The great distraction - the inCREDible polemic* of a report
Written by Tracey Gyateng, Ade Adewunmi, and Edafe Onerhime.
*polemic: an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another. “Polemic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
In May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by police officer Kevin Chauvin in the United States. The horrific killing sparked protests in the US and all over the world. Many of the protests outside of the US were a show of solidarity with African-Americans but also sought to draw attention to anti-Black discrimination and violence in their own countries too. That was definitely the case in the UK.
In July of the same year, in response to Black Lives Matter protests in the UK, Boris Johnson announced the creation of an independent commission to examine racial inequality in the UK. The Commission led by Dr Tony Sewell, an education consultant and charity leader, was set up by Munira Mirza, a close aide of the PM. There was disappointment from several quarters about the creation of this commission. For one thing both Sewell and Mirza had previously expressed scepticism about the very notion of structural racism in the UK. For another, there have already been several reviews of racial disparities across a wide spectrum of UK life and successive UK governments have been slow to act on the resulting recommendations.
Despite this, when deciding what the focus of our project to examine the impact of data and data-centric, digital technologies on Black communities should be, we chose to mirror the focus areas of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED). We felt it might be interesting to compare the narratives that emerged from both works.
Structural racism is real, now let’s move on
Having said that, CRED wasn’t the impetus for our work. Rather, it was our understanding that, without proper safeguards, innovation will often entrench existing power dynamics and economic (dis)advantage. Still, as three middle-class women working in tech, we were aware that our perspectives and experiences couldn’t possibly capture the variety of experiences that Black people have while interacting with technology on a daily basis.
And rightly so, Black people in the UK aren’t a monolith. We felt an exploration of these diverse experiences was a worthwhile project. That’s the short story of how in January of this year we kicked off an exploratory review of the impact of data and digital technologies on the lived experience of Black people in the UK within the spheres of: education, health, crime & justice and business & enterprise.
Our project was well underway by the time the Sewell report was released and we already had enough evidence to suggest that our understanding that innovation (in this case data-centric technologies) can and does entrench inequality wasn’t misguided. The conclusions of the Sewell report made for disheartening reading; it didn’t reflect our project findings, our lived experiences, or those of anyone we knew. Its sole purpose seemed to be the provision of cover for government inaction.
We might have stayed in that despondent state but for an epiphany triggered by political events at the time. More specifically, two news stories. One was about an alleged affair between Boris Johnson and his ‘business associate’, Jennifer Arcuri as well as the possible misuse of public funds. The other was about former prime minister David Cameron who, it was revealed, had lobbied the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak on behalf of Greensill Capital. The press coverage was superficial and relatively muted when contrasted with the treatment of other politicians who’d committed far less significant misdemeanors. The artist Cold War Steve, captured this really well in his work featured above. It occurred to us that the image could also be considered an allegory for the Sewell report. In other words, the report serves as a great distraction from the material conditions of people of colour in the UK. Instead, it keeps us debating the existence and impact of structural racism.
What is needed, and has been for some time, is a commitment to act. And while a further inquiry could have been helpful in sourcing and curating the most up to date research and setting out clear recommendations for the current government, its failure to do so does not negate the reality. And that’s where we exist — in a lived reality, and data and data-centric technologies are having a broad and very real impact on that reality. We felt that it was important to address the facts on the ground; more important than debating the alternative reality that the report seeks to project. Especially since others such as the Runnymede Trust have already done that so brilliantly. So we decided to forge ahead with the work we’d already started.
What does this report have to say about the impact of data and data-centric, digital technologies on Black Communities?
In two words — very little. Only two of the report’s recommendations specifically focus on data and data-centric technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and in particular, machine learning.
Recommendation 3 calls for improvements in the transparency and use of AI along the lines that have been recommended by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) i.e. that it should be mandatory for all public services that impact individuals to declare the use of AI. It also calls for the Equality Human Rights Commission to issue guidance that clarifies how to apply the Equality Act to algorithmic decision-making. Given the breadth and scale of AI use in both the private and public domains, this recommendation is pretty weak.
For one thing, it doesn’t address the use of AI by private sector organisations. This is despite the fact that some of the most egregious abuses are occuring in the private sector with limited means of redress available to individuals. For another, the issuance of guidance on the application of the Equality Act in this regard does not have any impact on the currently low level of enforcement. Suffice it to say that the report’s review of the role of technology on the lived experience of ethnic minorities is very lightweight.
Perhaps this is why the recommendations are only covered in a short chapter within the report, separate from the other recommendations. It certainly gives the impression that the CRED was unsure of what to say about the increasing use of automated decision making, its ability to amplify existing inequalities or how to connect it with the four areas of focus. This is especially worrying at a time when issues of workers’ rights within the context of the growing gig economy are in the spotlight.
Recommendation 23 of the report considers the role of equality data. It calls for the Race Disparity Unit to work with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to develop a standard way of collecting ethnicity data and for this approach to be pushed across media and public channels. Again, we believe that only the most superficial review of the role of data in aiding our understanding of how inequality plays out in real life could yield such a lightweight recommendation. There is so much that could have been said about data ownership and access in order to support greater agency for those about whom this data is collected.
Whilst both these recommendations are fairly weak (and sit within a report in which 16 of the 24 recommendations are a rehash of recommendations made in other reports), it will be interesting to see whether the government will continue with a pattern set by previous governments and make slow, if any, progress in enacting the report’s recommendations. This is important and has implications for members of marginalised groups that aren’t from ethnic minorities backgrounds. Black and Asian UK residents are over-represented within the British working class and growing underclass. A failure to address issues that impacts them is a failure to address the problems of the working class.
It is clear to many that unregulated data-centric technologies are one of the ways that private sector organisations are reshaping the world of work, the so-called ‘gigification’ of work. One upshot of some of the extreme streamlining practices being adopted in pursuit of ‘efficiency’ is the increased economic precarity of those at the bottom of the economic ladder. This has been a known problem for a number of years now.
In fact in 2016 the government commissioned the Taylor Review to review the UK’s employment landscape and make recommendations on how to improve it. To date the government has failed to introduce changes that have significantly improved the conditions of gig workers. Despite the over-representation of people of colour in this cohort, the Sewell report has no recommendations to make in this regard.
The very serious function, of racism is distraction
In a worst-case scenario, this report has the potential to make our work harder; if it is used to shut down much needed discussion about racial injustice — which our work seeks to highlight and challenge within the spheres of data and technology.
“The function, the very serious function, of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” Toni Morrison
More optimistically, it will serve as a small distraction that we will do our best to ignore. Instead we will continue to build a coalition of people who want to see data and technology put to uses that support human flourishing. More specifically, we’re building a coalition of impact comprising community organisation leaders, practitioners, technologists and academics who work within Black communities. The roundtables we convened earlier in the year have served as a good source of potential projects. We are now in the process of scoping out and resource planning for these projects.
You can find out more about the work of Data, Tech and Black Communities here: Who we are, what we value, and the change we want to see.
