#causeascene: Recent Episodes
Kim Crayton
Podcast Description “Decolonizing is the process of dissecting and removing colonialism. Most theories surrounding decolonization is based on decolonizing the colonized but the colonized can’t and shouldn’t cut themselves off and only decolonize themselves. The colonizer must also remove the dominant-subordinate relationship. In short, and this is all in bold…All spaces must be actively anti-racist.” […]
Podcast Description A perfect example of this is like a white woman calling the cops on Black men. It is like a fucking prime example of…and at that point maybe they do know they have privilege. But either way they know that they can manipulate the system to get a desired outcome and it is […]
Podcast Description It’s the hard conversations. Like a lot of people are still trying to find a way around not having these hard conversations, come to these real truths about how their approaching business and thestructure and the system that we all live in. And if Google doesn’t have the power to go against the […]
Podcast Description Black people in Ireland are like super educated. Because we just believe, okay…the only way to pull yourself, so you know, out of this is by education. So we, it’s the default we over educate. And so at the end of the day we’re overqualified and underemployed. That is the…thing that is happening. […]
Podcast Description People come to the union for all sorts of reasons. You’re hearing my story here, but a union is like live body of lots of people coming for different reasons so here’s a couple things like: first of all, some of us might be paid really well, but at the same time we […]
Podcast Description You know, it’s nothing like the doctor sitting and telling you that like you’re not sick yet, but you will be. “Oh yeah, yeah…it’s not bothering you now, but it will bother you later.” How you gonna tell somebody something like that? You’re pronouncing me dead 5 years down the line before you, […]
Podcast Description Within these social spheres, when you try, when you create algorithmic systems to predict social outcomes are you not only making a scientifically dubious claim because that’s impossible? But also you are doing something that’s ethically a red flag that harms people that harms minoritized communities. Abeba Birhane is currently a Ph.D. candidate […]
Podcast Description My argument in my Shame book is that it’s like a sort of fortress…of denial that white people have like surrounded themselves with because they are living in cognitive dissonance. And that’s what shame does. Shame when it’s real and it and it hits. It hurts so badly that you’re like how can […]
Podcast Description It’s funny because the title of my upcoming book is called Uncovering Bias in ML and I feel like it’s…it’s not that it doesn’t go deep. I feel like that’s the first layer, right? Yes, it talks about discovering that this bias is here. But I’m like: I make it clear from the […]
Podcast Description Ya know, we all have an Esther moment. And you know, if you think about, remember the story of Esther in the Bible like she found out that there was a plot to kill…annihilate all the Jewish people. And her husband Mordecai came to her and said, you know Esther, you know there’s […]
Podcast Description [I wanted to rebroadcast this episode before the 2020 U.S. Presidential election because of the racist comments from Jared Kushner “that Black Americans have to want to be successful” because there are many who believe this narrative. This interview documents the personal story of someone with the lived experiences of how the systems, […]
Podcast Description ‘I must have been really young cuz I remember…I have a freaky memory, like I was a creepy little white kid, umm, I was so creepy. I tried to sabotage my parents moving to the suburbs for two years and I would and I would like put little like cards that were like […]
Podcast Description “When I was growing up, my white friends would say: if I was around during slavery I never would have…I would have taken you and all that stuff and it’s like, okay. Well this is this is a version of it right now, you know, so what are you going to do it […]
Podcast Description “And I really felt so emboldened by what was going on that I asked to speak to [him/former manager] again. And I said, and I spoke to him on the phone and I said: Ya know, I want to be completely honest with you, um while I understand this was not your intention […]
Podcast Description “People sometimes think that like having had like, you know having had a Black president like changes people like attitudes towards it doesn’t, so…being in med school has made it…ya know, I feel like this is not the first time that I’ve been in like in a white space where I went to […]
Podcast Description “I mean that’s the ultimate dream right? Like, I think if you think back to 2011-2012 when you saw these uprisings around the world that were live streamed you saw Occupy protests and it was: “Oh, the Internet is great!…it’s gonna democratize communication” and I think to a certain extent it has and […]
Podcast Description “I’m not actually able to visualize it in my head, so it doesn’t have an actual structure to it. A lot of this is mathematically related…ya know numbers and variables…can be very abstract and so I had difficulty. It was like constant confusion. Between the autism and the non-verbal learning disability I’m a […]
Podcast Description Kim is taking some much needed time off, so enjoy this presentation from the 2018 Clojure SYNC conference. Additional Resources Presentation Slides Presentation Video Transcription Coming Soon! Twitter How to Survive the Robots: Professional Development 2.0: A Business Strategy Become a #causeascene Podcast sponsor because disruption and innovation are products of individuals who take […]
Podcast Description Kim is taking some much needed time off, so enjoy this presentation from the 2019 Cream City Code conference. Additional Resources Presentation Slides Presentation Video Transcription 00:30 Announcer: She’s the founder of the #CauseAScene movement. And the #CauseAScene movement has four guiding principles that we should follow: tech is not neutral, prioritize the most […]
Podcast Description Kim is taking some much needed time off, so enjoy this presentation from the 2018 JSConf EU conference. Additional Resources Presentation Slides Presentation Video Transcription 00:31 Hello, everyone. [Shouts] Hello, everyone! [Audience cheers]. Alright! If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you should know, ask somebody, it’s not going to be a quiet room. […]
Podcast Description Kim is taking some much needed time off, so enjoy this presentation from the 2019 Write/Speak/Code Conference Additional Resources Presentation Slides Presentation Video Transcription 00:30 Moderator: Please welcome to the stage our next keynote speaker, Kim Crayton! [Applause] Kim Crayton: White people, you’re gonna have a hard time with this today. My job is to […]
Podcast Description “Really it’s a cult. They prey on the people who don’t know, who are the weakestWho are going through the hardest time and I met a lot of people going through really, really hard time…everybody’s going through their pain or their hurt. And it just seems like Lambda is the hope for them. […]
Podcast Description “My mom said, ‘Be happy you have a job, if they just tell you to clean up just do it. And I was like Mom you’re missing the point: nobody else is cleaning up after someone else’s dog. Nobody else in this company has cleaned up someone else’s shit.” Ahlaya Reed is an […]
Podcast Description “And it’s also one of these put up or shut up moments where you like ‘care so much about this’ but here we are in this situation where the company you’re at right now isn’t doing enough, isn’t aligning with your values. And we’re trying to put lipstick on a pig and make […]
Podcast Description Kim is taking some much needed time off, so enjoy this presentation from the 2018 View Source Conference Additional Resources Presentation Slides Presentation Video Transcription 00:39 Kim Crayton: Yeah! Woo! Alright, you stop when I tell you to stop! [Audience laughs] You don’t stop when you wanna stop. Hello. This is [Kim laughs] “Stop […]
Podcast Description Kim is taking some much needed time off, so enjoy this keynote presentation from the 2018 Black’s In Technology Conference. Additional Resources Presentation Slides Presentation Video Transcription 00:30 Announcer: We saw her last night. And, when I say she lit the place up, you can tell when someone has a certain spirit, when […]
Podcast Description Kim is taking some much needed time off, so enjoy this keynote presentation from the 2017 Nodevember conference. Since technology now literately touches almost everyone and it is no longer the playground of just a few, it isn’t economically prudent to build products and services that don’t reflect the needs and desires of […]
Podcast Description “I think if we don’t fix the institutions people can apologize all they want, but the problem will remain. And so that’s why antiracism is important, but so is thinking about how antiracism can be a structural change in addition to making people individually more aware of the problem.” Jonathan M. Metzl is […]
Podcast Description “I get to teach some students who are closer to the engineering side of things and over the years I’ve certainly taught quite a few of them. And when they talk about that they want to improve the world and make things better and you look at the kinds of education they have […]
Podcast Description “I’m also making myself center stage and I don’t wanna do that either. I just have a really loud articulate voice that people listen to. And so, I need to learn how to use that without erasing the voices of the black women that I’m trying to lift up.” Cher is a self-taught […]
Podcast Description “It’s so obvious in the US that the big thing that has shaped the entire history of this nation is fuckin’ racism. Specifically…I don’t feel like I’m making a moral statement here, you can just look at the history. Like, there was not industrial capitalism until 1850, but there was slavery for a […]
Podcast Description “I feel like it enabled him to lure people who really do care about the things that he preaches on Twitter into a really toxic work environment.” Nancy is a full-stack software engineer based in San Antonio, TX. Before turning to code, Nancy was a Special Education teacher at high need schools in […]
Podcast Description Does that mean that there are certain people will be weeded out? Yes. Is that the objective? Abso-fuckin’-lutely. That’s the idea. There are certain people who honestly do not deserve a platform.” Adrian C. Jackson is a Houston-based computer scientist specializing in mobile, web, & full-stack enterprise application development since 2004. His tech startup, […]
Podcast Description “You will feel more comfortable to make decisions about Siri and Alexa and driverless cars…I wonder how AI is changing us and also feel empowered to ask questions, because right now everybody’s just…too afraid and It’s not their fault. Technology was pushed at us, that it’s the holy grail and you should worship […]
Podcast Description “This is really about relationships and failure to be attuned to relationships means that we’re…not using all of the levers and all of the assets we have in community to make this happen. Nor on the flip side are we being represented in spaces and places where we traditionally have not have [a] […]
Podcast Description “If you step into my classroom, that’s gonna be the help you get. You can come into my classroom it’s my space, I determine the rules, I determine what we’re gonna talk about and that’s what I tell ‘em on the first day: if you can’t handle this conversation, god bless you.” Eleanor […]
Podcast Description “I got a stat that will blow you away. At CUNY which is the City University of New York and their CS program, the majority of CS undergrads at CUNY don’t have their own computer.” Saber Khan is a Bengali-American educator based in New York City. He is a veteran K12 educator with […]
Podcast Description “‘And now I will tell you how to make Google slightly less bad without ever actually dismantling surveillance capitalism.’ This kind of sensible centrist nice kind of middle aged medium politically white guy narrative. But It’s always about that guy, or indeed that white woman or whoever is always the hero of the […]
Podcast Description “Black people are constantly lookin’ back at who they were, while constantly trying to look forward while navigating this fuckery that is white supremacy” André Brock is an associate professor of media studies at Georgia Tech. His scholarship examines racial representations in social media, videogames, black women and weblogs, whiteness, and technoculture, including […]
Podcast Description Capitalism has not failed, it’s only been implemented globally, rooted in white supremacy. Adam Smith, “the father” of Economics, in the 1700s, envisioned a moral economic system that worked from the ground up, was “inclusive”, and took care of the most vulnerable. Transcription 00:26 Hello everyone, I’m back again. I’m coming to you […]
Podcast Description “When your rights are being dismantled and destroyed, and your personhood isn’t respected, you shouldn’t be civil. You should cause a scene.” Dr. Chris Gilliard is a writer, professor and speaker. His scholarship concentrates on digital privacy, and the intersections of race, class, and technology. He is an advocate for critical and equity-focused […]
Podcast Description “There’s still quite a few people who think that ADHD is itself a parenting problem. And that stigma most definitely is also applied to Black people at a far greater rate than it is to white people. Even if it were behavioral problems…you will still see more sympathy for white parents than you […]
Podcast Description “Up until this point I had been like the model minority….And then all of a sudden THIS model minority turns around and she thinks Islam is feminist? That she’s proud of this? That she doesn’t think that we need to change ourselves to live in this society? No no, this was unacceptable. All […]
Podcast Description “I’ll say it again: it is the same thing and it is that thing that we simply refuse to talk about. Whether we’re talking about elections or we’re talking about technology. And that is the question of race.” is the author of the new book Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, From […]
Podcast Description “We can’t talk about what’s broken with education and coding education in the bootcamp system without zooming out to look at the larger context of our educational system. Why is it that Trump is like “Oh, I’ve got 2 trillion dollars I’ve just spent on purchasing new weapons that we’re gonna use to […]
Podcast Description “Na-na-na-na-no Boo Boo. If you’re a good person then you need to understand exactly what your white ness means. And you need to understand what kind of harm that it has caused and continues to cause on a daily basis, no matter how woke and good you think you are.” Dr. Tiffany Jana […]
Podcast Description “People of color, people from a low-income background get into this much debt going to a school thinking, this is my way into the tech industry, this is my way out of poverty, this is my way to help take care of my family or help care for my parents, and then they […]
Podcast Description “There’s a disconnect between beliefs and behavior. And there’s an investment in the symbolism of one’s beliefs and translating that as if it represents behavior when it doesn’t.” Dr. Courtney D. Cogburn is an associate professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work and faculty of the Columbia Population Research Center. She […]
Podcast Description “I think many folks on the Left…don’t really understand what is a system of oppression. I think they view racism that is some sort of personal indictment on an individual’s character rather than the reality that it is, which is a system that has existed since the very founding of this nation. It […]
Podcast Description Survival Homework Ask yourself, what are you willing to do in the service of antiracism? Transcription 00:10 OK everyone, welcome to today’s episode of the #CauseAScene Podcast Book Club episode of “How to be an Antiracist” Chapter 18: “Survival”. We’re at the end of this book. It took us a minute, but we […]
Podcast Description “I want every US presidential candidate…to give me a list of what they are going to in order to address institutionalized racism. I want to know what regulations, I want to know the policies, I want to know the data. And I want to be able to review your plan. Give me a […]
Podcast Description Success Homework Page 222: “Toure and Hamilton could not have foreseen how their concepts of overt and covert racism would be used by people across the ideological board to turn racism into something hidden and unknowable.” How does this statement parallel how the academic work of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” is being used […]
Podcast Description “When I go in and I’m working with companies, I tell them you have got to design your systems, your culture, your norms, your communication for the most marginalized person. If she’s okay, then the rest of the people in your company are going to be okay.” For 25 years, Nicole Sanchez has […]
Podcast Description Failure Activist: One who has a record of power or policy change. Homework Page 204: Identify and evaluate current policies that hold Blacks responsible for the racist ideas and beliefs of whitenesss. Page 207: How would your “activism” change if you accepted and internalized that whiteness is NOT racist due to a lack […]
Podcast Description “When I think about the role of technical systems…the inequity becomes even more encoded, subtle and it may seem like it’s operating where race is not explicit…The designers are not taking explicit note of race and yet racial disparities are being reproduced.” Ruha Benjamin is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founder of […]
Podcast Description “What I’ve realized is that after three years we have made absolutely no dent on this issue at all. What’s happened instead is that these companies are relying on our free labor to flag this up for them and they’re not doing anything.” Nandini Jammi is co-founder at Sleeping Giants, the campaign to […]
Podcast Description Things to remember about engaging as a #causeascene community member: There’s no “I’m not racist.” There’s ONLY racist and antiracist. An antiracist strategy isn’t about equality, it’s about equity. It is about actually discrimination against the interests of the privileged, in favor of prioritizing the most vulnerable I’m not here to rehabilitate or […]
Podcast Description Sexuality Queer Racism: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-sexualities. Queer Antiracism: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to equity between race-sexualities and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about race-sexualities. Homework Page 196: Dr. Kendi uses the word […]
Podcast Description “I honestly think that fairness just in terms of everybody having the same or some equal thing. I don’t think that’s realistic and I don’t think we’ll ever get there. I don’t think that is possible.” Aniyia Williams is a creator, inventor and tech changemaker. She is a co-founder of Zebras Unite, an […]
Podcast Description Gender Gender Racism: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-gender and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-gender. Gender Antiracism: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between race-gender and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about race-gender. Homework Page 186: Part 1– Find a recent […]
Podcast Description “A lot of these schools don’t even have instructors, right. A lot them are project-based…it’s just like, ya know, figure it out by yourself.” Dr. Kate M. Miltner is a TRAIN@Ed Postdoctoral Fellow at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. She received her PhD from the Annenberg School […]
Podcast Description Space Space Racism: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to resource inequity between racialized spaces or the elimination of certain racialized spaces, which are substatiated by racist ideas about racialized spaces. Space Antiracism: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity between integrated and protected racialized spaces, which […]
Podcast Description “I’m actually working on a book right now…I’m calling it ‘From Barbecue Beckys to Pink Pussy Hats’ – calling out white women and white feminists, because we white women have got some work to do.” Jessie Daniels, PhD is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center, CUNY (Sociology and […]
Podcast Description Class Class Racist: One who is racializing the classes, supporting policies of racial capitalism against those race-classes, and justifying them by racist ideas about those race classes. Antiracist Anticapitalist: One who is opposing racial capitalism. Homework Page 152: Make a list of as many policies, you can think of or find, that function […]
Podcast Description “There are people who have dropped out and gotten multiple jobs, got part time jobs and gotten up to that $40K threshold just barely and the ISA kicks in. And they’re up shit’s creek because they have to pay it. There’s no way out, or no way out that any of us can […]
Podcast Description Black Powerless Defense: The illusory, concealing, disempowering, and racist idea that Black people can’t be racist because Black people don’t have power. Homework Page 142: How many pieces of legislation has the House passed that Mitch McConnell won’t to a vote? How many conservative federal judges have been appointed during this same time? […]
Podcast Description “[Venture capitalists] are people who by definition have said: my only goal is to make money for myself. But what we’ve done is allowed those people and that mentality to become pervasive; to become the dominant culture.” Marco Rogers is a senior engineer and technical leader with 15+ years of experience building innovative […]
Podcast Description White Anti-White Racist: One who is classifying people of European descent as biologically, culturally, or behaviorally inferior or conflating the entire race or White people with race power. Homework Page 124: If your goal is to live and function as an antiracist, do you honestly have the courage to do what is right […]
Podcast Description “I don’t just want that people to realize that white people are complicit in white supremacy – I want you to question what whiteness means. I want you to learn about the history of whiteness.” Dr. Crystal Marie Fleming is Associate Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies and Associate Faculty in the Department […]
Podcast Description Color Colorism: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequities between Light people and Dark people, supported by racist ideas about Light and Dark people. Color Antiracism: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between Light people and Dark people, supported by antiracist ideas about Light and Dark […]
Podcast Description “Some of them require you to talk through and to like talk about that pain and suffering and then they still don’t learn anything from it. It’s almost as if Black people having a conversation or engaging in anything isn’t worth value unless there’s Black pain of some sort. Because we’re not allowed […]
Podcast Description Behavior Behavioral Racist: One who is making individuals responsible for the perceived behavior of racial groups and making racial groups responsible for the behavior on individuals. Behavioral Antiracist: One who is making racial group behavior fictional and individual behavior real. Homework Page 94: Evaluate the current list of political candidates [local, national, and […]
Podcast Description “You don’t mediate someone being racist. You don’t mediate someone being groped at the bar. You don’t mediate this shit. You tell whoever was causing the problem to make it right or get the fuck out. And sometimes the only way to make it right is to get the fuck out.” Annalee Flower […]
Podcast Description Episode Overview Operating Perspective: There’s no “I’m not racist.” There’s ONLY racist and antiracist. An antiracist strategy isn’t about equality. It is about actually discrimination against the interests of the privileged, in favor of prioritizing the most vulnerable I’m not here to rehabilitate or change anyone’s mind. I want them gone because they’re […]
Podcast Description “Everyone wanted diversity for the board, but it was really unclear as to how on Earth you have diversity over an entire globe with only 40 people on the entire board.” Kate Klonick is an Assistant Professor at Law at St. John’s University Law School and an Affiliate Fellow at the Information Society […]
Podcast Description “White people specifically can take rules and policies designed to protect people of color – specifically black people – and use them as weapons. I don’t remember ever being taught that, but it is instinctual.” Pete Holiday is a software engineering leader with over twenty years of experience in tech. His focus areas […]
Podcast Description Culture Cultural Racist: One who is creating a cultural standard and imposing a cultural hierarchy among racial groups. Cultural Antiracist: One who is rejecting cultural standards and equalizing cultural differences among racial groups. Homework Page 86: Do some research to discover Black communities, outside of Africa that have developed their own African culture […]
Podcast Description “I have this enormous privilege. It would be a shame to not use it. Then again I get the thinking around it because I was brought up with that pretty much instilled in me since I was like five: like work for your stuff and then it’s your stuff and no one else […]
Podcast Description Body Bodily Racist: One who is perceiving certain racialized bodies as more animal-like and violent than others. Bodily Antiracist: One who is humanizing, deracializing, and individualizing nonviolent and violent behavior. Homework Page 73: “Unarmed Black bodies, which apparently look armed to fearful officers, are about twice as likely to be killed as unarmed […]
Podcast Description “In part I felt this was a safe decision because I had discovered Pursuit from my local library…I went to my own library’s coding classes and at the library’s graduation ceremony they were giving out information on other coding bootcamps if you wanted to take this a little further and Pursuit was one […]
Podcast Description Ethnicity Ethnic Racism: A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between racialized groups and are substantiated by racist ideas about racialized ethnic groups. Ethnic Antiracism: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between racialized ethnic groups and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized ethnic groups. Homework […]
Podcast Description “I understand that in the tech industry, there are a lot of people that do not have a computer science background and a lot of companies are promoting this, but we’re still at a disadvantage and we’ll still feel very lost…I just feel like we’re going to be left behind regardless.” Twitter Anonymous […]
Podcast Description Biology Biological Racist: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully different in their biology and that these differences create a hierarchy of value. Biological Antiracist: One who is expressing the idea that the races are meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetic racial differences. Homework: […]
Podcast Description “Democratizing and meritocracy and those things are not just not a step forward. They are the right idea in the most ignorant way. They are coming from the perspective of trying to ‘do right’ but not applying any actual complex thinking towards what ‘doing right’ is.” Ben Halpern is the founder of DEV […]
Podcast Description Power Race: A power construct of collected or merged differences that lives socially. I want to begin this episode with a warning: Reading this book, are any other, does not make you an Antiracist expert compared with those who have the lived experiences of racism’s impact. Homework 1. Page 38: find 3 examples […]
Podcast Description There’ve been many raising questions recently about the real value of bootcamps, their impact on students and the community at large, and this new crop of businesses using Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs) to target the vulnerable. My hope is that this is only the beginning of a much overdue conversation. Transcription 00:30 Kim […]
Podcast Description Dueling Consciousness Assimilationist: One who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group. Segregationist: One who is expressing the racist idea that a permanently inferior racial group can never be developed and is supporting […]
Podcast Description “No matter what we build as human beings, we’re building it from human perspective.” Damien Patrick Williams is a PhD researcher at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society. His research areas include technological ethics, algorithmic bias, philosophy of knowledge, philosophy of technology, philosophy of mind, nonhuman intelligence, machine consciousness, […]
Podcast Description Welcome to the first episode of the #causeascene Podcast Book Club. The very first book we will be tackling is “How To Be An Antiracist” by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. I will cover a chapter a week, so I encourage you to read along. Also, please send your questions/comments/concerns to podcast@hashtagcauseascene.com and I’ll […]
Podcast Description “Twitter is an absolutely fascinating example of the political choice to say free speech is an absolute…The problem with that is, of course, they’re white men. Their default experience is radically different from the majority around them who have a very different experience.” C J Silverio is probably best aimed at back-end problems, […]
Podcast Description “There’s a term in computer science that I’ve become fond of, the idea of a naive solution. It’s a solution that appears to be correct at first glance. But if you dig in a little deeper you realize, ya know what – this is not really the way to go.” Kojo Idrissa was […]
Podcast Description “That’s what a lot of people miss, unless you’re specifically going up to people and saying ‘I am not white, I am indigenous’ – no one is going to recognize that.” All I can think is DarkSkyLady is a creative zealot writer talking and combatting white supremacy and all its sub branches. Additional […]
Podcast Description “Oh I can’t even make jokes anymore or I can’t be myself anymore.” – like yeah, if that’s how you are then you should not be yourself. You can be that way…and I don’t care if I’m not around, I don’t care. But yeah that’s what a code of conduct means: you have […]
Podcast Description “If you give ‘em your best slice of pizza and you know that’s your best slice in the box and they act like it ain’t nuthin, and they try to give it back, spit it out, whatever – don’t even give ‘em no more pizza.” After losing more than ten close friends due […]
“What if we were both carpenters instead of developers or designers and we were having these types of conversations about React versus Angular versus Vue, and it was about screw driver? Is it a flat head or a Phillips? Can you imagine two carpenters going at it on Twitter: I can’t believe you use flat-head […]
“Where are our biases? What do we have to do to get more people of color into our team and feel safe in our team. And then maybe feeling safe enough to tell us: we are feeling harm, please help us in this case. I think this is the biggest failure that they didn’t feel […]
Today’s topic is life as an Facebook content moderators Content warning: This story contains discussion of serious mental health issues, racism, descriptions of violent acts against people and animals, accounts of sexual harassment and post-traumatic stress disorder, and other potentially disturbing content. Episode Resources: THE TRAUMA FLOOR: The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America AI […]
“Let me tell you something, the day I started Black Tech Twitter, I had plenty of [white people] going: ‘What if there was a white tech twitter?” – I’m like THERE IS that’s literally the industry.” Pariss Athena is creator of the #BlackTechTwitter hashtag and movement, proving that the “pipeline problem” in tech isn’t true […]
“The thing that I keep coming back to is to not speak for or to make decisions or to pretend that I represent anyone that has a different experience or different affinity than I do.” Sara Chipps, is a JavaScript developer based in NYC who has been coding since the adolescence of the web. As […]
“We need to be able to talk about violence against the trans community because there is an immense amount of violence against the trans people, even white trans people. We need to be able to talk about that while also not co-opting the very specific type of violence that happens against Black trans women.” Emily […]
“What we did to help get stuff done is to change the conversation from it being a legal compliance to being an equality conversation. We want to make sure that you consider the spectrum of humanity when you build digital tools.” Danielle is a trained social scientist that has spent the past 15+ years working […]
“We’re starting to address some of the underlying functionality of our community and products, like how does our site work. Were there decisions made in the early days, and so many small made decisions along the way, that have contributed to our site being the way it is and can we reevaluate some of those.” […]
“In Detroit actually at the Women’s Strike for Peace they were having a big rally and the black women wanted to have signs that said desegregation or disintegration to combine these two issues and the white women said absolutely not. And Greta Scott King often had to broker the deal. Black women were always at […]
Episode Resources: Tech workers organize protest against Palantir on the GitHub coding platform Silicon Valley Nationalism: Technology is distorting reality and reshaping narratives Early Libertarian Dreams of a Free Internet Didn’t Work Out as Planned The End of Cyberspace: Internet theorists and companies once declared themselves free of nations and governance, but that’s all over […]
“I can’t even imagine why people have resistance to a code of conduct. It’s kind of like when you’re on the airplane and the flight attendant is telling you the safety things and you travel a lot so you kind of, ya know, look at your phone.” Jayne Groll is the CEO of DevOps Institute, […]
“Twitter can be a cesspool sometimes. And you have people who are constantly invoking their first amendment rights. This is not the government. You do not have first amendment rights on a private platform, sir/madam. That’s not how this works.” Bärí A. Williams is VP of Legal, Business, and Policy Affairs at All Turtles, a […]
Conversation about software engineers and their ability/qualifications to building businesses Here’s the link that started it all
“If you’re gonna enslave folks and make sure that they can’t learn to read and write…and keep them in this undignified situation, then it’s easier to look at them and think that they are inferior. So that just perpetuates that story.” John Biewen is audio program director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University […]
Topics Covered: Mueller Report, the Russians, Bitcoin, and Black Activists Tech and Conscientious Objectors Tech Continues to Question the Value of Diversity Google Organizers, Retaliation, and Solidarity Twitter’s Challenge with Banning White Supremacy Tracking and Recording Black Kids
“Let’s get a set a values that we all believe in and we can go from there. Because if we can’t make people feel safe I don’t want to start bringing in people who we believe are “culture fits” and expect them to change into how we feel they should behave.” Troy Connor is a […]
“Everything in tech is incremental, whether you’re building an app, you’re doing agile, you’re starting with something. You’re starting with an MVP and you’re incrementing on that. If you take that approach to learning you get away from this gatekeeper idea of you’ve got “it” or you don’t have “it”… you start where you’re at […]
Topics Covered: Twitter Bias Facial Recognition Software Facebook Leveraging Data for Friends TSA Body Scanners What Philly tech should learn from a hate speech incident at a local meetup
“And now some of you sit looking at me and now you feel uncomfortable. But today you have heard me. You can not unsee me. In this space I belong we belong here, in this space.” Hannah L Drake is a blogger, activist, public speaker, poet, and the author of 9 books. She writes commentary […]
Topics Covered: Nancy Pelosi warns tech companies that Section 230 is ‘in jeopardy’ Section 230 Saving Capitalism Powell Memo Requiem for the American Dream Adam Smith “The Wealth of Nations”
“The larger point is that experience at-scale does change culture, because experience at-scale IS culture.” Kate O’Neill is founder and Chief Tech Humanist of KO Insights, a thought leadership and advisory firm helping companies, organizations, and cities make future-aligned meaningful decisions based on human behavior and data. A prolific writer and author, her fourth book […]
“The problem isn’t Jewishness or Jews. The problem is when Jews start to act like and live as and be a part of the power of whiteness. And therefore get the power to move the levers of white supremacy in their favor.” Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Core Faculty Member in […]
“Whiteness positions itself as the the light of reason. That’s the colonial idea…it see’s itself as bringing technology, bringing enlightened thought, ya know The Enlightenment to all of us. And when you have discussion with people from that position…you are not perceived as logical. I can’t have that conversation. I refuse to have it. All […]
“It’s scary. It’s terrifying. Because it’s not just in the abstract we know that cis people that seem like allies could turn on us at any moment. It’s that it actually happens on a pretty regular basis. That we don’t perform trans-ness right and then we’re not women any more to them, or men, or […]
“Right now we need to focus on the people who are experiencing the most harm, people who are in the most danger. And because of the social racial hierarchy of white supremacy, [white people] are used to being taken care of first. And everybody else…it doesn’t matter.” Tori Williams Douglass is a writer, student, anti-racism […]
“I feel that tech is capable of change. It’s still a relatively young sector. The young men who built this industry…tended to be people who themselves were not treated that well at high school. Ya know, nerds shall inherit the Earth. When you point out to some of them that they are now oppressing other […]
“We have to stand up for what’s right and we have to do that in an intersectional way. We can’t just stand up for our selves, we have to build that solidarity. We don’t have the numbers alone. If we work together we can actually accomplish change.” Liz Fong-Jones is a developer advocate, labor and ethics […]
“I always emphasize to people that Make Love Not Porn is not anti-porn because the issue isn’t porn. The issue is: we don’t talk about sex in the real world.” Cindy Gallop, founder & CEO, MakeLoveNotPorn, is a graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, whose background is over 30 years in brand-building, marketing and advertising – […]
“At one point he said he was going to start a movement to fight real racism, because there are so many people like him who have been victims. I mean really? You’re a white man appointing yourself as the arbiter of what is real racism?” Rachel Barnhart is a longtime journalist in Rochester, N.Y. […]
“People just need to stop being afraid of repercussions when they speak up. You’re gonna get repercussions when you don’t speak up.” Ayani Good, is a retired IL attorney, high school administrator, and university-level educator (Chicago, IL and Sewanee, TN). Her legal practice was concentrated in the area of nonprofit corporation law. She is an […]
“It’s hard to change hearts and minds, but sometimes it has to happen in the reverse order. Sometimes you have to bring your people home and let the hearts and minds catch up.” Elisabeth Epps, JD, is an abolitionist, activist, and advocate. A former deputy state public defender and a graduate of the University of Virginia […]
“The Poor People’s Human Economic Rights Campaign…the way they define poverty is: if at any point you have lacked access to one of your basic economic human rights.” Virginia Eubanks is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is the author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish […]
“what is porn anyway, which is a whole other question. They were trying to find a way to run their website and the ask: we want to make queer, ethically-produced porn. How do we do that?” Dr. Kit Stubbs is a non-binary/queer/femme maker & entrepreneur who’s more interested in people than in technology. After earning […]
“I overheard someone in [GDI] leadership say something to the effect of ‘this is what they need – they need our space’ kind of like to say like ‘to find each other’ – this is ‘what they need, black women in tech need this’. As if we weren’t going to find each other at Google […]
“If we’re not going to make progress in our matriarchal organizations, then we’re just as oppressive as our patriarchal organizations.” Marisa Catalina Casey is an artist, educator and social entrepreneur. Prior to serving in Ecuador for two years as an Education and Business Advising Volunteer with the Peace Corps, she founded the Brooklyn-based nonprofit […]
“There is this global expectation that I can walk through the world and just demand things because of who I am and the color of my skin. And that is fucking wrong.” Tamara Temple is a self-described “Webologist”, tech maven, and deeply interested in software as a craft. As a life-long learner, Tamara has long […]
“The way that I describe it, and this is the god’s honest truth, I’m white enough to get the job, white enough to get hired, but I’m not quite white enough to get paid.” Leah La Salla is a self-taught, polyglot software architect. Her high school years in the Chicago area involved many hours working […]
“One of the challenges that happens in the online space, we say how we want to identify and people want to question that. As though that’s so hard to wrap someone’s head around that someone can choose how they want to identify.” Sharyn Holmes is a biracial Asian Australian. Not for the faint of heart, […]
“So you have these intentions, but without strategy it’s chaos. It doesn’t do anything and in many cases it harms the very people you’re trying to include.” @KimCrayton1 If you’re silent about your pain, they will kill you and say that you enjoyed it ~ Zora Neale Hurston “There are years that ask questions and […]
“I’m thinking of all the other people that think that my presence in this community and this space in this organization is a stamp on this is also safe for you.” Shanise is a web developer and community builder with a passion for where tech and social justice intersect. Show Resources: How White Women Use […]
“When you are used to being dominant, equality looks like a loss.” Mel Stanfill is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in Texts and Technology and Games and Interactive Media at the University of Central Florida. Stanfill holds a PhD in Communications and Media from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Stanfill’s research interrogates how […]
“I took an electronics class and there was a particular class of problems where they said: this is not the right formula to use, but we use it because it’s easy to understand. It’s like searching where the light’s good. So, we know specific things about diversity and inclusion that make sense and we keep […]
“It happens In a lot of 3rd world developing countries that we’re doing the same work as an American engineer or a Canadian engineer and we get paid way less…For example, a lot of my friends work for US clients…the companies who build this product are paying US dollars to build this product and then […]
“You need to emphasize [for white people] to listen to people of color and black women and brown women. You are not the expert, you are amplifying the expert.” Amanda Johnson is a fairly average suburban white woman. She works in education tech, is a single mom to an “ausome” seven-year-old, and has only been […]
“And that’s why black women are like ‘Peace. Out. I’m Done!’ The fastest growing entrepreneurial group in America they’re like ’Y’all are crazy, like who want’s to deal with this?!?” Karen Fleshman Esq. is an attorney, activist, and a nationally recognized expert on racism, feminism, workplace fair practices, police brutality, and politics. Working in nonprofits […]
“At it’s core [supremacy] means that men and whites are basically incapable. They have to have all these blacks and women propping them up. They have to have us beneath them. And they are so cynical about their own inability to compete, to be self-sufficient, that they won’t even hear of trying.” John Edward Lawson […]
Welcome to Part 2 of my conversation with @ashermaj & @digitalsista and our discussion about the ways technology is being used to target, harass & silence Black Women on and offline. “When [we] started explicitly talking about the racist narratives and started explicitly talking about what was happening to us, not just in context of watching the […]
Some of you may be aware of the calls to #ListenToBlackWomen, #AffirmBlackWomen, #VoteLikeBlackWomen, #SupportBlackWomen, etc because we are, as I so often put it, “The moral compass of this country [U.S.]”. We are the one group who has consistently been sounding the warning bells about the “radical” changes WHITENESS is just becoming aware off and […]
“You’re not gonna solve diversity on your own internally, you need organizations that are on the ground floor of this. Like, I’m personally invested in what we do as an organization.” Greg Greenlee is the Founder of the Blacks In Technology organization. He works as a Systems and Network Engineer and has spent over 15 years in […]
“I’m kind of now always uncomfortable, but I’m okay…I’m not comfortable with being uncomfortable, but it’s more like I don’t resist it” Dan Hassan (he/him), ethical solarpunk hacker, white-passing descendent of indenture :: founder of blockades.org http://blockades.org An opensource hacker with solarpunk tendencies active in autonomous co-operatives, blockchain research/development & big (enough) data analytics. Currently […]
“You can’t tell someone who is constantly under political attack that they can’t lash out at political opponents. When that’s your life, you cannot censor someone from seeking justice.” Coraline Ada Ehmke is an international speaker, writer, and developer with over 20 years of experience in software engineering. She was recognized for her work […]
Lindsey Dragun (drag-uh n) is a tech evangelist and former full-stack developer, who transitioned into tech after earning an MA in International Peace & Conflict Resolution. They have a passion for accessibility across tech and teaching others how to better improve the usability of their applications. In their spare time, Lindsey plays video games, volunteers […]
Garrett Dimon makes software, and launched his first web site in 1998. Since then, he’s worked in a variety of roles on sites and applications of all sizes. He is currently helping with Marketing and Customer Success at Wildbit. All music for the #causeascene podcast is composed and produced by Chaos, Chao Pack, […]
Emily Kaminsky is a white-bread, mid-life, mid-career, cishet, married mom of three living in Massachusetts. She grew up in Maryland and spent time working in international development in the former Soviet Union and living in Vermont working in microenterprise finance. Now in Massachusetts, she works for a community development financial institution; there, she is a member […]
Tanya DePass is the founder and Director of I Need Diverse Games, a non-profit organization based in Chicago, which is dedicated to better diversification of all aspects of gaming. She is a lifelong Chicagoan who loves everything about gaming, #INeedDiverseGames spawn point, who wants to make gaming better and more inclusive for everyone, the Diversity […]
Anil Dash is an entrepreneur, activist and writer recognized as one of the most prominent voices advocating for a more humane, inclusive and ethical technology industry. He is the CEO of Fog Creek Software, the influential independent New York tech company revered for its history of groundbreaking products including Glitch, the friendly community where anyone can discover […]
Saira Rao has been a Democratic party activist since she was a teenager; she cast her first vote for Bill Clinton. But after the catastrophic November 2016 election, it was clear that the Democratic party establishment had lost touch with the people it claimed to represent. Saira has emerged as one of the country’s strongest voices […]
Bonus #causeascene Podcast @causeascenepod episode with the career coaching from @causeasceneconf San Francisco with @deadmoon, @nebrius, @dshaw, @seldo, and @TobiahZarlez
Ruby Hamad is a Lebanese- born writer and PhD candidate who was raised in Sydney, Australia. She has been writing about feminism and race- related issues for close to a decade, exploring commonalities in experiences and structures across societies with a history of settler-colonialism. She splits her time between Australia and the USA. Show Notes: […]
Marcus is a Staff QA Engineer at RetailMeNot, inc. He has been in QA-related jobs since 2001, having used WebDriver since its debut in 2008. Marcus is also the co-chair of the Selenium Conference Planning Committee. He’s an avid piano player, plays bass for the RetailMeNot house band the WailSharks, and enjoys life in Austin, […]
Shireen is an Internet pioneer and serial founder who was born and raised in the projects of New York City, playing video games before they could be played on televisions and designing BBS boards and gopher sites prior to the Web going world wide. Resources Links: This Is Not a Game: How SXSW Turned GamerGate […]
Sara Wachter-Boettcher is the principal of Rare Union, a digital product and content strategy consultancy based in Philadelphia, and the co-host No, You Go, a podcast about living your best feminist life at work. Her most recent book, Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech (W.W. Norton, 2017), was named […]
Chelsea Higgs Wise is a clinical social worker and intercultural communicator who specializes in connecting underserved and misrepresented communities with policymakers to advocate against racism and misogyny. Chelsea is a proud Virginia graduate as she earned her Bachelor’s of Social Work from Longwood University and her Master’s in Clinical Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University. […]
Leonardo Graterol is a Latin American software engineer, born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, now living in Chile. He’s worked in web and software development jobs in several industries like digital marketing, e-commerce, GIS and airlines. Leonardo is also experienced in teaching and public speaking, he has taught several programming courses and has delivered talks […]
Nina is the Co-Founder & CEO of ersity, a startup focused on creating an equitable, diverse and inclusive tech industry. They are building a platform that’s the “Glassdoor for diversity” where companies can highlight what they’re doing to create inclusive environments for people of all backgrounds, and diverse coders, developers and engineers can share their […]
DOER OF THINGS, DREAMER OF DREAMS Melanie is an obsessive learner. She drinks far too much coffee. She thinks being creative is about the best thing you can do with your time, which is why she does what she does. Melanie has a background in Fine Art Photographic Printing, and she’s had the pleasure of […]