By Adekemi Sijuwade-Ukadike
Look at me!
I said look.
Black, African, Proud!
She, her, woman Disabled?
Look at you…
Black, brown, beige, white
and somewhere
Along the lines of a fabled…
Classification
Oh! Hi there, Kay Kay!
I am talking to you,
my nearest neighbor.
You don’t recognize me?
Nor my brother?
Oh! Yes!
It’s dark outside
You almost called the cops?
Cos you thought my brother
...was a gorilla?
A Nig….
Ahhh
But that’s been cleared up now
The algorithm is different
All thanks to deep learning
I’ll just take it to social media
Damn!
I have been flagged!
For hate speech!
But my caucasian friend
just posted the same thing?
I am off to work now
I got a job! Thank God!
Time to clock in to work
Oh Watson!
This punch card system
You created...
Was also used
To classify blacks in apartheid South Africa
My brilliant colleagues of color in tech
Feel marginalized, alone
I admire you
I respect you
To ask why
And not try
Could be to drown
But changing this situation
Is perhaps an elusive proposition
Let me get back to work (laugh)
As an AI programmer…
Creating a repository
Of models, software
Trained to recognize millions, if not billions
Of colorful faces, bodies...
Of lingua... patois, ebonics, pidgin...
Among other things
If all goes well…
Next time
When you see me
You will see
Who I say I am
And who I am meant to be