Racial Bias in Code and Data: An Interview with Alex Garcia
As a young data journalist, I was advised to attend NICAR — an annual data journalism conference organized by Investigative Editors and Reporters and their suborganization, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. In researching the conference, I stumbled upon recordings of the 2019 NICAR Lightning Talks, which are five-minute presentations related to data journalism chosen by a popular vote. Last year, Alex Garcia gave a talk called 5 ways to write racist code (with examples). I was able to chat with him last week about his talk, the response he received, and how he’s feeling about it a year later.
Emilia Ruzicka: Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me! Can we start with an introduction?
Alex Garcia: Sure! My name is Alex. I recently graduated from University of California, San Diego (UCSD) with a major in computer engineering. I’m from Los Angeles, went to school down in San Diego. I’ve always been interested in computers and when I started at UCSD I decided, “Oh, computer engineering might be something kind of cool.” The first time I ever programmed or did anything in this field was when I started out in college.
I didn’t know about the data journalism field until about a year and a half, two years ago, and I found out through Reddit, Data is Beautiful, and I found…
