Joshua Ogure’s presentation of the Map Kibera Trust was very interesting. The community involvement in mapping Kibera was something I hadn’t even thought of before. This is where my privilege of being born in the U.S. is highlighted, It had never occurred to me that a village wouldn’t appear on a map. It’s truly amazing how the youth of the city made its inhabitants their own map, this is wonderful for community engagement and businesses within Kibera so anyone who views the map is aware of all places where they could spend their time and money.
While reading “Algorithms of Oppression” I was not shocked at the idea of such a large monopoly enforcing racist and sexist stereotypes in its algorithm. It’s common sense that every person has a bias, but a bias this blatant and immoral should be unacceptable and employers should be more aware of this when hiring and also in their ways of tackling these problems when their faculty make them aware. When Noble began to speak of the blatant racism during the Obama administration I was completely shocked, labeling the leader of the U.S. a slur, and using an offensive stereotype to relate to his wife is not a “glitch”.
That doesn’t seem like an accident to enforce stereotypes that have been used to dehumanize black people for more than 300 years. They didn’t take any preventative measures to avoid this and when their algorithms were exposed for their racism it was a quick-fix an apology, then onward to the next scandal. The problem of systemic racism is a heavy topic but with algorithms such as these, continuing to spread this hateful information makes us no closer to lessening the number of people who believe in these heinous views.
Julie Ciccolini’s presentation of NADCL has a lot to deal with diversity, especially since it’s dealing with the criminal justice system which has a tendency to disproportionately affect ethnic minorities. It also helps diversify the technological experience on how to use their software to track and analyze information about individual officers and units. This information can help attorneys obtain information in order to
It’s amazing how these police records are “available to the public” however whenever it is requested they make it very difficult so whoever is requesting it just gives up. I took a look at the Citizens Police Data Project and the information it gives is very valuable. over 200,000 allegations but only 7% were disciplined, and with the ‘wonderful’ record of the police properly disciplined it could be assumed that the offending officers got paid leave, or maybe were given a lesser duty on the force. This site gives a neighborhood breakdown with the race and ethnicity percentages, so it gives even further proof of over-policing black neighborhoods.
The neighborhood highlighted a blue color above is 75% white and shows little to no activity, but if you look at the image below in the same blue highlight with a 91% black population the entire area is almost red with police activity.
When Rose Ampuero presented I was surprised by how this committee is just recently meeting and starting to pay more attention to inclusion in NYU. Especially in a University where finding a community is so difficult due to the fact that “the city is our campus” the work that is done to allow minorities to find a safe space anywhere in the university.
I knew that the policing and prison systems are corrupt but, while I was reading about Jose Diaz’s story it seems like my faith in the systems that are supported to protect us continued to fall lower than it already was. There was a blatant disregard for the law and the lives of those inside the prisons. They refused to give proper healthcare to those who were sick, and the hoops they make inmates jump through just to have their cases heard before a judge is unbelievable. This system is formatted for profit, you give them a finish line and as they get remotely close to it you move it back so they either say they’re guilty and serve time for something they didn’t do or they possible spend more time just to have someone listen to what they have to say.
The guest speakers I am most curious about are Rose Ampuero and Julie Ciccolini. I am familiar with Rose Ampuero and I have heard her speak about her either trying to have or currently having a group of male allies where they learn to use their privilege to elevate the voices of the minority. I am not familiar with Julie Ciccolini but the NACDL is something very important especially now that the people have brought light onto the misconduct of police officers.
I know we covered this topic at the very beginning of the semester I just wanted to take this blog post to speak about how medical students are being taught to enforce negative stereotypes about minorities. My sister is a registered nurse and while she was studying for her NCLEX exam she showed me a question she found funny yet concerning. The question asked something along the lines of “When treating Hispanic patients and they are in pain they will tend to…” and the answer to the question was over exaggerate their pain.
I was never able to understand why my father, an afro-Latino, had such an inherent mistrust of the medical system but thanks to the information given to me in this class I understand. Their stereotypes of minorities don’t end a Latinx people, there is a section of the NCLEX study guide called “Cultural Considerations”, I’m not sure if this title is supported to be sarcastic but medical professionals shouldn’t be helping enforce these stereotypes. The blame for situations such as these has to be placed upon companies that continue to publish textbooks with information such as these.
The technology I choose to explore was Zoom, their mission statement is, “to develop a people-centric cloud service that transforms the real-time collaboration experience and improves the quality and effectiveness of communications forever.” Zoom’s founder Eric S. Yuan created this technology in order to improve communication when being face-to-face is not an option. Yuan was a Freshman in college when he first thought of Zoom, he needed to take a 10-hour train ride in order to see his girlfriend (who is now his wife), he would daydream about other ways for him to see her without the commute, and those dreams became Zoom. The Zoom software communicates using HTTP protocols and accepts requests using json.
Zoom Founder
Zoom has come a long way since 2011, most of its advances have seemed to come in the past year. Due to the increase in users since the beginning of quarantine Zoom has needed to improve its server capacity and its security protocols due to “Zoom Bombers” where strangers would join zoom calls and interrupt the session in progress. Zoom has improved in these areas, but it still does not have end-to-end encryption which would be the way to make all users safer while using the program.
Salient Social Identity
For this project, I am focusing on the SSI of lower socioeconomic status (SES). The lack of extra income has exposed many human beings to a lower value of life that has given a multitude of possible negative outcomes. The negative impacts range from physical health, education, and family well-being. Being part of a lower SES has been studied and a link has formed between the low SES and “negative psychological outcomes, while more positive psychological outcomes such as optimism and self-esteem” have been linked to those with higher SES. Lower-income people are also more likely to have,” Elevated rates of morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases later in life.” An example of the negative impacts low SES has on physical health is, “Elevated rates of morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases later in life”
Outcomes such as the ones above only go to further prove Virginia Eubanks’s ideas in her book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. As we’ve become more advanced as a society we have been leaving those who have lower income some steps behind. Zoom is no exception to this idea, they do try and make their platform accessible to those who are lower-income but there are some gaps when looking at how those without computers are able to access their services.
Interviews
Interviewee Clara
Interviewee Abril
For my interviewee’s I interviewed my roommate, and one of my neighbors. For my roommate, Clara, Zoom is working just fine since the only time she uses it is for classes and she is on her computer. This situation is different for my neighbor Abril, on multiple occasions she has needed to join Zoom meeting on her phone, and almost every time she needed to join an error didn’t allow her to join her class.
Allowing users to access their platform from multiple devices is one of the reasons why I thought that Zoom would be accessible to those who are lower-income, but it seems most of their time is used to improve the computer interface, while the phone is being left behind. At the beginning of the quarantine, Abril had difficulties accessing her classes due to having a large family at home, only one laptop, and zoom on her phone was giving her a hard time.
Looking at the back end of Zoom I know it works, but it is not as reliable as it should be. It’s a great thing that Zoom provides its services through something as simple as a phone call because even those with lower income will be able to have a device handy in order to join their meetings, but in the case of my interviewee, it was not the safest case for her to get to her classes on time.
Wrap-Up
If I were to continue this project I would further examine the capabilities of the option zoom has to join calls on your cellular device, to see if a difference in providers was a reason for the unreliability in the connection to the zoom calls. I would try to find more interviewees that use zoom through the call-in option and see if the experiences of my interviewee were universal or the exception.
Dell. “The Courage to Try.” CIO, 11 Apr. 2014, www.cio.com/article/2370056/the-courage-to-try.html. Accessed 15 Oct. 2020.
Yitzi Weiner. “The Inspiring Backstory of Eric S. Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom.” Medium, Thrive Global, 2 Oct. 2017, medium.com/thrive-global/the-inspiring-backstory-of-eric-s-yuan-founder-and-ceo-of-zoom-98b7fab8cacc. Accessed 19 Oct. 2020.
I am an avid user of social media, my use of social media has increased a lot due to the pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, it feels as if my attention span has decreased to the point where I’m on Instagram for three minutes then I enter all the apps in a seemingly random order to see if I find anything that can keep my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. The platforms I use are Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok. Due to 2020 being an election year it seems like a lot of the information on these apps is about the upcoming election and how to request a mail-in ballot, politicians and their stances on important issues, and the overall importance of voting for the sake of rescuing our democracy.
Although Facebook owns Instagram I feel that Instagram does a better job of informing the users that the information that they are seeing may not be true. I have not seen any implementation of that fact-checking on Facebook, this could be due to the fact that I use it much less than Instagram.
I was thinking of using Zoom as my technology since the pandemic made most people familiar with this software I thought it would be interesting to look into. I am very familiar with the UI since I have been a meeting host and an attendee, but I am not very familiar with what is happening within the code. I am considering using socio-economic status because since Zoom is a technology that needs a stable internet connection to work and having a lower income could make it difficult to attain a stable connection or even having a device that would allow you to go on Zoom.
For my interviews, I was thinking of interviewing one of my roommates because they use Zoom and are lower middle class so they would have some interesting viewpoints on Zoom and its relation to their status. For the second interview, I was thinking of trying to interview my RA, because not only does she have to attend classes on zoom but she has to work and facilitate zoom activities for everyone on my hall floor.
Members of the LGBTQ+ communities have always had to face discrimination in the way they express themselves and their love. The idea of “gayborhoods” probably emerged to have a supportive community of like-minded individuals who supported each other and had gone through similar strife. These neighborhoods most likely started small but have the years have passes housing shortages have caused these areas to expand and move around. According to Vox writer Matthew Yglesias, “gayborhoods” began after the Second World War, “gay men and lesbians who were discharged from the military for their real or perceived homosexuality remained behind in major port cities.” Places such as San Francisco, Greenwich Village, and Boystown had a high concentration of LGBTQ+ partners living there.
As of recent, these neighborhoods are disappearing and becoming gentrified or “straightened” as Scott James of the NYT puts it. This gentrification isn’t solely due to increased expenses to live in a big city, but also due to the increased acceptance of members of the LGBTQ+ community. Due to less discrimination, there are more options, young gay millennials no longer believe that they can only thrive in gayborhoods. There used to be a need for gays and lesbians to freely express themselves but now they can feel safe almost anywhere.
James, Scott. “There Goes the Gayborhood.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 June 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/us/gay-pride-lgbtq-gayborhood.html.
Yglesias, Matthew. The Rise and Fall of American Gayborhoods. 8 Aug. 2014, www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5979467/there-goes-the-gayborhood-by-amin-ghaziani.
When reading chapter 8 of Medical Apartheid there is a very clear parallel when we take a look at what is happening at our border. They are giving women at the border forced hysterectomies, they go to the doctor for a completely unrelated reason but leave without their uterus. The difference between the two situations is that when it was originally done, they were planning on having it as a punishment for unwed mothers as a punishment for having premarital sex. Now it seems like these forced hysterectomies are just eugenics. Even the President of the United States has endorsed this “racehorse theory” which idealized selective breeding that can improve a county’s performance. It’s not a secrete that the only thing the current President has done effectively divides this country and his actions only promote his mostly white base to be more outward in their white supremacy.
