Calling In the Nice White Ladies of the Tech World & Beyond

The 2022-2023 Identity & Computing Lecture Series begins September 20, with Dr. Jessie Daniels.

The “Karens” phenomenon, white women who call 911 on Black people going about their everyday lives, has now been immortalized in a Beyoncé track (“Energy,” Renaissance). Often overlooked in any discussion of “Karens” is the role of technology in facilitating this kind of harm. In fact, ‘nice white ladies’ are not only complicit in, but actively participate in the design and implementation of harmful technologies. Indeed, we might think of white femininity as its own kind of technology that has the power to affect change in the material world. In this engaging talk, Jessie Daniels connects the dots in a way that many have called transformational. In the conclusion, she asks how we might ‘call in,’ rather than simply call out, the nice white ladies of the tech world.
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Jessie Daniels, PhD is a Professor of Sociology at Hunter College (CUNY), where she directs the master’s degree program in Applied Digital Sociology. Daniels is affiliated with the Harvard Berkman Klein Center and the Oxford Internet Institute. She is the author or editor of six books, including her most recent, Nice White Ladies, which received coveted starred review from Kirkus and was included on their list of Best Nonfiction of 2021.