Artificial intelligence programmers, please spare black people the racist small talk
BlackTechLogy: The Dollar Tree conversation that perfectly encapsulates why black people are content working from home
I have naively high hopes for artificial intelligence. Even with deepfake videos and facial recognition problems, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it’ll never get to the point of asking the kind of idiotic small-talk questions I hear when (some) non-black people converse with black folks.
Yesterday, I made a quick stop to Dollar Tree for syrup and stood in the line behind a white guy attempting to chat with a black woman cashier about the holidays. In what should have been a non-controversial conversation, he asked how her holiday week was going. She smiled and said she had a great time, then joked that her two daughters don’t get along at all.
His response, “Are they Bebe’s Kids?”
I scowled. I looked from him to her, just waiting on her to look in any way, shape or form offended. Cashiers may have to act like the customer is always right, but customers can call other customers out on their nonsense. Her eyes clouded for a smidgeon of a second, and if you know you know. She still played it cool, smiled a little wider and pointed out that they are teenagers. She then described them as two girls “who have nothing in common.”
Just like that, she discredited the stereotype that all black women must have super young kids wreaking havoc wherever they go and that black children can’t just be two independent thinkers. He didn’t take the hint. He went for the next stereotype and asked were they like the “Home Alone kid.”
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He’d gone from deep-voiced black babies to abandoned white kids creating traps for burglars while their parents have gone missing. I wanted this entire conversation to end. I spoke up about not needing any bags (she had not asked me this question at all) to get him to get the hint and bag his items elsewhere, specifically away from her before he brought up the next bad-ass kid movie he could think of. This entire conversation reminded me of Alexandra Dal’s Facebook post about a “subtle kind of racism” that people of color experience.
For example, a query to teenagers:
White teen student: “What colleges have you applied to?”
Black teen student: “Will you be the first person in your family to graduate high school?”
These are the kinds of small talk questions that explain why black people are so happy to work from home. (In all fairness, none of the white people I’ve befriended would ever ask such a thing. Past co-workers? Absolutely.) Meanwhile, in-person cashiers have nowhere to escape when these conversations happen. They can’t turn the video conference camera off to breathe and take a short walk. They just have to grin and bear the micro-aggressions of these kinds of questions.
AI programmers, we need your help
I’m begging those who work on artificial intelligence (AI) to fix incidents like these before AI can become too “human.” Unfortunately, there are already flaws in the programming.
In one example, Trevor Noah spoke with Sam Altman, the formerly ousted CEO of OpenAI, on his “What Now?” podcast. Noah brought up how artificial intelligence couldn’t recognize black women primarily because we don’t have "rosy” cheeks or often wear bright makeup. Melanin and cosmetic choices made the technology think darker-skinned black women must be men.
Recommended Read: “Facial recognition has a blind spot ~ BlackTechLogy: Melanin-biased software leaves a lot of room for error”
In a second example, Georgia residents are involuntarily helping technology to profile black people who are renewing their licenses at the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles. Their license photos are sent to a facial recognition system to help law enforcement with specific violent crimes.
While Altman may have higher hopes that anti-racism will improve with technology, I’d like to believe him. The problem is I think people who see nothing wrong with asking black women if they have “Bebe’s Kids” could be handling the programming of AI software technology.