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Despite numerous CS education pedagogical interventions, the pipeline of Black women in Computing has not increased, which illustrates the need to address structural issues (such as racism, sexism, power, and privilege) that impact Black women’s inter- sectional identities. Without honest conversations about power relations within the field of Computing, one cannot expect to en- gender social change that equates to equity for all CS students. Leveraging intersectionality as a critical framework, we interview 18 Black women about their experiences navigating the comput- ing education ecosystem. Intersectional analysis of Black women’s experiences reveals that CS education consists of saturated sites of violence in which interconnected systems of power converge to enact oppression. Findings reveal three saturated sites of violence within CS education: 1. traditional K-12 classrooms; 2. predom- inantly White institutions; and 3. internships as supplementary learning experiences.
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A Method to the Madness: Applying an Intersectional Analysis of Structural Oppression and Power in HCI and Design
With increased focus on historically excluded populations, there have been recent calls for HCI research methods to more adequately acknowledge and address the historical context of racism, sexism, gendered racism, epistemic violence, classism, and so on. In this article, we utilize Black feminist epistemologies to serve as critical frameworks for understanding the historical context that reveals the interconnected systems of power that mutually influence one another to create unequal outcomes or social inequalities for different populations. Leveraging Black feminist thought (BFT) and intersectionality as critical social theories of design praxis, we introduce intersectional analysis of power—a method that enables HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to identify and situate saturated sites of violence in a historical context and to transform the ways in which they engage with populations that have been historically oppressed. Engaging in self-reflection as researchers, we apply an intersectional analysis of power to co-design technologies with community street outreach workers who address violence in their predominantly Black communities. We: (1) identify the saturated site of violence; (2) identify the intersecting systems of power and who holds power (past and present); (3) describe the “conceptual glue” that binds these intersecting systems together and the assumption(s) that those who hold power are employing to guide their interactions; (4) examine the ways in which Black people are subjugated, surveilled, and/or expected to assimilate to “normative” ways of being and behaving; and (5) identify acts of resistance. This article contributes an alternative to traditional HCI and design methods that falsely perpetuate a lens of neutrality and colorblindness that centers on whiteness, innovation, and capitalism and ignores the history of State-sanctioned violence and structural oppression.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1937759
- PAR ID:
- 10489068
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
- Volume:
- 30
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1073-0516
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 45
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Power structural oppression Black feminism critical HCI methods
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3507695
