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Dark Face

The racism inherent in the technology of camera phone is a problem a brown woman like myself is very familiar with specially if she happens to be one is frequently shares the frame with light-skinned people. The only way for me to get a passably decent picture is to put on make-up with HD powder to finish and make sure the lighting is near prefect. These conditions are not achievable in a candid shot and out comes a picture where my face looks dimension-less, weirdly blotchy, deathly exhausted and worse. It's not they way I want to memorialize the moment - not sure anyone else in the picture wants it either. 

I don't wear makeup regularly and am fortunate to have skin that can get away without it. In pictures taken by a phone (which is almost always the case these days), the light-skinned person in the frame looks mostly like themselves, maybe a notch paler in comparison to my much darker version as the phone camera renders me. I have absolutely no problem with dark skin (my own or that of anyone else - its who we are naturally and it is perfect for us) and I am very happy with the shade of brown I am. I do have a problem being turned into a caricature of myself and being forced to use makeup to try and get around it. 

It is not that tech companies or smartphones are inherently racist. The people developing these technologies, which usually are made in US companies, are overwhelmingly using data sets that are heavily influenced by white people. What tech companies and smartphone makers can be accused of, is ignorance. Having said that, we’re not sure if that’s a good enough defence.




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