Black Data Matter

Abstract

This chapter charts how a group of citizens seek to challenge systemic and institutional racism within their city by building their own datasets and tools. It looks at how some computer programmers created black data — data about the murder of black lives, data about systemic, institutional racism, and data that demands justice. The result is a Mapping Police Violence database. The database maps the deaths of people killed by the police by district, most of which happened in black neighbourhoods. This initiative then grew into a black atlas of the city, incorporating crime data, census data, and some housing and welfare data.