Race, Education and #BlackLivesMatter: How Online Transformational Resistance Shapes the Offline Experiences of Black College-Age Women

Abstract

Grounded in critical race theory and a burgeoning field of Black feminist technology studies, this article takes a techno-structural approach to understanding the promise and peril of internet technology to support activism, transformational resistance and counter-storytelling for Black college-agewomen. Qualitative interviews with 17 Black undergraduate women reveal multiple benefits of leveraging social media for racial justice, as well as the socioemotional and academic consequences of algorithmic racism. These findings support the need to develop new conceptual frameworks that can foster students’ sociotechnical consciousness, and further equip them with the critical race techno-literacies needed to disrupt anti-Blackness both on and offline.

Bias, bias everywhere: A response to Li et al. and Zhai and Nehm

“…At the same time, research teams also need members with a deep knowledge of, and lenses for viewing, how power and oppression are at play in the socio-technical-epistemic mangle of knowledge production and generation (Liz arraga, 2023;Tanksley, 2022). This need not necessarily be a different person than someone with deep technical expertise; understanding how datasets were collected from a socio-technical systems perspective requires recognizing how methods of data collection impact the nature and quality of the data-including social biases that might be reflected in the dataset or what might be missing (D'Ignazio & Klein, 2023).…”

Picturing persistence: High-achieving Black undergraduate women’s photographs of community cultural wealth in the COVID-19 pandemic.

“…Political resistance represents another individual-level factor that influences Black women’s college persistence and success. Black undergraduate women are often frustrated with the lack of progress in higher education and society, thus they constantly employ multiple forms of resistance to “enact ideological, practice, individual, and/or institutional change in their schools and communities” (Tanksley, 2022, p. 8). Banks (2009) demonstrated how successful Black undergraduate women resist oppressive structures at HWUs by speaking up about personal and collective injustices, advocating for social change, and helping people learn about Black people and culture.…”

#StayMadAbby: Reframing affirmative action discourse and White entitlement on Black Twitter.

“…Over half of Black social media users connect with others, engage with issues, and express their views on social media (Tanksley, 2019). Over one-quarter of Black social media users post predominantly about race, and the majority post or follow people who post about race (Tanksley, 2019). Black social media users, whether they create or follow tweets, can view reactions of many individuals in public posts as a means of creating a counternarrative that asserts the value of Black culture and lives (such as #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackGirlMagic; Bonilla & Rosa, 2015; Tanksley, 2019; Williams, 2020).…”

“…The #StayMadAbby hashtag trend demonstrates how social networking via platforms rapidly disseminate information and have the potential to influence the framing of social and political narratives (Steward et al, 1998; Tanksley, 2019). The authors use CRT to argue that #StayMadAbby exemplifies a collective process of reframing the assumptions behind lawsuits that aim to challenge or dismantle Affirmative Action in college admissions.…”