Liberatory Computing Education for African American Students

In this episode I unpack Walker, Sherif, and Breazeal’s (2022) publication titled “Liberatory computing education for African American students,” which unpacks and situates the five pillars of the liberation framework proposed by El-Amin within data activism modules.

Welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either an
interview with a guest or multiple
guests or a solo episode where i unpack
some scholarship in relation to computer
science education in this week's episode
i'm unpacking a paper titled liberatory
computing education for african-american
students this paper was written by
rachel walker iman sharif and cynthia
briesel apologies if i mispronounce any
names you can find a link to this paper
in the show notes as well as a link to
the author's google scholar profile so
you can read more papers by the authors
and you can find the show notes by
clicking the link in the app that you're
listening to this on or by visiting
jaredoleary.com where there are hundreds
if not thousands of free computer
science education resources including a
link to boot up professional development
which is the non-profit that i work for
and that powers this podcast here's the
abstract for this paper quote the
underrepresentation of minoritized
groups particularly african-americans is
the long-standing reality of computing
fields computing has the opportunity to
change the world and is increasingly
being incorporated into our daily lives
computing classes discuss computing as
abstract neutral utopian and unable to
cause harm while everyone needs to be
part of the process of ending a
multi-layered system of barriers we
focus specifically on why this goal is
of particular relevance to african
american students we highlight dr l
amin's liberation tools which state how
a sound racial identity critical
consciousness liberation-centered
achievement identity collective
obligation along with activism skills
are essential to preparing african
americans to fight for racial liberation
given that computing classes teach
students critical thinking skills to
solve complicated problems we argue that
computing is well positioned to
incorporate liberation tools liberation
tools teach students how to think in
terms of systems which is essential for
racial liberation by expanding the
liberation tools we coined the term
liberatory computing to reveal how
computing curricula can motivate and
provide african-american students with
practical skills to address the racism
embedded in society end quote if i were
to summarize this paper into a single
sentence i'd say that this position
paper unpacks and situates the five
pillars of the liberation framework
proposed by el amin within data activism
modules so the paper begins in the
introduction talking about how we can't
expect to broaden the workforce in
computing with underrepresented
populations if underrepresented students
don't feel a sense of belonging within
computing culture of the field so for
example the authors cite that less than
four percent of cs bachelor's degrees
are awarded to black or african american
students one of the reasons why the
authors suggest that there is such a
small percentage of black or african
american students pursuing cs is because
there isn't a very clear connection with
social justice according to the authors
here's a quote from page 85 quote
additionally a vast amount of
african-american students are not taught
how technology is utilized to surveil
police and incarcerate their community
in hopes of creating radical change it
is essential to understand the
difference between navigating and
transforming society the liberation
framework is defined as an alternative
contemporary emancipatory school model
for african americans that is attentive
and responsive to the powerful role of
racism in african americans lives and is
intended to prepare african americans
not just to thrive in this society but
also as racial liberation truly requires
to re-envision society and create a
fully humanizing alternative end quote
so in the background the authors go on
to say that they're going to use the
liberation framework which is composed
of quote one sound racial identity two
critical consciousness three liberation
centered academic achievement identity
or collective obligation and five
activism skills end quote it's from page
some curricula that use some of these
liberation tools but what they posit as
liberatory computing draws from all five
of these different tools now here's a
quote from page 86
el amin created the liberation framework
for african americans because the
situation of african americans has been
qualitatively different from that of any
other racial or ethnic minority in the
united states additionally we take a
similar stance to el amin when she
states the systematic and deeply
entrenched nature of racism in the us
context has been abundantly covered and
descriptively and empirically written
about as such this work assumes that the
reader knows that the united states as
it currently stands both sits in and
promotes racist ideology beliefs and
subsequently creates and sustains racist
individuals end quote and a little bit
further down in this section the authors
mention that although this focuses on
african americans the curriculum that
they are proposing can be applied to
other races and i'll argue at the end
with slight modifications it can be
applied to other oppressed groups
outside of just race all right so the
next section is titled the liberatory
computing through data activism modules
so in this section the authors break
down the five different pillars of this
framework and then they provide an
activity related to each one of those
tools now the activities that are in
here focus specifically on data activism
however this is just one model within
one subfield in computing that this can
be applied so when you're listening to
the different tools try and think of how
you might apply it in a different
subdomain alright so the first tool is
on sound racial identity here's a quote
from page 86 quote dr l amin states a
sound racial identity assists african
americans in seeing that the stereotypes
about their group are likely false
currently african americans are not
taught their true historical
contributions in their formative years
end quote so by grounding racial
identity within facts rather than
falsehoods this might assist students
with having more confidence in their own
identities in relation to computing and
this is not just embracing a racial
identity but also intersectional
identities to understand the different
cultural
wealth that each person brings to the
table now here's the activity that they
describe on intersectional data
visualizations so students will spend
about a week recording data about their
identity and then they will draw some
kind of representation of that data so
they're going to communicate a story
about their data set of their identity
in relation to some kind of a
contemporary issue or just patterns that
emerge from the data that they collect
and this drawing is meant to
humanize the data through the artistic
expression that they end up creating
which is a really interesting activity
it relates to my limited understanding
of art therapy and even trauma therapy
approaches that i have been very
successful with youth so if this sounds
interesting to you i highly recommend
checking out creative arts therapies to
learn more about different approaches or
how you might use the arts to
potentially explore data as it relates
to social justice or some kind of issue
that students might explore now the
second tool critical consciousness quote
is the ability to recognize resist and
analyze systems of inequality students
need to understand the roots of their
oppression before they can change the
source of their oppression to control
the narrative is to control the power
end quotes from page 86 so by
understanding the roots of oppression in
relation to computing in particular can
help students understand and analyze how
computing may unintentionally amplify
the oppression of different groups or
the opposite of that in terms of
figuring out how computing may assist
with
liberating certain groups so the
activity that they suggest for this is a
data nutrition label activity so here's
a quote from page 87 quote students will
use the concept of data nutrition labels
to create labels for existing data sets
that contain undetected racial bias the
aim of this activity is to clearly and
concisely describe the data set
ingredients and to encourage the
collection of better and more complete
data and more responsible usage of such
data a data nutrition label for the us
census data set could contain
information about the possible harms of
using this data set such as privacy
racial bias socioeconomic bias and
gender bias since the census has
undercounted african-american and native
americans in the past the data
nutritional label would contain a
warning label about representation bias
as a result african american students
will become committed to taking action
against systems of oppression because
they know how to communicate information
regarding bias in quote from page 87.
now to argue any student who works on a
project like that would learn how to
better communicate information around
bias and i appreciate that they included
a variety of different types of biases
or harms that might be included in that
like privacy racial bias socioeconomic
bias gender bias etc it's important to
explore a multitude of biases that might
be present and having a variety of
identities at the table can assist with
that so for as a quick example myself
being non-binary who is married to a cis
woman and neither of us are heterosexual
i'm able to better see some potential
gender biases that might exist when
trans and non-binary individuals are
often not included in discourse or
there's a heteronormative lens being
applied or discussed in some way and if
there's somebody at the table who had a
disability they might be able to notice
and illuminate ableist practices etc but
if a group is too homogenized then it
might be more difficult to find some of
these biases or forms of oppression but
the next tool in this liberation
framework is on collective obligation so
the authors mentioned that since slavery
has been around there have been laws
that have prevented african americans
from gathering they might be punished or
even killed the reason why is because
they're trying to prevent an uprising
they also tried to prevent this by
banning learning how to read and write
or banning education entirely and they
mentioned how there were almost like
different classes of slaves on
plantations for example the field slaves
were different than the house slaves as
they received quote better treatment
even though they were still very much so
slaves this division often put many
african-americans against each other in
terms of competing for a position as a
house slave so the authors argue that
african americans must believe in linked
fate which is the concept that one
person is not free until everyone is
free it is essential that african
americans harness their collective
voices to create social change teaching
african-american students to advocate
for themselves and their communities in
computing leads to more inclusive
technology end quote from page 87 and
i'd agree that applies to everyone
regardless of if you are in an oppressed
group or not being an ally or a
co-conspirator is important as a
non-binary individual who has presented
and published on trans culture and
education i and my friends cannot do it
on our own we need support from cis
individuals just make sure you don't
control the narrative same thing applies
for racial discrimination biases etc as
a white individual i need to be
supportive of others who are oppressed
but i need to make sure that i don't
control the narrative and although that
just talks about race and gender that
can apply to any form of a press group
so here's an activity called the paying
forward activity so in this activity
students will choose some kind of a
topic from the data activism curriculum
and then create some kind of a learning
experience for kids and they encourage
students to co-design these learning
experiences with the younger kids so
they are encouraged to be a part of the
design process and the teacher kind of
guides this discussion to make sure that
things are age appropriate but the
authors note on page 87 that quote
african american students will realize
that they do not have to wait until they
are older to have a meaningful societal
impact end quote which is such a good
point i've seen like so many news
stories where it's like some young
entrepreneur like somebody in middle
school who developed something that
solved a problem and so they created a
company manufactured some kind of a
product that helped people and now
they're like a billionaire or whatever
and i look at that and go wow i wouldn't
even thought i could have that kind of
an impact at that age so it's important
to show that you don't have to wait
until you're an adult to help other
people you can do this through
volunteering designing apps that solve
some kind of a problem or just generally
creating some projects that solve some
kind of a problem for example check out
the interview with mike hackley from
last week or the previous entry with
addison lilholt both of those interviews
talked about students creating projects
that were relevant or had some kind of
an impact on the communities that they
lived in all right so the fourth tool of
the liberation framework is
liberation-centered academic achievement
identity and there's a slash between
academic and achievement okay so here's
a quote from page 87 quote el amin
states educators need to be as direct
and relentless in providing african
americans with positive messages about
the racial groups as academic competence
as society is in presenting negative
messages the liberation-centered
academic achievement identity lcai
ensures that african americans realize
they can use their academic success to
address racism for themselves and their
community in quote from page 87 so to
do this they provide an activity and
this is one of many potential activities
and it's called the evocative audits so
in this activity students use a variety
of arts like quote animation embroidery
literature drawing graphic art dance
fashion etc to show how data science has
transformed their communities's
sociopolitical realities positively and
or negatively in quotes from page 87 so
the purpose of this is to humanize the
harm of algorithms in order to be able
to actually address or dismantle systems
of oppression caused by computing and
again i really appreciate their
connection with the arts as somebody
with multiple degrees in music education
it's something i'm definitely passionate
about alright so the final tool is
activism skills so activism skills
include using computing as some kind of
the communication medium or even or even
as a part of activism in general so
computing can be taught in a way that
leverages activism so as an example
activity they provide an activity called
the quantifiable action which addresses
the prompt how might we empower our
community to address potential
disparities and they address this
through a data analysis of some kind of
social justice topic where quote
students learn how to advocate for
people that are disproportionately
impacted by systemic inequality
throughout the entire data science
development process data mining data
cleaning exploratory data analysis
modeling visualization storytelling in
quotes from page 88 and so they provide
some different examples of what might
this look like for example some of the
historical biases in the criminal
justice system and so they will do some
kind of a data analysis and then create
some kind of a report or communication
or publication or media or something
that they will then use to teach their
community about some of the injustices
that are going on so on page 88 table 1
kind of gives a great summary of each of
the liberation tools as well as a very
quick summary of the activities that are
discussed so if you want a very quick
summary make sure you check out page 88
on table 1. and then the authors
conclude on page 88 with a quick
discussion so i'm going to read the very
last
section of the discussion on page 88
quote moreover dr l amin refused the
idea that is infeasible to use education
and racism by stating there is no easy
path for pursuing racial justice thus
this emancipatory framework should not
be excluded based on the perceived
difficulty to implement the strategy
alone the liberatory computing framework
is practical because schools inherently
have a significant role in shaping
students's racial identities their
understanding of historical events and
their ability to work in groups end
quote from page 88 all right so that is
a very quick summary of the paper itself
i very much so enjoyed reading the paper
and i do highly recommend taking a look
at it only a few pages long so it's
pretty short but at the end of these
unpacking scholarship episodes i like to
provide some lingering questions or
thoughts that i had while reading
through the paper so the first question
that i have is what other oppressed
identities might the liberation
framework apply to so for example if the
tools were instead of sound racial
identity it was sound gender identity
followed by critical consciousness
liberation-centered academic achievement
identity collective obligation and
activism skills might this framework be
used to help liberate different gender
identities and expressions but what
about other oppressed identities or
groups so this is clearly a very helpful
framework for thinking of black and
african american students but if we
think of it as a springboard or a model
we might be able to apply
the same ideas in different ways and
obviously in different contexts but if
we do start to apply this framework with
different groups of people what might be
missing from the framework that would
apply to other identities and that's
something i don't really know it depends
on the identity that's being explored
and the context i need to think about
that more but i think it's important if
we're going to use frameworks as a
springboard that we don't just apply it
blindly actually really think through
what about this works really well what
about this might we need to modify or
add to in order to better align how to
liberate different oppressed groups but
another question that i have is what
would this look like in other areas of
cs so other than data analysis when
you're listening to those different
tools and activities what kind of other
projects were you thinking of in
different sub-domains of cs i love that
they didn't just provide the different
tools but also provided some example
projects or activities of what this
might look like in a very specific
subdomain in cs thank you to the authors
for doing that it's important to situate
theory into practice which is often not
done in academia at least not enough in
my opinion well a final question that i
have after reading this i've mentioned
before in similar articles is when might
a focus on activism cause harm to
students so something that i've talked
about previously is i enjoyed music
because i could escape all of the
horrible things going on in society it
was my mental escape from suicidality
that was largely caused by feeling like
i couldn't have an impact on the world
because there's just all these terrible
things going on when i was suicidal like
in high school and undergrad if i were
forced to confront these issues i don't
know if it would have done more harm
than good for somebody like myself
because i was intentionally trying to
not dwell on some of the horrible things
that i was observing but to argue with
myself even though i was trying to avoid
those thoughts i might have felt better
by helping other people and feeling like
i had some kind of an impact so this
relates to the collective obligation
activity they mentioned that students
will realize that they don't have to
wait until they're older to have some
kind of a meaningful impact on society
so even though it would have been
difficult for me to focus on it the
thing that i love about the way they
frame this is is not just sitting and
talking about hear all the horrible
forms of oppression going on it takes it
one step further by going okay now what
can we do about that to address this
form of oppression and change it to have
some kind of a positive impact so even
though i was trying to escape those
thoughts and needed to in order to focus
on my own mental health i do think that
the focus on acting and improving rather
than just critiquing and observing would
have been good for somebody like me but
i don't know so those are just some
lingering thoughts or questions that i
had when i was reading the paper i do
highly recommend that you take a look at
it again you can find a link to it in
the show notes at jared o'leary.com or
by clicking the link in the app that
you're listening to this on if you
enjoyed this episode and this is your
first time listening there are well over
similar podcasts on activism anti-racism
data analysis social justice etc but
there's a ton more of awesome interviews
and unpacking scholarship episodes that
might be of interest to you so make sure
you check them out but stay tuned next
week for another episode and until then
i hope you're all staying safe and are
having a wonderful week

Article

Walker, R., Sherif, E., & Breazeal, C. (2022). Liberatory computing education for African American students. 2022 Conference on Research in Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), 85–89.

Abstract

“The underrepresentation of minoritized groups, particularly African Americans, is the longstanding reality of computing fields. Computing has the opportunity to change the world and is increasingly being incorporated into our daily lives. Computing classes discuss computing as abstract, neutral, utopian, and unable to cause harm. While everyone needs to be part of the process of ending a multi-layered system of barriers, we focus specifically on why this goal is of particular relevance to African American students. We highlight Dr. El-Amin’s “liberation tools” which state how a sound racial identity, critical consciousness, liberation centered achievement identity, collective obligation, along with activism skills are essential to preparing African Americans to “fight for” racial liberation. Given that computing classes teach students critical thinking skills to solve complicated problems, we argue that computing is well-positioned to incorporate “liberation tools”. Liberation tools teach students how to think in terms of systems, which is essential for racial liberation. By expanding the liberation tools, we coin the term, “liberatory computing”, to reveal how computing curricula can motivate and provide African American students with practical skills to address the racism embedded in society.”

Author Keywords

Liberatory computing, activism, liberation tools, justice, broadening participation in computing, critical consciousness, computing education, antiracism, data activism, racial identity, collective obligation, liberation centered academic/achievement identity

My One Sentence Summary

This position paper unpacks and situates the five pillars of the liberation framework proposed by El-Amin within data activism modules.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

What other oppressed identities might the liberation framework apply to?
- What might be missing from the framework for other identities?
What would this look like in other areas of CS (i.e., other than data analysis)?
When might a focus on activism cause harm to students?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

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