Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist who works at the MIT Media Lab. As a dark-skinned Ghanaian American woman, she deals with AI bias very frequently. As a result, she founded the Algorithmic Justice League.
Click on the picture to the right to view her Ted Talk, where she talks about how programmers need to take accountability for their biases when they are teaching machines how to identify things like faces and voices.
To the left is a video from Buolamwini's youtube channel. This is a more poetic way of Buolamwini using her voice and her platform to bring awareness to biases in artificial intelligence and machine learning. This was debuted at the museum of fine arts in Boston. You can learn more about Buolamwini's cause here.
Hover over an image to learn more about that article.
Colorism in South Asia
This article is about how those with light skin are seen as higher up in society, and how they may not have the same struggles in life as a person with darker skin. It also talks about how darker skinned people are seen as less valuable and often have more troubles in life. Some darker skin people in South Asia use a product called “Fair and Lovely” to make their skin lighter and to be accepted in society.
Colorism and the African Culture
A brown skinned (not quite dark skinned or light skinned) Nigerian woman talks about how it had been deeply ingrained in her that dark skin was uglier skin. She also describes how lighter skinned woman are more attractive to Nigerian men. This causes many woman to use skin-lightening creams because they want to be seen as more beautiful.
Dominican Colorism
This article is about a Dominican boy who grew up with dark skin. He was ashamed of it because he was seen as less than everyone else. He would speak in Spanish and change the way he dressed so that people would change the way they thought about him. Later on in life, he realized that he should accept himself and that he shouldn’t change anything about himself to please someone else.