tears

color drain

How I mourn that my adopted city, Pittsburgh, is such an unwelcome place for black thriving. Having visited Atlanta, I can feel the difference in the atmosphere. When I went hiking around the parks around Atlanta and saw black men and women comfortably exercising in the woods, I knew I was a different place. The North may have been open to abolitionists, it may have been opposed to Jim Crow laws, but it never had to deal with its latent racism. 

The purchasing power of the black citizens in the South had more power than their counterparts in the North. Boycotts cut into the economic well-being of the South, mandating the death of legalized segregation. But in the North? Red-lining, lack of public transportation between cities and suburbs, zoning laws that made the minimum lot size unaffordable, and  the de-investment of cities were implicit segregation of systemized racism. 

In my city, predominantly black neighborhoods were neglected or decimated. My own neighborhood, although one of the most central with the best views, is an afterthought even with the rich history of August Wilson, Teenie Harris, the Homestead Grays, and Crawford Grill. Even today, the mantra of “Most Livable City” stands at a point of reckoning – for whom? Pittsburgh has a serious color drain (over 3,000 Black or African Americans according to 2010 Census and 2015 Census Estimate data). With world class institutions and universities here, more people are coming or staying in the city. However, this does not include black men and women. 

I am thankful for my black brothers and sisters who have remained in Pittsburgh or decided to live here. Thank you for your sacrifice. I hope and pray that our city will become one where your contribution is truly appreciated and celebrated. I hope and pray that generations to come would say – Pittsburgh is a place where people of color have thrived and have opportunity to thrive.

i, too, a removable alien

I ,too, am a citizen

Yet the only proof is a paper
Easy target for conflagration
judged high risk pigment
by a force of deportation
by vague executive amendment

My home, naught but a dream
Broad exclusion and bright fear
Amber waves meant not for me
Land of slaves and home of tears
from sea to shining sea

But, I will sing as I was taught to sing:
Lord prepare me,
to be a sanctuary

I will stand as I was taught to stand:
my name upon a list,
to be worn as a badge of honor

I will say as I was taught to say:
I, too, count it as joy
I, too, am a removable alien

pittsburgh planning commission rejects controversial penn plaza development

 My adopted city, Pittsburgh, is on the cusp.

How do you have a city that welcomes all, regardless of income? How do you have a city where the poor and the rich can live next to each other, to interact with each other? 

Penn Plaza is the site of a former apartment complex that had become naturally affordable housing in East Liberty, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh which has rapidly been developed in the past 5 years and has an influx of hundreds of luxury apartments built. In the meantime, rent in Pittsburgh has steadily increased, especially in the newly (re-)desirable East Liberty. The developers decided to tear down the apartments and replace with market rate apartments, displacing residents who were in a highly accessible and desirable location. In contrast to other development projects in the area, this one specifically tore down affordable (albeit naturally and not mandated) housing without any real plan of replacement.

This is a hallmark decision – a moment in our collective history that speaks to the hope of truly having a livable city for all. The challenge is for us to move and recognize that although capital may be a useful system, we must be willing to make sacrifices to emphasize human capital.

Maybe we won’t grow as fast; maybe it will take more work. But the journey is as important as the destination. 

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
   to those who issue oppressive decrees,
 to deprive the poor of their rights
   and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
   and robbing the fatherless.
 What will you do on the day of reckoning,
   when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
   Where will you leave your riches?
 Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives
   or fall among the slain.

Isaiah 10:1-4a (ESV)

Lord, I pray that we might be a city that is a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm, and a shade from the heat (Isaiah 25:4a).

justice against the machines

As someone who works at a company driven by data, I work with a lot of data. I work on machines that process and produce a lot of data and then I gather and process data for those machines to work better. For the multitude of data advocates out there, the refrain is often: data is love, love is data. And by this, I mean you could do a reading of 1 Corinthians 13 in this way:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not data, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not data, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not data, I gain nothing.

Data is patient and kind; data does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Data bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Data never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and data abide, these three; but the greatest of these is data.

Data is basically God, incarnate in bits of ones and zeroes. But the reality is that there a fundamental flaws with data:

1. We choose what to collect
2. Our collection is biased and incomplete
3. We decide how to interpret data to conform to our beliefs

We need to be vigilant about how we design and train these machine-learning systems, or we will see ingrained forms of bias built into the artificial intelligence of the future.

Like all technologies before it, artificial intelligence will reflect the values of its creators. So inclusivity matters — from who designs it to who sits on the company boards and which ethical perspectives are included. Otherwise, we risk constructing machine intelligence that mirrors a narrow and privileged vision of society, with its old, familiar biases and stereotypes.

And for any followers of Jesus that work with data, or work on machines that work with data, we must be cognizant to not generate conclusions that align within that narrow view. As we teach machines, we ought to teach them to be more like Christ. We need the perspectives of many “others” around us, lest we end up perpetuating prejudices and systematic injustices in a digital medium.

how to reduce racial bias

Telling people they’re racist, sexist, and xenophobic is going to get you exactly nowhere.

How then do we approach this issue?

The key to these conversations, though, is empathy. And it will take a lot of empathy — not just for one conversation but many, many conversations in several settings over possibly many years. It won’t be easy, but if we want to address some people’s deeply entrenched racial attitudes, it may be the only way.

Such an empathy can only come the love of God. We must first see each and every other as an individual child of God. There will likely be many biases that need to be overcome which will take a lot of time and a lot of effort. This sounds hard. “Why should these people get such a gracious pass when we have received no grace?” But did Christ not show you much undeserved mercy? Should we not go and do likewise? 

To abandon the white community for the sake of diversity means we end up with Mr. Trump. We need missionaries to go to white communities, too.

- Sean Michael Watkins on Navigating the Trauma of Trump

I will prophesy, that the gospel which was twisted in such a way that drove black men and women into the cities, fully rectified, will empower them back into the hidden corners of this nation bringing the good news. How blessed their feet shall be! There well may be martyrs in this cause – let us who have not been gifted with such a burden not sit idly. 

There’s an unfortunate lack of understanding that interactions across groups can be positive and enrich rather than divide. That’s what people who do live in pretty homogeneous parts of the country just don’t know. They’ve never experienced it.

Though “this is not our fault, it is our problem” (attributions to Sean Michael Watkins). The easy thing to do would be to sit by, watch, write Facebook posts that go into the echo chamber of oblivion. We must also enter into the hard work, having challenging conversations and relationships with those who are not ‘woke’. For if we exercise the privilege of disengagement, we will have become the pharisaical hypocrite.

A wise friend has said, “racial reconciliation will cost you your life.” Let us surrender our lives before the King, carry our cross, and do the hard work of reconciliation.