this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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This is a Systemic Bias; in this case Systemic racism.
The outcome a product or service disproportionately targets Black people. It wasn’t designed to do it, so it’s not overt racism, it just worked out that way.
Camera systems inherently have a harder time with dark skin. That’s a fact. However it’s been found time and time again that these systems are predominantly created by and tested on light skin individuals. So the bias is built into the flawed creation. You can see this in Hollywood where lighting has only recently been set up to highlight dark skin with majority black casts and show runners in shows like Atlanta and Insecure.
I’m speaking generally, not about this system specifically. It is probably like every other camera based system that struggles with dark skin over light skin. Even things like automatic sink sensors in public bathrooms have failed in this way https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-dark-skin-1797931773
The outcome of the bad technology and policing is disproportionately effecting dark skinned people. That’s where it becomes systemic racism. No one decided to design a system to arrest more blacks people. The outcome of various factors ended that way however. Sometimes it’s just a consequence of nature, but most of the time there are clear reasons like lack of representation in design and testing that would have found the problems earlier.
Arrests more innocent black or darker skinned people is what I meant.
I’m not overusing the term, you’re conflating two types of racism, and need to understand the context in order to understand what others are speaking about. If you just assume everyone is talking about overt racism all the time, you’re going to jump to the wrong conclusions and probably think people are being dramatic or ridiculous half the time.