Afrofuturist Feminism: Reinserting Blackness, Queerness, and Disabilities in the Design Process
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Bosley, Brooke F.
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Abstract
In 2020, the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, Brayla Stone, and other Black lives lost to police brutality and COVID-19 reignited social protests across the United States and globally. These deaths magnified how white supremacy enacted violence toward Black communities, which shows up when people have biases toward marginalized groups.
In response, companies such as Procter & Gamble, Ben & Jerry's, and even tech companies like Google, Amazon, and META released statements against police brutality. Tech companies promised fixes to algorithmic bias, shadowbanning, and diverse hiring practices. Technological solutions to these problems will not necessarily erase racial inequity; however, they can ultimately change how we build and create tools for marginalized communities for the better. We need principles that help designers, engineers, and researchers push for more equitable technology solutions centered around Blackness, Queerness, and Disabilities.
This dissertation focuses on technology designers and researchers and how they build experiences that work for all marginalized people. I have developed Afrofuturist Feminism Principles to counter biases, violence, and trauma that technology design has enacted. My work is grounded at the intersection of Afrofuturism, Black Feminism, Race & Technology studies, and Human-Computer Interaction. The principles have been tested through co-design sessions with designers and non-designers around police brutality and COVID-19 that demonstrated the effectiveness of Afrofuturist Feminism Principles in tackling traumatic problems. I also interviewed researchers and designers to learn about the principles' challenges and opportunities. The goal of the dissertation is to understand how Afrofuturist Feminist principles could mitigate harm at the nexus of these issues and present a series of strategies on how to address these issues in design.
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2022-12-09
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Dissertation