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That is all the housekeeping. Now it is my pleasure to bring in doctor benjamin and doctor roberts, doctor benjamin is associate professor of africanamerican studies and author of the awardwinning book save after technology, tools for the new gym code and editor of leading technology and founder of labs that bring together students, activists, artists and educators to develop a creative approach to data justice. Doctor door 3 roberts is University Professor university of pennsylvania with the Loss Department of African Studies and sociology. She is also the founding director of the penn program on race, science and society, how science, politics recreate race in the 20 fifth century, race, reproduction and the meaning of liberty. Shadow bonds, the color of Child Welfare. Doctor benjamin and doctor roberts, thank you for being here, happy to be here with both of you. I will get right into it. I once to begin with history. Both of you have been critical in calling attention to the deeply rooted presence of races and objective fields like science and medicine, this presence has a long history especially in this century so i would love to hear about both of your entry points into these topics. I will take it off, thank you for that introduction and thanks to haymarket for hosting this and many other great programs on abolitionist leasing. It a special thrill to participate in this one with my brilliant friend and colleague, so knowing that we begin with stating our personal history, writing about policing in science and medicine, what was my entry into this topic and last night i woke up in the middle of the night realizing i had written on the topic of policing long before i ever acknowledged in public i had never spoken about this before. I dont know why it escaped me for so long. It was 40 years ago. As a thirdyear student in 19791980 in law school when i was 25 years old. I wrote my thesis on police surveillance. This morning i went down to the bowels of my basement and found the paper entitled wolves in sheeps clothing calling uncovering the role of police as political intelligence agents, submitted may of 1980 and accorded by criminal law and this administration. I dont think i looked at this paper for almost 40 years now and i want to read the purpose of the paper, my conclusion so i wrote the purpose of this paper is to present a critical analysis of the function of police in america by focusing on the role of political intelligence agents, at best intelligence operations have been ineffective and unrelated to the stated objective of, and and destruction of innocent lives outweigh any possible benefit. Than the 70 page paper on all the harm caused by police in political surveillance and concluded all the reforms were unrealistic and i wrote a realistic approach to the problem, how to acknowledge functions to maintain the present social order through repression of political defense because of his underlying purpose is repugnant to democratic government with devastating consequences, the institution should be abolished in all its forms. First time i ever used abolition in connection with policing but i was 23. Fascinating to me, they largely reflect my approach today. If we take a realistic honest look at the function and outcomes of policing we have to come to the conclusion that abolition is the only answer to the problem. After i graduated from law school i practiced and spent a number of years organizing a group of people who dont hear much today, grand jury, people who refuse to testify when they convene to cut political activists, basically they refuse to collaborate on the prison system. I became involved in that struggle when my former husband was detained as political prisoner in new york city in the early 1980s. I had at a young age and Early Education by fire about policing in prison. At the same time i became interested in reproductive justice. My entry was personal, justice activists i knew before the term was coined because i had my first at home attended exclusively in 1982,19841986 and there were two puerto rican sisters in harlem who were political activists that i met in my work and i connected to my awareness of the commercialization of medical practice and injustices in the Healthcare System and at the same time i was alarmed by the prosecution of black women for use in crack cocaine when pregnant and when i left Legal Practice to become a professor my first project was investigating policing and criminalization of black mothers for article challenging the constitutionality of prosecutions. I realize prosecutions were part of a broader history of state regulation to the present day and the policing of black mothers was crucial to reproductive and racial politics in america and i ended up writing blackbody which was foundational for my work for women of color activist movement for reproductive justice, black women organizing at the forefront. Join families living with protecting children that left to my second book with Child Welfare published on most 20 years ago in 2001. Began reading about scientific studies that was speaking to find ways at a level and searching for generic differences between races. I began to explore the origins of the biological concepts over the last 400 years and i wrote my latest book to explain white race was invented and why its resurgence in biotechnologies reinforces Structural Racism and white supremacy. Ill explain more as we go through the program. But all these projects are ways in which biological explanations of the order. These are reinforced by science, medicine and technology. And they make any quality with childbearing and parenting in particular have been made the scapegoats for social problems that are caused by Structural Racism. When people who are deemed to be naturally predisposed to bat outcomes is not only a way of justifying controlling them , but also a way to legitimize size oppressive systems like police, prisons and foster care. Host wow, should i jump in . [laughter] thank you so much for moderating and hay market for hosting. I just want to get some virtual flowers to dorothy who has, as you just got a glimpse sort of blazed this trail in the academy and community activism. Get to bask in the warmth of that trail that she has blazed. I was thinking i should have dug up a paper too. [laughter] as i was thinking about at first i was thinking in terms of entry points. Just growing up in a heavily policed neighborhood. I didnt want to insights and a side i already, two questions of police when they look at moderna from the underside, it was not a particular insight in a way of knowing a world that has been valuable to me. And so in terms of following these entry points, for me it really started an undergrad where i was looking and comparing medicine obstetrics and particular, the policing of childbirth there. Its heavily influence at that time by dorothys words and killing the black body. And really thinking about their relationship with tween authoritative report rooms not just who is harmed by it, but one who is benefiting, as a theme in terms of whats produced by oppressive systems. And then i was comparing obstetrics to black midwives and georges were then and even now it is outlawed. And thinking about what we have these oppressive systems were reimagining always there as part of the story how it connects to the story the police that policing happens behind the conversation is to identify and to identify the broader landscape of policing is ever to narrowly focus on one institution and be obvious they were going to miss a whole slew of other sites and logics. And allow policing to continue. And so for me bringing medicine into that is important because medicine is like the dew good profession. And so we think about policing on one end, medicine has a long history of racial violence embedded in it from its origin. So what tells us we find it there we should expect to find anywhere at the end of the dew getting profession. Which leads for my undergrad thesis that im trying to jot down the title i dorothy brought her paper, it was a classic sort of undergrad title. It was a moment of conception, racism, patriarchy and capitalism converge, that was it. [laughter] sewed like no subtlety. And i love it. So i went to looking at biotechnologies and looking at some of these questions. Think again what motivates me is to question things that we are not supposed to question. And so, if we think about science in a bubble or technology as it hovers above society. Like they dont have the right or power to question it. Even those impacting your life. If you dont have some provincial or specific expertis expertise, or somehow barred from raising questions about it. They are expertise is your experience with that technology or that medicine. That is the kind of knowledge that we have to give voice to. My first book was around biotechnologies. It was looking stem cell research. Its being those questions of power and inequality to bear on the emerging technologies around data scientists automated decision systems, and again its thinking about how racism and other systems of oppression are productive. That is its not simply who is harmed but who is benefiting, not only financially but in many other ways from the maintenance of these oppressive systems. Its about thinking about the relationship between race and technology in particular. Theres more and more time to think about the ethical impact of technology whose producing it when you tell that part of the story to. We talk about the black midwives the early part of my work and dorothys as well as really understanding that imagination is a terrain of struggle. Whose imagination rains . One way to understand the inequalities and injustices we see is that many people are forced to live inside someone elses imagination. And so when we think about the Digital World crafted force, the physical socialization of racism and equality, that is the materialization of someones imagination. Someones imagination. And part of demonstrative rising and the imposition of that imagination is also cultivating our own imaginary more liberatory imagination. In the imagination is not like an afterthought its about a luxury, its not something just for the privilege. It is a terrain of action. And we have to begin to struggle and work towards materializing a world in which we can all thriv thrive. Host wow, thank you both so much i love that. I think that really you both hit on a lot of points i would love to draw out. With that said, i guess on the system i want to talk about what Role Technology plays when it comes to Law Enforcement. And kind of what are some of the parks of the system that we are not seeing . Were seeing them brutal and violent work of the system all the time. But kind of whats going on behind that. Some of the places we may not be as familiar with there may not be seeing. So yeah. Guest yeah, just, we brought up this contract between medicine and Law Enforcement, the police. And i think its very interesting to think about how racism is built into predictive tools in different ways in both those domains. So we can think about racism and predictive algorithms and policing across multiple systems. In fact willing to think about how widespread policing is and how it takes so many different forms, is it think about the role of prediction and all of these different institutions. It helps you see they are all about policing people. They are not about helping people, even systems like the Child Welfare system. And the Healthcare System that is supposed to be benevolent and supportive are actually designed to police and punish people for the reasons we were saying whose hands are they . Whos imagining the world that these systems are about to facilitate . Its actually a world that is static or becomes more oppressive. But the point of it is to keep the status quo. Not to allow imagination of something more equal and humane. Its a way in which these predictive algorithms supports imagination for social change. Because they embed within them, existing inequality. So whether were talking about predictive algorithms with family regulation education of the current racial order is not so much how the technology themselves operate. The common purpose to facilitate who we think would marginalize people in order to do lots of different things. Deny them benefits, keep them away from resources, keep resources out of their hands free deny them, deny them freedom. Finally funneling them into prisons and Detention Centers. In medicine diagnostic algorithms ive adjusted those outputs because its acceptable to treat race as a biological change in medicine. Now in Law Enforcement, and happens in a different way built into the algorithms without an explicit mention of race as a factor. And so, theres all of these different ways that happen, but whats critical and its something that virginia eubanks points out in her book on algorithms and public assistance programs, maybe someone when help me im blanking on the name parts back automating inequality. Thank you. I reviewed the book i love the book. Its remembering all these things. Spent but she points out that in the past, the risky individuals were watched. They were identified and watched her theres this time of surveillance. New database surveillance, the target emerges from the data. So the people who are targeted are people who are already have been treated unequally the inequality is embedded in the data already so state agencies ability massive amount of data for the surveillance has transferred funds the predictions of the prediction today is even more than it was in the past, a way of maintaining a racist social order. And so now, reliance on these Big Data Analytics is critical to the expansion of the regime because the state same is to control population rather than to adjudicate individual guilt or innocence. It is a managing social inequality is not aiding people who are suffering from social inequalities. And so Risk Assessment is no longer about actually determining whether an individual is going to do something. Its about whether the individual belongs to a population that the state wants to manage. And so that is why you get some of these Law Enforcement databases and algorithms that are already predicting that toddlers are going to be gang members. They havent done anything to be a risk to anybody. But it is not their individual characteristics, it is that they are in a population that needs to be managed. That is what the prediction is all about. Also, big data and algorithms facilitate the States Mission but i want to point out and this goes back to some of what im saying in my introductory comments that racism has always been about predicting that making certain racial groups seem as if they are predisposed to doing bad things. And therefore justify controlling them. So race it self is a form of categorization that ranks people by supposedly in a trade that claim to predict their behavior and their character. And so the stereotypes have been justified or helped to justify a rationalized state control of whole groups of people based on their race. And said that is just some of the ways in which prediction operates across multiple institutions to make race seem as if itself is a predictive factor. So that it can be the basis of state control, state intervention, state and violence. All of these algorithm tools are based on the racist ideology that black race itself is a risk. Whether a time but the risk of disease, or the risk of criminality. It cuts across all of the seemingly very different domains that are tied together by this notion of prediction that just embeds and reinforces the current state of inequality. Thank you so much for that. I want to bring in doctor benjamin as well to talk about some of the things you mentioned and also maybe giving up like zeroing in on some of these technologies and giving us more on that. Absolutely. I cant emphasize the point dorothy made enough, the idea that even before you get into the hardware and software of technology, understanding race as a kind of Predictive Technology that historically has been used to control and subordinates rules up it doesnt matter if you dont understand the intricacies of some new hightech thing, you can understand your limited experience of being profiled and predicted against, what mistakes are in this conversation. With that i really hope, with this idea of the new jim crow understand that innovation goes hand in hand with containment. That often times we conflate in