Honestly, after watching and reading these works on Black data, it reinforces that I am not in a position to speak or decide on these matters - especially from my position as a white person - however, obviously I must attempt to! With regards to “who owns Black data,” I agree with Dorothy Berry from the keynote panel that right now, in our current environment, institutions own this data.[1] There is so much data that is still out there to be sourced, but so many archives may not want to expand or take in “worthless” data, so it goes unnoticed. On the whole, we as historians (digital or traditional) should be on the lookout for “silences”, or explicit omissions as Berry also mentions, and be sure to try and fill them.[2] It’s also important that we stop telling stories as they have been perpetuated; instead of using old language that referred to people as “slaves”, it’s important to recognize that these are real people with families and lives outside of a forced situation.
Even well-meaning actions can also be a problem though, when using this data we exclude those whose data it is from caretaking or participating. One way to help mitigate this issue is to consult with or (especially!) employ people of that group, for example as a white person working with Black data. As the panel discussed, it is their ancestors so they should be involved in decisions related to it, similar to data from any other marginalized people group.[3] On the other hand, having a project for Black-owned data led by Black people can be particularly impactful. When a white person leads a project on Black data, it can “often reflect the racial hierarchies present in higher education.”[4] However, though not a guarantee, when Black people lead work on their own data, they are more likely to see through those hierarchies and reconstruct a more informative narrative.
The keynote discussion in the video highlights similar issues to what we find in the readings, such as there being an “imbalance of power” and “bias built into the architecture of digital technology.”[5] These systems were, for the most part, setup by white people in institutions during times when Black voices were rarely considered, so it would absolutely make sense that the continuation of their work would still – even incidentally – work to exclude those who do not fit the preferred narrative. If one does not realize something is missing, how can they seek to fix it?
There is hope, however. Bilphena Yahwon, a panelist in the keynote, mentions the work she is doing to create a community archive called Archive Liberia. This, as a communal work, leverages many hands to make quick (and hopefully safe) work.[6] Community archives and crowdsourcing work is an excellent thing, but scholars in digital history should be leading the charge when it comes to recognizing and resolving these problems, which are systemic and grow from rooted colonialism.[7] We need to be more transparent about where the people handling data come from (including biases, funding, and other influences), but more importantly we need to involve those whose data we are handling. Black people should own and have access to their data, but if they are not in the room when it is being digitized, reviewed, and decided on whether it should be kept or not, we will end at an inevitable and irreversible loss, greater than what we have already experienced in silencing Black voices.
[1] Dorothy Berry, Jennifer Morgan and Bilphena Yahwon, “Keynote Conversation and Closing Event for Who Owns Black Data? (March 29, 2024),” moderated by Nadejda Webb, keynote conversation, March 29, 2024, streamed on March 29, 2024, by LifexCode, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/live/Y2eomzSkxPM.
[2] Berry, Morgan, Yahwon, “Keynote.”
[3] Berry, Morgan, Yahwon, “Keynote.”
[4] Kim Gallon. "Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities." In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016. University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
[5] Jessica Marie Johnson. "Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads." Social text 36, no. 4 (2018): 57-79. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-7145658, 59, 65.
[6] Berry, Morgan, Yahwon, “Keynote.”
[7] Safiya Umoja Noble. "Toward a Critical Black Digital Humanities." In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.