How can programmers help end police racism? - tbwriting
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DevX101
Your coding skills can't end it.

Educate yourselves on how to be anti-racist. Educate your friends, families
and colleagues on how to be anti-racist. Elect district attorneys, judges, and
local officials who are anti-racist.

Stop being apathetic. Silence in the face of oppression of your fellow
countrymen is implicit consent.

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gregjor
We can't even end language wars.

It's not a tech problem. Programmers can start, like every other human being,
with empathy and examining their own assumptions, biases, and bigotry. Since
there's no global community of programmers, and it's a skill or a job rather
than an identity, I think you're asking a meaningless question.

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tbwriting
I like where you were going, but sorry - it’s really not a meaningless
question at all.

Programming is a skill, and produces tools - tools that help people
communicate, inform, solve problems, and more.

(Also, no global community of programmers? Maybe not a single overarching one,
but there definitely is one.)

~~~
gregjor
I’ve been programming for 40+ years, I’m not aware of any global community.
How do I join? A bunch of people doing the same kind of work is not a
“community” to me. Is there a community of car owners? People who wear socks?

I suppose programmers can take some credit for putting cameras in cell phones,
but the people using those to document and prosecute racism are not the
programmers. I’m sure we’ll see a flurry of apps to track police abuse or
something, but I don’t think those will make any difference, because the
problem isn’t “not enough software.”

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giantg2
The only way I see it stopping by programming is by implementing technology to
document police misconduct (racism isn't the only issue). This would also need
law and policy changes to provide appropriate disincentives for misconduct.

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kgraves
Stop working for Palantir (and other surveillance capitalists like Google and
the like), but particularly Palantir, they work with police departments the US
[0] [1].

Use your software skills to help activists instead and do not work for the
enemy.

[0] [https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/leaked-palantir-
gotham.htm...](https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/leaked-palantir-gotham.html)

[1] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kx4z8/revealed-this-
is-p...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kx4z8/revealed-this-is-palantirs-
top-secret-user-manual-for-cops)

