Black Blockchain: The Future of Black Studies and Blockchain

Abstract

Lt. Nyota Uhura, a fictional character performed by actress Nichelle Nichols, is a much beloved figure of the Star Trek universe. MSNBC commentator Jason Johnson features her Ebony Magazine cover in his virtual background. CBS’ All Rise fictional character, Judge Lola Carmichael, furiously rebuked another judge who removed Uhura’s picture from her office. Former President Barack Obama confessed to a youthful crush, and Star Trek fan, Whoopi Goldberg, joined the second iteration, Star Trek: Next Generation, because Nichols characterized for Goldberg a black woman on television who could play someone other than a maid. The attachment to Lt. Uhura epitomizes Black possibility in spite of a subjugated past. Scholars define this interface of imagined Black future and technology as Afro-futurism. While Afro-futurism exists mainly as a cultural field of study, futurism permeates Black daily life, in sometimes dark, problematic ways. Recent works like Coded Bias expose how new technologies, like AI and big data, increase surveillance, reinforce racist notions of Black criminality, and apply discriminatory treatment in Black patient care. Scholarly attention rightfully centers on the negative impact of futuristic machinery, but these technologies can either empower or suppress. Blockchain embodies this tech duality and concomitantly stores within it the key to self-determination, sovereign identity, and community empowerment while divergently acting as an instrument for oppression. How Black Studies adopts blockchain can determine black people’s political, social, cultural, and economic futures. But without the philosophical intervention of Black Studies, blockchain’s potential for people power becomes subjugated to individuals, entities, and institutions insensitive to the issues impacting the black com-