I am a white, heterosexual male. I’m as privileged as it gets. I acknowledge this privately, but I should publicly address the fact that others do not benefit in the way I do.
When considering what to write about in this column last week, I chose to pick a different topic because I couldn’t find a tech angle for the protests, other than the one I had written about years ago. That was a mistake. This week, as a publication, VentureBeat participated in #BlackOutTuesday, and we also shared some essential reading on race and tech.
Today I’d like to use my column to amplify the voices of black journalists in tech:
- Jared Council — read his work at the Wall Street Journal and his article “Emotional dam broken for black community, including black journalists“.
- Megan Rose Dickey — read her work at TechCrunch, including “Gig workers in San Francisco are mostly people of color and many are immigrants, according to survey“.
- Sidney Fussell — read his work at Wired, including “Protests renew scrutiny of tech’s ties to law enforcement.”
- Alan Henry — read his work at the New York Times (he’s at Wired now), including “How to Succeed When You’re Marginalized or Discriminated Against at Work.”
- Taylor Lyles — read her work at the Verge, including her article “A smart toilet could identify you by your ‘analprint’ and detect diseases.”
- Samara Lynn — read her work at Black Enterprise, including “Bots in blackface — The rise of fake black people on social media promoting political agendas.”
- Edward Ongweso Jr — read his work at Vice, including “Amazon delivery driver says he was fired for asking about coronavirus.”
- Bijan Stephen — read his work at the Verge, including “Coronavirus is changing my relationship with the internet, and I bet it’s changing yours, too.”
- Kunbi Tinuoye — read her work at UrbanGeekz (which she founded), including “Make music count: The math EdTech app helping kids stuck at home.”
- Jenna Wortham — read her work at the New York Times, including “Has coronavirus made the internet better?“
And of course there’s our own Khari Johnson (@kharijohnson) — go read “A fight for the soul of machine learning.” Please follow these journalists and learn from them. This list is not finite, but it is short, which in itself speaks volumes.
Sharing this list is not the end. I will continue to learn, listen, and contribute to the cause as an ally.
ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.