Speaker 1: Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
Speaker 1: conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
Speaker 1: decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
Speaker 1: a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
Speaker 1: to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
Speaker 1: at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
Speaker 1: love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
Speaker 1: not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
Speaker 1: a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us for session four thirty eight of the
Speaker 1: Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into our
Speaker 1: conversation after word from our sponsors. As we head into
Speaker 1: the holidays, many of us will encounter old memories and
Speaker 1: create new ones. You may spend time recounting stories from
Speaker 1: your childhood, learning a new line dance, or even taking
Speaker 1: orders in the kitchen on how to make a family recipe.
Speaker 1: Memory keeping has long been a practice for humans across
Speaker 1: the globe, but for Black people, though, traditions look different,
Speaker 1: and in the age of technology, the way memories are created, stored,
Speaker 1: and used introduce a new set of questions around who
Speaker 1: gets to call them their own. Today, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: be joined by doctor Tanya Sutherland, currently a professor and
Speaker 1: dean at UCLA. She has dedicated her research to unpacking
Speaker 1: the uniqueness of black memory work, and in her book
Speaker 1: Resurrecting the Black Body Race and the Digital Afterlife, she
Speaker 1: digs into how technology, history and data longevity affect how
Speaker 1: we practice arkavism and how those practices impact our digital afterlives.
Speaker 1: If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please
Speaker 1: share with us on social media using the hashtag TVG
Speaker 1: in session, or join us over in our patreons to
Speaker 1: talk more about the episode. You can join us at
Speaker 1: community dot therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us today, doctor Sutherland.
Speaker 2: It is an absolute pleasure to be here, and it's Tanya. Please.
Speaker 1: Oh, Tanya, got it? Got it? So I wonder if
Speaker 1: you can start by just giving us a definition of
Speaker 1: your work. So what do you mean when you talk
Speaker 1: about black memory work in black digital afterlives? Wow?
Speaker 2: Thank you? What an important question and a perfect place
Speaker 2: to begin when we talk about digital afterlives. We're really
Speaker 2: talking about the data that's collected by us for us
Speaker 2: about us. That includes anything from our social media, to
Speaker 2: our email, to our communications such as text messages, instant messages, right,
Speaker 2: all of this content that we're producing in our own
Speaker 2: personal lives, and then actual data bits and bytes. When
Speaker 2: you take a photograph, the metadata from that gets collected
Speaker 2: on your phone, So if you have an iPhone, right,
Speaker 2: that information then goes to Apple. They're collecting that data
Speaker 2: and that metadata. They're collecting the time of the photograph,
Speaker 2: the location of the photograph, some information, some other information
Speaker 2: about the image itself, and increasingly with the use of AI,
Speaker 2: that includes some maybe sort of description about what might
Speaker 2: appear in the image. This is sort of a new
Speaker 2: added layer of what is being collected and noted. And
Speaker 2: then when you pass away, the question becomes what is
Speaker 2: done with all of this data? And so in many
Speaker 2: ways we have what I have termed digital afterlife, where
Speaker 2: all of this data and our digital detritis lives on
Speaker 2: after we do, and we have very little say in
Speaker 2: terms of what is done with that data, how it's used,
Speaker 2: how it might be manipulated. There are, as we know
Speaker 2: now digital resurrection, and other kinds of digital immortality practices.
Speaker 2: All of these things get tied up in what we
Speaker 2: mean when we say a digital afterlife. When I talk
Speaker 2: about Black Memory Work, I'm looking at all of the
Speaker 2: potential harms that can be served up by a digital afterlife,
Speaker 2: and I'm looking to Black memory work, which really describes
Speaker 2: a long history, robust history of practices within black communities,
Speaker 2: diasporic communities across the globe that are about preserved memory
Speaker 2: in ways that make sense to us, and in some ways,
Speaker 2: I think about Black Memory Work as a corrective or
Speaker 2: as an alternative path to a digital after life, something
Speaker 2: more intentional, right, something that we craft for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about like what inspired you and like
Speaker 1: what interested you in this work and how it inspired
Speaker 1: the writing of your book.
Speaker 2: I had been thinking about this in some way, shape
Speaker 2: or form since my childhood. I was distressed as a
Speaker 2: child to see the Save the Children campaign. Do you
Speaker 2: remember this? On television commercials for Evening TV. There would
Speaker 2: be pictures of ostensibly starving children, and they would show
Speaker 2: it was always black children. They always had very distended bellies.
Speaker 2: What we would now probably refer to colloquially as poverty, porn. Right,
Speaker 2: we were looking at black babies in distress, and as
Speaker 2: a child, I remember being struck by how it only
Speaker 2: ever was kids who looked like me, and it didn't
Speaker 2: make sense to me. As a child, I didn't have
Speaker 2: a language or reference points really to understand what I
Speaker 2: was seeing, or to make sense of it, or even
Speaker 2: to sort of contend with it. And then when Hurricane
Speaker 2: Katrina happened, I was immediately taken back to those pictures,
Speaker 2: to those commercials, to those ads, to that entire ad campaign,
Speaker 2: and I thought, we are seeing dead people who look
Speaker 2: like me on television once again, now on the internet
Speaker 2: as well, in the overflowing waters of Lake pontchitran Right,
Speaker 2: we are once again looking at images of black people's
Speaker 2: bodies and distress, deceased, and it's being presented to us
Speaker 2: as something that we should taken again any real context.
Speaker 2: We aren't given tools with which to process what we're seeing.
Speaker 2: And I thought, there's got to be a reason that
Speaker 2: it's always people who look like me, and that reason
Speaker 2: can't just be racism. What else is at play here?
Speaker 2: And so that sort of became the center of the
Speaker 2: inquiry for my book Resurrecting Black Body, which is about
Speaker 2: race and the digital afterlife and really explores these questions
Speaker 2: in depth.
Speaker 1: And what are some of the most common practices of
Speaker 1: black memory work that we may not even realize that
Speaker 1: we're practicing.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I love this question. So we are
Speaker 2: very creative when I say we right now, I'm talking
Speaker 2: about the Black Memory Collective, which is a small community
Speaker 2: based organization that I'm the founder and director of. And
Speaker 2: when we talk about black memory work, the kinds of
Speaker 2: practices that we first started talking about and seeing, we're
Speaker 2: things like quilts, right it was we understand memory to
Speaker 2: be braid in someone's hair as a root to freedom.
Speaker 2: We understand black memory work to be quilting. We understand
Speaker 2: black memory work in a way that other people might
Speaker 2: not recognize it. Other people might call someone a hoarder,
Speaker 2: for example. And that's not to say that there aren't
Speaker 2: issues around hoarding, but it is to say that when
Speaker 2: you have been dispossessed of your physical belongings repeatedly over generations,
Speaker 2: there's something to that holding on to things. Right, that
Speaker 2: is about a memory process, a memory ritual, a memory practice. Right,
Speaker 2: If you're not out here hoarding or braiding hair or quilting.
Speaker 2: Don't think you're not doing black memory work. Certainly for
Speaker 2: our photographs and the things that we might find in
Speaker 2: the boxes under our beds, that's black memory work. And
Speaker 2: then in an even more expansive way, we are finding
Speaker 2: that the way that folks show up for one another
Speaker 2: in community is also about a memory practice or a
Speaker 2: memory ritual. It's about building memory and that memory then
Speaker 2: gets held in community. And I think that's a lot
Speaker 2: of it right, just the ways that we are showing
Speaker 2: up in community and asking one another to hold things
Speaker 2: for ourselves, for our communities, all of that, all of
Speaker 2: that counts as block memory.
Speaker 1: You know, as you're talking to me, I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: this large black leather purse that my grandmother had that
Speaker 1: had all of these photos, and every time I would
Speaker 1: go home for like holidays, like I'm going straight to
Speaker 1: this purse to like ask my aunts and uncles like
Speaker 1: tell me about this picture? Who was this? And really
Speaker 1: wanting to like understand like why there were these collection
Speaker 1: of photos. It also makes me think about how important
Speaker 1: it was to my grandmother that anytime she went to
Speaker 1: a funeral, she had to have a program, right. And
Speaker 1: then would come back from the funeral and like put
Speaker 1: it in the back of her bible. Right, And so
Speaker 1: it feels like as a culture, like as a community,
Speaker 1: it feels like we have been doing this black memory
Speaker 1: where even if we weren't calling it it.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, that's exactly right. It's in our art.
Speaker 2: It's literally woven into the fabrics of our culture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So what are some of the I love it. I
Speaker 2: just yeah, like you have to go on a big
Speaker 2: black bag full of black memory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I need to figure out where that person is
Speaker 1: so that that doesn't get like displaced, and like you know,
Speaker 1: we always kind of have an eye on where that
Speaker 1: is and who has ownership with it.
Speaker 2: So what are some of.
Speaker 1: The differences between black memory practices and maybe more widespread
Speaker 1: like western archival practices.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for asking us question. So, in
Speaker 2: a brick and mortar archives, what you will find is
Speaker 2: that there are papers, and those papers go in boxes,
Speaker 2: and those boxes go on shelves, and there are processes
Speaker 2: through which things may cross the arkable threshold or enter
Speaker 2: the archives. There are high level descriptive practices, high level
Speaker 2: discovery practices, high level access practices that really are about
Speaker 2: ensuring the longevity of those materials and the condition of
Speaker 2: them in that very specific way. And for the most part,
Speaker 2: the brick and mortar archives that exist in the United
Speaker 2: States were created to document the dominant culture. Right the
Speaker 2: ways that we tend to show up in those archives
Speaker 2: is in newspapers, in databases of runaway slave ads. The
Speaker 2: institutions that hold those archives have not traditionally made it
Speaker 2: their agenda, their goal, or their policy to document black life.
Speaker 2: And if they do, what they're documenting is the same
Speaker 2: the children campaign and the bodies in like Pontitrain, they're
Speaker 2: documenting trauma, death, and disposition. Black memory worked the exact
Speaker 2: opposite of that. It starts with us, It starts from
Speaker 2: the bottom. It holds us. It is generative, It shifts,
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to stay static. There's no demand that
Speaker 2: it be accessible broadly, widely accessible. In so many ways,
Speaker 2: they are side by side practices that almost have nothing
Speaker 2: to do with one another. Right because the goals aren't
Speaker 2: the same, the practices and the policies aren't the same,
Speaker 2: they can speak to one another, they could influence one another, certainly.
Speaker 2: Black memory workers who call themselves such often are trained
Speaker 2: as archivists. So they come with the knowledge of how
Speaker 2: to preserve materials. What they're doing with that knowledge isn't
Speaker 2: just preserving materials putting them in a box on a
Speaker 2: shelf and saying, hey, come and visit my brick and
Speaker 2: mortar archives, to visit your stuff. They're saying, I know
Speaker 2: how to preserve this. Let me show you, let me
Speaker 2: teach you, let me help you. And so it's also
Speaker 2: a knowledge practice in a way, and a generational one
Speaker 2: in a different way than institutional brick and mortar archives
Speaker 2: like the National Archives or even the Library of Congress,
Speaker 2: or I mean even your local repository or university archives
Speaker 2: may hold. They are set about to do sort of
Speaker 2: different things.
Speaker 1: And what do you feel like is the goal of
Speaker 1: a black memory work? Then it's a different goal, like
Speaker 1: you said, than archiving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think what I've observed, what I've heard people say,
Speaker 2: is that we need to preserve our memory. No one
Speaker 2: else is doing that for us, and we're going to
Speaker 2: do it in a way that is intentionally black, and
Speaker 2: so that shows up differently, right, We show up differently
Speaker 2: in intentionally black spaces. The work is done differently in
Speaker 2: intentionally black spaces, and I want to be really clear
Speaker 2: that not everyone who is a black memory worker, right, yea,
Speaker 2: and your grandmother is a black memory worker, that bag
Speaker 2: that's black memory work. So it doesn't matter that she
Speaker 2: didn't have a master's degree in library and information studies
Speaker 2: or science, right. I assume she did bond anyway, though
Speaker 2: neither of my grandmothers did either, and I would absolutely
Speaker 2: call both of them black memory workers. I think the
Speaker 2: purpose and the goal for us is about preservation of memory.
Speaker 2: It's also about preservation of cultural heritage, and there's a
Speaker 2: certain protective layer I want to say for future generations
Speaker 2: that's very intentional. There too.
Speaker 1: More from our conversation after the break And so is it, Tanya,
Speaker 1: a more personal kind of like, Okay, it is for
Speaker 1: my family to preserve the history of our family, not
Speaker 1: necessarily for me to learn about your family, because that's
Speaker 1: kind of what it feels like. It's like, oh, with archiving,
Speaker 1: like you can go visit like a library, a museum
Speaker 1: and like learn more. This feels like it is a
Speaker 1: more personal thing maybe for your community. Well definitely your
Speaker 1: direct family, but maybe also your community that is still
Speaker 1: like close to the family.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I would say that's true. And I would also
Speaker 2: say that in terms of concentric circles or community and
Speaker 2: how we build and how we live and work with
Speaker 2: one another, there are many sort of points of possible
Speaker 2: or potential interaction with other people's historical memories. Right. I
Speaker 2: know that ancestry has become a very popular site. I
Speaker 2: have my own issues with it, but part of what
Speaker 2: it's done is to help people who otherwise couldn't even
Speaker 2: make those family connections be able to make those family connections.
Speaker 2: So I think Black memory work serves a similar function
Speaker 2: as well, inasmuch as you know, you're telling a story
Speaker 2: and you mentioned a name, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 2: it's oh, I have a picture of him, and it's
Speaker 2: through its storytelling is also a really key element of
Speaker 2: Black memory work. As we are telling each other one
Speaker 2: another's stories, as we're telling our own family stories, as
Speaker 2: we all of those things that we hold in collective,
Speaker 2: I think makes it more communal, more community based and
Speaker 2: community oriented. And also, if there is a desire to
Speaker 2: do long term preservation work that requires resources, and it's
Speaker 2: generally going to be easier to do that in community. Right, So, if,
Speaker 2: for example, one of the things that the Black memory
Speaker 2: collective in Los Angeles is talking about doing is building
Speaker 2: a repository of sorts, perhaps a digital repository to hold photographs,
Speaker 2: to hold recipes. We're still talking with the broader community
Speaker 2: about who would want to participate, who should hold and
Speaker 2: steward it, what an ingest process would look like. And
Speaker 2: then it starts to really feel like we're having the
Speaker 2: conversation about a brick and mortar archives. Right it shifts.
Speaker 2: It doesn't stop being black memory work, but it takes
Speaker 2: on sort of the patna of traditional artical space.
Speaker 1: So in your work you also talk about Black memory
Speaker 1: work being restorative and healing. Can you talk about what ways, like,
Speaker 1: what does that look like for black memory work to
Speaker 1: actually heal.
Speaker 2: There's a member of our collective who is very interested
Speaker 2: in birth stories and part of the so when I
Speaker 2: said storytelling, narrative is a really important part of Black
Speaker 2: memory work because it isn't in part about telling our stories,
Speaker 2: preserving those stories for the future and for our children,
Speaker 2: our grandchildren, our descendants are communities more broadly, and so Dominique,
Speaker 2: I don't think she would mind me naming her is
Speaker 2: doing really beautiful work around talking with people who have
Speaker 2: difficult birth stories and recording those stories for that person
Speaker 2: so that they can have something to hold. Right So
Speaker 2: in some instances, they may not have a child to hold,
Speaker 2: but they now have a story that they can hold
Speaker 2: that has been told to someone who is holding it
Speaker 2: in care and in community with them. And I think
Speaker 2: there's something very healing and restorative about that kind of practice.
Speaker 2: And we think about all of that as Black Memory work.
Speaker 1: You know, telling you you started off by given some
Speaker 1: very powerfil examples of like things in your personal experience
Speaker 1: that have shaped your interest in doing this work. So
Speaker 1: you talked about the State of the Children campaign as
Speaker 1: well as Hurricane Katrina, And I'm wondering, you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about that as like as told to us, right
Speaker 1: like these messages and stories that we saw, But what
Speaker 1: you're talking about with Black Memory work is us owning
Speaker 1: this process. I wonder what does it look like for
Speaker 1: something like Hurricane Katrina, or even I'm thinking about the pandemic,
Speaker 1: right like, how traumatic that was for so many of us,
Speaker 1: and how many of us lost loved ones and lost
Speaker 1: experiences and all kinds of things. What does it look
Speaker 1: like in Black Memory works a whole space for both
Speaker 1: the joy of black life, but also the more people
Speaker 1: parts of it.
Speaker 2: That's something that I think about a lot. I taught
Speaker 2: a course in the fall of twenty twenty four, yes,
Speaker 2: in the fall of twenty twenty four on black memory work,
Speaker 2: and there's not much written about it in the professional literature,
Speaker 2: certainly not in information studies, and so I'm casting about
Speaker 2: a little bit looking for materials for my students to read,
Speaker 2: and about halfway through the quarter they came to me
Speaker 2: and they said, Professor Sutherland, this is beautiful and we're
Speaker 2: really enjoying this class. But if we had one note
Speaker 2: for you, more joy, Please more joy, because it was
Speaker 2: a lot easier to find representations or examples of how
Speaker 2: we are actually holding space for one another in tragedy
Speaker 2: and in trauma than it was to find things written
Speaker 2: about how we are holding one another in joy. So
Speaker 2: I'm really glad that you asked that question, because with
Speaker 2: COVID so much loss, there are a lot of community based,
Speaker 2: grassroots level projects to document people's experiences with COVID. I
Speaker 2: can't say the same thing was true with Katrina in
Speaker 2: the same way, but it certainly is true now with COVID.
Speaker 2: There are oral history projects all kinds of things that
Speaker 2: are sort of attuned to that kind of pain. I
Speaker 2: think where we are maybe not doing as good a
Speaker 2: job is and finding those moments of celebration and lifting
Speaker 2: those up. Part of black memory work is teaching the
Speaker 2: kids how to play spades, right, Like, we got to
Speaker 2: know how to play dominoes. If we don't know, then
Speaker 2: we're only bringing the bad stuff with us through the generations.
Speaker 2: So I know y'all want a gate keep, but teach
Speaker 2: the kids, keep them maybies how to play spades and dominoes.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what I do you're seeing, Tanya, is that
Speaker 1: I got to break out my hula hoop and teach
Speaker 1: the babies how to do the hula hoop.
Speaker 2: Need double dutch? Yeah, I want to see there waiting, Okay,
Speaker 2: you want to see that's right? Yeah. You know, many
Speaker 2: years ago, there was a project in Trinidad that was
Speaker 2: now I'm not going to remember exactly what it was called,
Speaker 2: but it was something. It was a cultural memory project,
Speaker 2: and the idea was sort of sort of this living museum.
Speaker 2: What a beautiful notion. They had a storyteller who was
Speaker 2: there to tell the stories of Afro Trinidadians and the Caribbean,
Speaker 2: there was hopscotch and they would teach anybody who didn't
Speaker 2: know how to play how to play. And I thought that,
Speaker 2: right this, we need more of this, We need more
Speaker 2: living museums, so to speak, more of that energy anyway,
Speaker 2: if not formulation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love it. So I
Speaker 1: think lots of people who are enjoying our conversation, will
Speaker 1: you know hear this and like feel like it's beautiful
Speaker 1: and be very inspired and then feel like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: where do I start? Right? Like what does it look
Speaker 1: like for me to have my own personal family kind
Speaker 1: of black memory work? So what would you suggest to
Speaker 1: them for how to get started?
Speaker 2: I would say, look to your people, right, what are
Speaker 2: you collecting? Because we're all collecting something, even if we're
Speaker 2: not really aware of it. So stop and take a
Speaker 2: beat and are what is it your collect Is it shoes? Honey,
Speaker 2: I'm not mad at you. Just ask yourself what is it? Right?
Speaker 2: Because the shoes are important. All God's children need traveling shoes. Right,
Speaker 2: ask yourself what you're collecting, and then look and see
Speaker 2: talk to your people what are they collecting. My mother
Speaker 2: is a tremendously hard working person. And a really brilliant cook.
Speaker 2: I don't know that she would tell you that she
Speaker 2: is a collector of recipes or that she is the
Speaker 2: keeper of our family culinary traditions. I don't know that
Speaker 2: she would see that in herself, but I see it
Speaker 2: very clearly something I want to make sure gets preserved, respected, held, Right,
Speaker 2: those are the kinds of things I would practice. My dad,
Speaker 2: for example, is a lover of music and has a
Speaker 2: tremendous record and other music collection. I don't think if
Speaker 2: you asked my dad you know what he collects, that
Speaker 2: he would say music. And he probably wouldn't even consider
Speaker 2: himself the music officionado. He just likes music. But those
Speaker 2: are the family stories, right. He comes from a line
Speaker 2: of musicians, and he's probably not thinking about the history
Speaker 2: of his own family as being important to his love
Speaker 2: of music, right. I think we start there. We really
Speaker 2: start by looking inward and looking outward and having conversations
Speaker 2: with the people closest to us, and then we go
Speaker 2: a little bit further out talk to my cousins, I
Speaker 2: talk to my aunties, and then at the same time, right,
Speaker 2: once you feel like you have the capacity for it,
Speaker 2: start talking to other people in your community, start talking
Speaker 2: to people at church, or you know, trying to think
Speaker 2: of where else people gather. These days, we've become so dispersed.
Speaker 2: Ask people when you're playing cards, ask people at wherever
Speaker 2: it is at the cookout. The cookout is actually the
Speaker 2: perfect place to have this conversation, to start this conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we are kind of moving quickly into the
Speaker 1: holiday season, it feels like a good time to think
Speaker 1: about you know, so for example, and the things you've shared, right, Like,
Speaker 1: would it be an opportunity maybe for you to record
Speaker 1: your dad talking about a couple of his favorite albums,
Speaker 1: or to record mom as she's preparing for the holiday
Speaker 1: dishes as a way of kind of getting started with
Speaker 1: some of these conversations.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely get your phone out. Don't just record mom
Speaker 2: doing what she's doing, but learn it with your hands too. Right,
Speaker 2: There's something really important and important aspect of black memory
Speaker 2: work is the cultural transmission. And cultural transmission is fancy
Speaker 2: speak for handed down from generation to generation, and by
Speaker 2: that we mean like physically it's a practice that has
Speaker 2: been transmitted from one generation to the next. So I
Speaker 2: learned how to roll out a roty dough from my
Speaker 2: anti intrinidad. I now have that memory in my muscle.
Speaker 2: I have muscle memory of how to do that. I
Speaker 2: can teach my son how to roll out a rote.
Speaker 2: So if I had just had a video of Anti
Speaker 2: doing it, Anti and Iurene doing it, maybe maybe I
Speaker 2: could still teach my son. Maybe. But having that muscle
Speaker 2: memory is really important, which is why I'm saying I
Speaker 2: want to see the kids with their hands in there
Speaker 2: waiting to jump it for double dutch. Right, the recordings.
Speaker 2: We can take all of the preservation practices to heart
Speaker 2: and utilize them, and digital things vanish. Sometimes those things
Speaker 2: get lost. It's a lot harder to lose something if
Speaker 2: you know it in your body.
Speaker 1: So this feels like a perfect intersection of where we
Speaker 1: started in talking about black memory work and then digital afterlife, right,
Speaker 1: because when we're talking about is these videos that kind
Speaker 1: of live beyond us. And I'm sure as we know
Speaker 1: that there are all kinds of like ethical considerations around,
Speaker 1: like digital archives and who has a permission to share?
Speaker 1: Can you talk about like some of the ethical considerations,
Speaker 1: especially when we're thinking about digital afterlives.
Speaker 2: Yes, I start from a place of concern and care
Speaker 2: when it comes to any kind of digital recording. I
Speaker 2: don't often allow myself to be recorded in fact, because
Speaker 2: if there is no digital video of me, then there
Speaker 2: can't be an aid fake of me saying some stuff
Speaker 2: I would never say, doing some stuff I would never do,
Speaker 2: and then having that be one hundred years from now
Speaker 2: what my descendants are looking back on and thinking, Oh,
Speaker 2: that was Tanya. So that's what we don't want. That's
Speaker 2: sort of the core of the ethical concern is that
Speaker 2: our images and likenesses, which we already know are typically
Speaker 2: taken in moments of trauma and despair. Those are the
Speaker 2: images that are then held kept. That's the about us
Speaker 2: and sort of on our behalves, not bias and for
Speaker 2: us approach. And there are ethical concerns that one can
Speaker 2: raise and think through in terms of access and sharing,
Speaker 2: and I have a lot of thoughts about that. I
Speaker 2: think we should be thinking about what is appropriate access,
Speaker 2: but who determines what is appropriate right? I think that
Speaker 2: should be done at the community level, whoever the community
Speaker 2: is that's being affected or influenced or included in whatever
Speaker 2: the digital project is. Also, I'm thinking about Frederick Douglass.
Speaker 2: Frederick Douglas was big on the photograph and the potential
Speaker 2: what it could do for us. He did not think
Speaker 2: that this was a technology, that photography was a technology
Speaker 2: that should be to convince white people that black folks
Speaker 2: had value. He didn't think the photograph should be necessary,
Speaker 2: that any kind of technology could in fact demonstrate the
Speaker 2: value of a black life to somebody who didn't want
Speaker 2: to see it. So imagine in the year twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, somewhere in there, when I got on
Speaker 2: Beyonce's Internet and I saw a photograph of Frederick Douglass
Speaker 2: that had been reanimated through Ancestry or one of those companies,
Speaker 2: and he's shaking his head back and forth, back and forth,
Speaker 2: and I thought, everything I know about this man from
Speaker 2: the words that came out of his mouth, he would
Speaker 2: hate this and would not stand behind it at all.
Speaker 2: And for me, that's where the ethical issues start. If
Speaker 2: we have no agency and no ability to say what
Speaker 2: is going to be done with those materials, and we
Speaker 2: know that there is a long history of using our
Speaker 2: images in nefarious ways that end up harming us, doing
Speaker 2: further harm, then that's for me, the first ethical flag.
Speaker 2: That's where we have to start. We have to start
Speaker 2: with people having a certain amount of agency and being
Speaker 2: able to say yes I want to do that or
Speaker 2: no I don't. It's got to be a consent based model, absolutely,
Speaker 2: is the first thing I think. And then I think
Speaker 2: we have to be really careful. You know, I said
Speaker 2: the thing about gatekeeping earlier in kind of a joking way,
Speaker 2: but there are real needs for gatekeeping, and it's because
Speaker 2: we are collecting materials for beautiful reasons and not nefarious ones,
Speaker 2: and we don't want to open ourselves up to further attack.
Speaker 1: More from our conversation after the break, I guess that's
Speaker 1: my next question, what you telling you? Because you've already
Speaker 1: talked about like how dispersed we all are, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, the cookout largely doesn't exist all the time,
Speaker 1: maybe as it did kind of historically, And so many
Speaker 1: of the ways that we are creating community and talking
Speaker 1: with one another about these kinds of things is online.
Speaker 1: And so what does it look like to gatekeep when
Speaker 1: so many of these conversations in ways that we are
Speaker 1: kind of practicing black memory work kind of happen in public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really really important point. And the thing
Speaker 2: that immediately occurred to me as you were. As you
Speaker 2: were speaking, is all of the times that I have
Speaker 2: seen a mean pop up on the Internet and then
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of people, non malanated people rushing in
Speaker 2: to be like, explain it to me, explain it to
Speaker 2: me and get it, Like I don't get it. I
Speaker 2: have seen gatekeeping happening there in a way that I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's right, you know exactly what to do. You understood
Speaker 2: the assignment. Your people are like, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: tell you that it's actually not your business, so it's
Speaker 2: saus business. And I have been very impressed actually with
Speaker 2: our ability to find ourselves and commune online. Black Twitter,
Speaker 2: while it was a thing, was a very it was open.
Speaker 2: It's not like you couldn't follow some accounts and find
Speaker 2: your way into black Twitter. But if you didn't have
Speaker 2: a guide of some kind, if you didn't know where
Speaker 2: to start, black Twitter might as well have been a
Speaker 2: locked room in a castle somewhere, Like you could not
Speaker 2: find us queens. We weren't available like that. And even
Speaker 2: though we were right there saying the stuff that we
Speaker 2: were saying in public on a very open public platform.
Speaker 2: So I think that we've always found ways were very
Speaker 2: creative wokes. And it's one of the things that's actually
Speaker 2: impressed me most about studying the way that black people
Speaker 2: kind of move on the internet is that somehow the
Speaker 2: way that we are in real life, of course gets
Speaker 2: echoed and we understand the assignment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, you bringing up leg Twitter just
Speaker 1: unlocked all of these memories for me, because you're right,
Speaker 1: it was not like a place to go. You did
Speaker 1: have to know kind of like who you needed to
Speaker 1: follow and like the stories and like the things that
Speaker 1: we would revisit year after year. Like it was very
Speaker 1: much that if you know, you know kind of thing
Speaker 1: and thinking about you know, I think how difficult it
Speaker 1: was for people when ownership of Twitter changed, right, and
Speaker 1: so then it very much felt like not a safe
Speaker 1: place or as safe as it could be for black
Speaker 1: folks to kind of congregate, and you know, just rise
Speaker 1: in bots and trolling, and so it very much feels
Speaker 1: like that was a place where there were so many,
Speaker 1: i think rich cultural conversations about like just what it
Speaker 1: means to be black right now and now that doesn't
Speaker 1: exist in the same way, and so you know, like
Speaker 1: can you help me talk through like what does it
Speaker 1: mean for us? To together in a place, like a
Speaker 1: black Twitter that is not owned by us, right that
Speaker 1: we have no control over and like became so meaningful
Speaker 1: for so many people, and then for it to kind
Speaker 1: of be disbanded, it would that means in terms of
Speaker 1: like black memory.
Speaker 2: Work, what a lesson to have learned, right that when
Speaker 2: you don't control your own spaces, they can be taken
Speaker 2: from you, even no matter how much time, energy, effort,
Speaker 2: labor has been invested into that space. And seeing what
Speaker 2: has become of Twitter, it's not even a place that
Speaker 2: you want to hang out or be. So I'm watching
Speaker 2: the development of Black Sky with great interest because I
Speaker 2: think that a fair number of black Twitter users, at
Speaker 2: least those in academic circles, migrated over to Blue Sky.
Speaker 2: There's a Black Sky that has been very intentionally developed
Speaker 2: to kind of combat that very thing. What happens if
Speaker 2: Blue Sky goes down. We don't want to lose our space.
Speaker 2: So I'm watching the development of Black Sky with great interest.
Speaker 2: So noticing that we are finding ourselves, you know, we
Speaker 2: are finding community in similar ways on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: But Instagram, you know, much like Facebook and Twitter is,
Speaker 2: it's not what it once was right. You can't have
Speaker 2: the same kind of community that you might have once
Speaker 2: been able to build. And so we're seeing this actually
Speaker 2: happen over and over and over again. And the lesson
Speaker 2: is that we have to build it, right. We have
Speaker 2: to build our own thing if we want to have
Speaker 2: our own thing and have it remain And the remaining
Speaker 2: part has to be really intentional. It just really has
Speaker 2: to be. We can't build a black sky. And this
Speaker 2: is no shade to the black sky creators. I don't
Speaker 2: know what their intentions are, but we can't build a
Speaker 2: black sky and then allow it to ask everybody to
Speaker 2: come and be part of that and then be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: actually it's a firefest.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We're not going to do that in our own communities
Speaker 2: to each other because everybody else has is yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So some amount of fortifying self fortifying, I think is
Speaker 2: really important in digital spaces as well. So all of
Speaker 2: the black creators, all of the black entrepreneurs, all of
Speaker 2: the black tech folks out there, get yourselves together. Let's
Speaker 2: be in conversation and make sure that we are building
Speaker 2: things in a way that will allow them to last.
Speaker 2: Now that being said, I also want to say that
Speaker 2: not everything is made to last forever, and that there
Speaker 2: is real value in allowing a process of forgetting. There's
Speaker 2: value in that process of letting go right, And so
Speaker 2: I think we need to be really careful too, that
Speaker 2: we're not trying to hold onto something just for the
Speaker 2: sake of holding on to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that feels important. So you mentioned one of the
Speaker 1: examples you use was like thinking, well, Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: want myself to kind of be video because twenty years
Speaker 1: from now, I don't want some random AI video of
Speaker 1: me doing a thing that I never did to show up.
Speaker 1: What does it look like for us to have agency
Speaker 1: in this process? Because it feels like this stuff is
Speaker 1: like growing exponentially, like much quicker than like legislation can
Speaker 1: keep up with it, and you know, all of the things.
Speaker 1: Not that legislation is ever you know, like the be
Speaker 1: all in all for us anyway, but it very much
Speaker 1: feels like there's very little regulation and we are not
Speaker 1: keeping at pace with like the way AI is growing.
Speaker 1: So what kinds of things can we do to like
Speaker 1: protect ourselves and to be thinking about like how to
Speaker 1: retain our agency and constant as technology continues to you know, expand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, You're absolutely right that the law can't keep up. Certainly,
Speaker 2: the legislation is nowhere near the pace of technological development,
Speaker 2: and the folks who are working in that space have
Speaker 2: been sounding alarm bells for a long hot minute. I'm
Speaker 2: thinking of people like olandro Nelson, Ruhap, Benjamin Sofia and Obole, myself,
Speaker 2: Andre brockunding bells and sounding bells. And I think that
Speaker 2: what's challenging is that everybody wants to play, right. Everybody
Speaker 2: wants to play with the technology. Everybody wants to know
Speaker 2: how chat GPT works. And I don't think there's enough
Speaker 2: information that folks don't have enough information to know that
Speaker 2: there are potential downline effects or concerns. Right, if you
Speaker 2: aren't a person who's watching black Mirror, you see chat
Speaker 2: GPT as something that can just help you do X,
Speaker 2: Y or Z right. It can help you get a
Speaker 2: recipe together. I'm wanting to trust it to do that,
Speaker 2: but it can help you do all kinds of things. Right,
Speaker 2: It's a product, it's being sold. What's not being told
Speaker 2: to people is that all of the back end data
Speaker 2: collection is doesn't make a large language model a responsible
Speaker 2: tool for your health, your wellness your anything right, and
Speaker 2: looking to these digital tools like that is in the
Speaker 2: long run, going to be deleterious. These are the alarm
Speaker 2: bells that people keep trying to raise. So I would say,
Speaker 2: I know it's really easy for me to say do
Speaker 2: your homework. But when I say do your homework, I'm
Speaker 2: not saying like, you need to read my book. Please
Speaker 2: do read my book. I'm not saying that you need
Speaker 2: to go out and read a bunch of academic books.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that you need to go read a
Speaker 2: bunch of academic articles. I'm not even saying that. And
Speaker 2: I would encourage you to try to read the terms
Speaker 2: of service, but they write them in such a way
Speaker 2: they don't want you to read them. Right. When I
Speaker 2: say do your homework, talk to people again. Talk to people.
Speaker 2: Talk to people about their experiences. Ask the person that
Speaker 2: you know that is closest to these technologies or closest
Speaker 2: to this as their life's work. Or do you know
Speaker 2: someone who is in tech. Do you know someone who
Speaker 2: knows a little thing or two about coding? Ask them, Hey,
Speaker 2: what do you think about this technology? Do you think
Speaker 2: I should be taking any steps to protect myself if
Speaker 2: I'm using TikTok in particular, because every technology is going
Speaker 2: to be different and have different concerns, right that come
Speaker 2: with it. For me, it's not actually possible to craft
Speaker 2: a life in which I'm never going to be recorded.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that I'm not making more intentional offline choices, right,
Speaker 2: And so there's balance there too, Understanding that we are
Speaker 2: not going to be able to keep up with the
Speaker 2: pace of how the technology is developing. It's not going
Speaker 2: to be legislated rapidly enough in a way that's going
Speaker 2: to protect us. What steps can we take? Understand how
Speaker 2: the technology works, Understand who owns the technology, Understand what
Speaker 2: they are gaining by giving you something that looks free.
Speaker 2: They are gathering your data, they're pack they're reselling it.
Speaker 2: You are the product, right. TikTok isn't the product. YouTube
Speaker 2: isn't the product. It is a little bit, but you
Speaker 2: are the product, right. Your data is extraordinarily valuable. So
Speaker 2: perhaps the first question is how much of myself do
Speaker 2: I want to give up? It's a hard one, but
Speaker 2: it is a compromise, and it is one that you're
Speaker 2: making every time you use these technologies. How much of
Speaker 2: myself do I want to give up? How much information
Speaker 2: do I want to share? How much of my data
Speaker 2: do I want them to have? Right? And yes, if
Speaker 2: you know somebody that works in any of these industries,
Speaker 2: ask them, ask them. Is there something I should be
Speaker 2: concerned about here?
Speaker 1: I'm curious, Tanya, because you said you taught a class
Speaker 1: I think last year, what kinds of conversations are young
Speaker 1: people having about consent in like all of these, right,
Speaker 1: because I think you know, you'd often think about young
Speaker 1: people as being very eager. It's a kind of be
Speaker 1: on top of technolog advances, but I would imagine there's
Speaker 1: also some pushback and thinking through like Okay, what do
Speaker 1: I want this to mean in twenty years from now?
Speaker 1: So I'm just curious, like, what kinds of insights thechae.
Speaker 2: Maybe as a part of the clay is, Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a great question. Teach an undergraduate class called Information and
Speaker 2: Power where we really go into a lot of these questions.
Speaker 2: And then I taught that black Memory work class. And
Speaker 2: it's interesting because they kind of sit at opposite ends
Speaker 2: of an intellectual spectrum. Right again, where the information and
Speaker 2: power is content more like the digital afterlife conversation that
Speaker 2: we're having, where we talk about things like consent, we
Speaker 2: talk about data collection, we talk about surveillance, and every time,
Speaker 2: without fail, these students are learning something which that's not
Speaker 2: just a credit to me as a professor. I'm not
Speaker 2: patting myself on the back. What I'm saying is that
Speaker 2: they didn't know. They didn't know which they to be
Speaker 2: worried about or concerned about, and the class gives them
Speaker 2: an opportunity to think about how they want to engage.
Speaker 2: And I always assign in this Information and Power class
Speaker 2: a forty eight hour offline assignment where they have to
Speaker 2: go for forty eight hours and they're not allowed to
Speaker 2: use their student ID. They're not allowed to use their phones,
Speaker 2: no digital technologies. You can use electricity, listen to your recirl,
Speaker 2: put your records on. Okay, I love it. But what
Speaker 2: you can't do is call an uber or a lift.
Speaker 2: You can't use your ID to your student ID to
Speaker 2: get into your dorm or into the dining hall. And
Speaker 2: it doesn't take more than forty eight hours for people
Speaker 2: to realize how much of their lives is absolutely controlled
Speaker 2: and determined by outside forces that are run by technology
Speaker 2: companies like I couldn't do this. I couldn't do that.
Speaker 2: I couldn't do this. I couldn't do that. I basically
Speaker 2: had to sit at home for forty eight hours have
Speaker 2: people like have my roommate bring me food. I just
Speaker 2: didn't realize. I just didn't see it. And I think
Speaker 2: once you see it, it's hard to unsee it.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a powerful little example and a real uh
Speaker 1: ipposunity for many of us to practice, like what would
Speaker 1: even be like for it twenty four hours to like
Speaker 1: not engage with any of your devices like.
Speaker 2: That, Yes, that's right, and to really observe, well, what
Speaker 2: can I do and what can't I do? Right? Where
Speaker 2: can I go? Can I get on the subway? Can
Speaker 2: I take the bus? Do I have to have my
Speaker 2: phone to pay my bills?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It's a lot of things that are touched by technologies
Speaker 2: in ways that we can't opt out right, And so
Speaker 2: I think what tends to happen is this is the
Speaker 2: moment for people and everyone who's listening. I would encourage
Speaker 2: you to take this moment for yourself and just say
Speaker 2: how much how much again? How much of myself do
Speaker 2: I want to give up? How much of my time?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Understanding that I can't completely opt out. I can't say no,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't want to have to use my
Speaker 2: phone ever, it's not really practical in our modern society.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that you have to be posting
Speaker 2: every single thought that you have or a Brazilian selfies, right, like,
Speaker 2: maybe there's room in there for moderation, for thoughtfulness, for consideration,
Speaker 2: for taking a bit of a step back and reevaluating.
Speaker 1: It has been so wonderful to learn so much more
Speaker 1: about your works, Tanya. I really appreciate you spending the
Speaker 1: same time with us today. Please let us know where
Speaker 1: we can stay connected with you and learn more about
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing. Do you have a website
Speaker 1: as well as any social media handles you'd like to share?
Speaker 2: Thank you, doctor Joy, Thank you so much. This has
Speaker 2: been a delight. My website is at Tanyasutherland dot com.
Speaker 2: You can find links to my socials there, but you
Speaker 2: can pretty much find me either at Tanya Sutherland or
Speaker 2: at Tanya dot Sutherland depending on the platform.
Speaker 1: And the name of the book and where can we
Speaker 1: find it.
Speaker 2: The name of the book is Resurrecting the Black Body
Speaker 2: Race and the Digital Afterlife, and you can find it
Speaker 2: anywhere that books are sold. You can order it directly
Speaker 2: through the University of California Press website. You can get
Speaker 2: it on Amazon, or please try your local bookshop.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. We'll be sure to include all of that in
Speaker 1: our show notes. Thank you so.
Speaker 2: Much, Thank you so much, what a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Absolutely thank you, Tanya. I'm so glad doctor Sutherland was
Speaker 1: able to join us for today's conversation. To learn more
Speaker 1: about her and her work, be sure to visit the
Speaker 1: show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com plash Session
Speaker 1: four thirty eight, and don't forget to text two of
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Speaker 1: much more. You can join us at community dot therapy
Speaker 1: for blackgirls dot com. This episode was produced by Aleise
Speaker 1: Ellis Indichubu and Tyree Rush. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford.
Speaker 1: Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week.
Speaker 1: I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all
Speaker 1: real soon. Take good care,