin to a digital lifeline, classroom, and chosen family. The beautifully intricate networks created by people of color online are simply the seeds of liberation and I honestly smile when I think about how all over the world, people of color are building, hacking, reusing and re-purposing the tech available to them to undermine the oppressive white supremacist capitalist structures that have previously kept us in the dark, far from the building blocks of society and the vaults of opportunity. My heart literally flutters when I think about the thousands upon thousands of marginalized people, but most of all black queer people, who will learn to code, dream up their own digital worlds, platforms, and spaces to redefine the idea of who can become an architect of society.
Naturally, I experienced the harsh realities of being young and black in corporate and tech spaces, working at notable companies in Midtown Manhattan and north Brooklyn, just to realize that not only was I the sole black hire in at least 2 years but 1/3 of the female employees and the first person under 35. Then comes the shame of being paid much less than a non-black coworker for doing the same, and often better work — as if the added prestige should be enough for me to overlook it. Honestly, if I could collect money for every time a black woman in tech has retold this same tale, we could have our own venture capital firm. But, alas capitalism is inherently racist and we wind up back where this system wants us to be, despite being exceptional negroes.
Being a black queer woman, and therefore being thrice oppressed, I understood that I was naturally able to innovate in ways that the average white man would never be asked to — simply as a result of a legacy of terror and the brief moments of recourse we are given in our daily lives. Complete strangers, bonded by our melanin and desire for support and community, use these platforms more actively and arguably produce the best content than any other group. Black folk, simply by seeking to honor their blackness in online spaces, have transformed how the world views activism, social exchange, content creation, skill-sharing — but most importantly, in doing so we are reconnecting the diaspora.
For the greater part of a millennium, black people across the globe have been subjected to various forms of violence and oppression via the white supremacist innovation machine. Guns and gun powder, germs and medical experiments, cotton gins, and railroads all have levied their weight on the backs of black bodies to push certain groups in society forward while leaving communities of color without resources, space, and time to heal, let alone to innovate and create effectively apart from established institutions, all of which were fueled by racist, colonial agendas. Black bodies were enslaved for the sake of social structuring that positioned whiteness above all else while creating a gargantuan financial advantage over other groups. When we talk about legacy and the use of capital, especially in relation to tech, we are referring to the harnessing of those same reigns that choked my ancestors out of the classification of humanity. When we name all of the communities of color, the black and brown invisible participants in the world of tech, we begin to see that the same architecture for white supremacist colonial empire is being employed actively in the same industry supposedly out to save the world. If we are being honest, mainstream tech is a colonial movement by another name. Numerous tech companies and the leagues of ignorant white people employed by them are pushing out people of color in neighborhoods across the country, short-lived havens from the historically racist redlining of a generation past, now playgrounds for the hipster racism that drives by in a Tesla while police harass and force our black and brown bodies out of spaces now deemed worthy of your “rejuvenation”. To be black and radical in this current landscape often feels like running after a flying target, or rather an entire group of cis white men who are convinced they are problem solving when they are in fact a major part of the problem.
Many social media platforms are powered by black culture, black creativity, and discourse centering various forms of black activism. Queer black women push this further by driving and leading literally all of the impactful activist movements since 2013. This is a well known fact. And yet Twitter is still centers whiteness in its hiring practices and in policy, reflective of how the colonial narrative is integral to how we view tech today. Who is expected to build and supervise while others simply exist and carefully negotiate the status quo? Visibility via hiring practices or temporary spotlights certainly doesn’t stop the violent acts of racism, sexism, and other various oppressive forces from manifesting on a mass scale in tech spaces. In fact, by setting the bar so low that black folk should be satisfied by working at white tech companies and achieving perceived equality in this way is deeply insulting and evident of the psychopathic reflexes embedded in mainstream justice and “diversity” work. Programs like Black Girls Code and TransH4CK , among many other radical initiatives are doing the work to help redefine and shape not only tech, but also education and collective organizing.
Whose hands are being used to mine the coltan from the earth, then turned to tantalum to be packaged in expensive iPhones with a half-life of 2 years? I wonder if hardware developers think of the black and brown person(s) whose life is halved due to strenuous labor and the pressures of a society still haunted by the ghosts of colonialism and European occupation? If you knew how many black and brown hands were involved in the process to create your machine, would you then ask me still, “What brings you to tech?” I desire to create because I aim to solve my own problems first, and in doing so, work through and against the decades of scientific racism that allowed technologies to be created in silos, imagined only by white minds and therefore elementally lacking. The next time someone asks me how I got into tech, I will tell them that I’ve always been in tech, from the fibers and circuit boards to the slang you confidently steal from twitter and yes, even the 1/100th of your local tech company, positioned strategically in the first row of the company photo. I firmly believe that a better tomorrow can only be envisioned by black minds, survivors of the waves of a slow and systematic genocide, but also fundamentally gifted with the blueprint for global liberation.
