The Power and Potentiality of Abolitionist Tech
Date & Time: February 27, 2025, 12:00 pm–1:00 pm
Location: Zoom Meeting
The CSHE and the BSIEL presents The Power and Potentiality of Abolitionist Tech, part of the 2024-2025 Black Study in Education Lab Webinar Series.
This presentation by Dr. Tiera Tanksley examines how anti-Black racial logics are embedded in both analog and digital technologies, particularly within educational settings. Dr. Tanksley highlights how systems like school discipline protocols, surveillance tools, and AI technologies contribute to the dehumanization and control of Black youth. She also critiques the myth of technological neutrality and exposed how tools such as automated grading, predictive analytics, and educational AI platforms often perpetuate racial bias and historical inaccuracies. Dr. Tanksley proposes combatting racist technology and systems through abolitionist principles, such as dismantling harmful structures while collaboratively imagining and building new, just systems by cultivating socio-technical consciousness, resistance, and freedom dreaming among Black youth, empowering them to design technologies that center racial justice, community healing, and collective care.