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ISSUES: Racial & Ethnic Discrimination
Chapter 2: Tackling racism
How apps and other online tools are
challenging racist attacks
An article from
The Conversation
.
By Alana Lentin, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University and
Justine Humphry, Lecturer in Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University
I
n the aftermath of Brexit in the UK
and the success of Pauline Hanson
in the Australian Senate elections,
racism seems to be a more present
threat than ever.
As First Nations people and people
of colour in Australia well know, racial
violence never went away. But, for
others, recent events may serve as a
needed reminder that racist attacks and
abuses of police power also happen
outside the US.
The Brexit fallout has included a sharp
rise in racist attacks on people of
colour and migrants, including eastern
Europeans. Anti-racists in the UK have
quickly responded. The iStreetWatch
website now allows users to report and
map racist incidents across the UK.
People are increasingly using online
spaces and digital tools such as anti-
racism apps to strategise, challenge
racist views and strengthen anti-racist
solidarity.
The
post-Brexit
Twitter
handle
@PostRefRacism has nearly 10,000
followers. It encourages users “to
document the increase in racism in the
UK following the vote for Brexit”.
But as @PreRefRacism observes, far
from being new, racism has merely
become more visible to white people
since Brexit.
Defining, discussing and
countering racism
Activists and scholars have always
argued race is a complex formation that
needs to be set in historical context.
However, the popular view is racism is a
matter of bad attitudes that anyone can
hold.
In
online
discussions,
reductive
approaches to racismcan be challenged
in real time. It is due to the prominence
of many black feminists on Twitter, for
example, that the term intersectionality
has become more widely understood.
Social media provide an important
space in which racism is being defined,
discussed and countered. These are
key sites for observing how discussions
of race take shape.
However, as media scholar Gavan
Titley notes, this has also led to
racism becoming “debatable” – to
the detriment of a clear delineation of
what racism is and is not.
While “cyber-racism” is important to
challenge, the persistence of street
violence and the intertwining of
“offline” and “online” worlds call for
new methods for opposing racism in
public.
Mobile
apps
for
anti-racism
interventions and education have
been around for a number of years
and several more are in development.
As our research on apps in Australia,
the UK and France has shown, they
have diverse functions: to report racist
incidents; to educate; and as news
sources for racialised communities.
The “phone in your pocket”, with
its built-in geolocative and image-
capturing capabilities, can be a
powerful anti-racism tool, enabling
immediate reactions to racist events.
As with the recent police shooting of
Philando Castile, mobile video live-
streamed online can generate almost
immediate widespread condemnation
and reaction.
Tracking Islamophobic abuse
The Australian Islamophobia Watch
is a reporting app modelled on
one developed by the French anti-
Islamophobia association, the CCIF. The
app was launched in reaction to the
2014 police raids on Muslim homes and
subsequent attacks onMuslimpeople in
public, women in particular.
Like iStreet Watch, the app allows users
to report incidents of Islamophobic
abuse. Amap is created to visualise these
incidents by category such as physical
or verbal aggression, discrimination and
vandalism. This representation of racial
violence is itself a primary purpose of
these apps.
The CCIF spokespeople in Paris told
us that, in addition to enabling the
reporting of racist events, the app-
generated data draw attention to the
existence of Islamophobia as a category
of racism, which is highly contested in
France. By cataloguing abusive events,
CCIF makes the point that Islamophobia
cannot go ignored.
The app includes a feed that provides
an alternative news source for an
embattled
community.
Against
a backdrop of increased state-
sanctioned Islamophobia – bans on
hijabs and burqas, the imposition
of pork on school canteen menus
and heightened policing of Muslims
in a hyper-securitised landscape –
the resource generates community
solidarity.
In this way, users may experience the
app as a more concrete response to
racism than fleeting online hashtag
campaigns.
What are the risks of these
apps?
Our research will now turn to the US
and Canada where app development
has focused on police violence
against the black community. Tools
such as the NYCLU Stop and Frisk app
allow users to film police violence,
report incidents and alert users when
others are being stopped and frisked
in their area.
While such apps purport to put the
power in the hands of those on the
receiving end, the rise of formalised
digital platforms that capture and
store data and evidence of racism also
raises legitimate concerns:
Ö
As our research shows, the
conduit between the reporting
