Dreaming of a Culture of Care Inside Tech Work
Do we need more black women in tech?
“We tend to and care for the entire world and it is killing us” — Saidiya Hartman1
This newsletter is meant to be a follow up to last week’s story asking, Where are all the black women in tech?. Instead of asking where they are, maybe the better question is should they show up there at all? For the longest time I resisted “career development” as an offering inside the vision of Seeda School. Certainly the black feminist2 imagination is too radical for something as flat as learning to code for the purposes of tech industry employment inside racial capitalism. Certainly the solution isn’t to help funnel more black women into yet another war in exchange for job security and benefits. Certainly, we can dream more expansively than this. Certainly the call has more erotic3 potential than that.
“I am interested in exploring how the social safety net built into “modern employment” practices are inspired by black feminist and indigenous practices of collective care.”
What are we to do in a system engineered with a lack of social safety net as a feature, not a bug? These days when I think about what I crave the most, it's the boring things — the most quotidian desires. Inside the current, radical political opening we’re in, it might be uncool to admit I fantasize about transitioning all the bills to auto-pay. Inside the generativity of this abolitionist present it might feel off topic to insert dreams of healthcare and retirement plans or financial ease and automating savings strategies. It has become popular to dismiss having a dream job, so what do we do when we don’t dream of labor but dream of paid vacations, housing security, and price no longer being a barrier to working with the therapist we desire? We burn down the system that makes labor a prerequisite to care. Absolutely, yes and…how might we collectively imagine workspaces that center the care and social genius of black feminist technologists? I am interested in exploring how the social safety net built into “modern employment” practices are inspired by black feminist and indigenous practices of collective care. When we remember healthcare, retirement plans, housing security, distributed work arrangements, paid sick leave, and access to childcare aren’t outside of the abolitionist imaginary what must we demand from a work culture that tricks us into forgetting?
“When we remember healthcare, retirement plans, housing security, distributed work arrangements, paid sick leave, and access to childcare aren’t outside of the abolitionist imaginary what must we demand from a work culture that tricks us into forgetting?”
For years I made the mistake of thinking labor and liberation were forever at odds with each other, inside and outside of capitalism. While acknowledging this can’t be true as care is labor and core to liberation, I also want to acknowledge the opening that many anti-capitalists labor organizers and black feminist thinkers have cultivated for centuries: What if labor and liberation are two sides of the same coin in this collective struggle? As a black feminist software engineer, I have struggled to reconcile exchanging my labor for the worthiness to survive and that struggle seems to compound when the thing I’m most fascinated by — code and the computer facilitating ways of being not yet imagined — is tragically being gate-kept inside a colonizing industry profiting from surveillance capitalism while maintaining oppressive work cultures.
This brings us to the central question of this newsletter, do we need more black women in tech? Listening to black women recite their experiences working in tech is like watching a romantic movie whose familiar plot is predictable but no less heartbreaking each time you encounter it. Hopeful bliss charged with the butterflies of excitement and possibility is met with betrayal. From Google’s abusive push out of Timnit Gebru, to harmful experiences Erica Joy Baker recounts from the TED stage, to the list of everyday instances of oppression Bukola Ayodele rattles off like a grocery list to her YouTube audience. Do we need more black women in tech if their presence will consistently be met with abuse? Here are some of the reasons I think our presence is essential:
Lack of diversity in thought, life experience, and social background on software engineering teams ensures you’re only solving problems and frustrations for a very narrow group of people. This often results in upholding the status quo.
Moving fast and breaking things often impacts marginalized communities first. If your team is committed to harm reduction, your team must be committed to hiring and creating a culture of belonging for the most marginalized.
Black women who are passionate about technology exist. We are alive this very second and we deserve leaders, role models, and advocates who have embodied familiarity with our experiences inside the companies we desire to contribute to with our skills.
“Do we need more black women in tech if their presence will consistently be met with abuse?”
Not only are the ideas of black feminism essential to every software engineering team who genuinely cares about the lives of all oppressed peoples, but black women and their communities also deserve the quality of life that being a tech worker often offers. They deserve to benefit from the social safety their social genius and organizing has produced. This includes benefits such as paid time off, paid education, subsidized transportation, maternity leave, volunteer opportunities, and more. Unfortunately, many social securities are only accessible through employment. This is a key design feature of capitalism but we can imagine and build toward black feminist futures while maintaining employment inside the tech industry. For most of us this both/and isn’t optional, it is essential to our survival. So here are a few open questions I would love your help with:
How do we leverage the black feminist imagination, the generativity of code, the employment benefits, and financial ease the industry offers to practice a culture of work that centers care?
Since we need more black women in tech, what forms and delivery of support are needed that feel as delicious as the erotic yes inside black feminism?
Since black women didn’t invent racism or sexism and shouldn’t be solely responsible for combating oppression, how might we hold companies who are upholding intersectional4 oppression accountable?
Tech bootcamps have been sending black women into battle without self-preservation tools. What toolkits and resources do black women need to enter and grow within the tech industry while remaining whole?
Speculating about what is built inside workspaces that center the care and social genius of black feminist technologists is an irresistible site of inquiry for me. As technology continues to “advance” in Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and the ideas of Web3 it is urgent and mandatory that the teams are as diverse as the customers the “innovations” promise to serve well. I hear someone saying, “Don’t we want to completely dismantle the systems of white supremacy that facilitated the inventions of these “innovations" instead of contributing to them?”. Absolutely. And, and, and, how do we serve the black feminist technologist who currently wants to enter tech to take care of their family, own a home with a garden they feed their block with, and send their cousin to college? How do we support the black woman software engineer who needs equitable employment this year to help pay for her mom’s medical bills, afford the black feminist somatic practitioner she’s been dreaming of working with, and take a vacation every season? What about the tech worker who needs the health insurance their job provides, desires the financial stability to fund their ceramics hobby, and wants to invest in the practices of young black queer artists? What resources do they dream of to ensure their material needs are met as we collectively imagine a world that tends to our breath? Do we need more black women in tech? Yes. Does the tech industry deserve us? No. In a world that benefits from the labor of black women daily, how might we build workspaces that tend to their material needs, social safety, and imagination?
“Do we need more black women in tech? Yes. Does the tech industry deserve us? No. In a world that benefits from the labor of black women daily, how might we build workspaces that tend to their material needs, social safety, and imagination?”
“We tend to and care for the entire world and it is killing us” by Saidiya Hartman is a quote first encountered on @the.black.gaze Instagram. This snippet is from Flip 2022 during a panel with Luiz Mauricio Azevedo, Saidiya Hartman, Rita Segato, and Djamila Ribeiro.
I use “black feminist” and “black woman” interchangeably in order to situate the political imagination of black femme, woman, queer, non-binary, and trans folks at the center.
The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power by Audre Lorde. This chapter was originally a paper presented at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount Holyoke College, August 25, 1978, and was later published as a chapter in Sister
Outsider.
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.