Volume 112
Issue
6
Date
Jun. 2024

Artificial Intelligence, Afrofuturism, and Economic Justice

by Ifeoma Ajunwa
Artificial intelligence (AI) work technologies have been lauded for their efficiency, cost savings, and ability to democratize access to work. Indeed, AI work technologies make a “planetary labor market” possible. […]

Dystopian Dreams, Utopian Nightmares: AI and the Permanence of Racism

by Chaz Arnett
This Essay draws connections between Octavia Butler’s Parable series (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents), HBO’s Westworld, and Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well: […]

Thinking of a Master Plan: Data Citizenship/Ownership as a Portal to an Unfettered Black Universal Basic Income

by Philip Butler
If you are old enough to remember the song that inspired the title of this Essay, then you might already be vibing out to its potential. In Afrofuturistic fashion, I […]

Afrofuturism and the Law: A Manifesto

by I. Bennett Capers
Afrofuturism seems to be everywhere these days. It’s front and center in the award-winning fiction of N. K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor. It’s in the pop music of Janelle Monáe and Outkast […]

On “Color-blind” and the Algorithm

by Jessica M. Eaglin
“Earthling?” I jump and bump my head on the underside of a bookshelf. It is a quiet Monday in late summer, right before the start of the school year. I […]

A Black Existential Perspective on Afrofuturity and the Law

by Lewis R. Gordon
This Essay examines Africana Black existential conditions of Afrofuturity and some of the expectations they may pose for justifying the law. The discussion summarizes the Sankofic dimensions of this kind […]

Constitutional Sankofa

by Paul Gowder
In one of Afrofuturist musician Sun Ra’s songs, June Tyson chants: “When the Black man ruled this land, Pharaoh was sitting on his throne.” This illustrates a common theme in […]

Dismantling the Master’s Algorithm: Understanding Defense Attorney Use of Algorithmic Recommendation Tools Using N. K. Jemisin’s Red Dirt Witch

by Cierra B. Robson
Across the United States, algorithmic tools are proliferating throughout the criminal legal system, with more than 3,000 jurisdictions in the United States using some sort of predictive technology to determine […]

Afrofuturism at Work: Critique & Praxis

by Etienne C. Toussaint
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, so-called essential workers from minoritized racial and ethnic groups were disproportionately subjected to workplace indignities that resembled, in the words of Keeanga-Yamahtta […]

Letters to Soleil: Reproductive Reparations as Black Maternal Justice

by Kristen Paige Green
I see inequity wherever it exists, call it by name, and work to eliminate it. Dr. Shalon MauRene Irving—the proud author of this Twitter bio— championed medical equity. The thirty-six-year-old epidemiologist […]