For our group presentation, me, Hannah Shlesinger, and Emily Lopez explored the affects of bias and identity within the Digital Humanities. We focused on the readings by Tara McPherson, Moya Bailey, Kim Gallon, and Denise Pacheco and Veronica Nelly Velez. These readings all looked at how identity and social trends shape digital humanities research, and especially how bias influences how we use research tools. All scholars used critical race theory in their approach and looked at the Digital Humanities as a way to confront racial disparities in academia. Working together with a group was enlightening. All 3 of us took different approaches to the project, with Hannah focusing on UNIX and social movements of the 1960s, Emily focusing on identity, and me focusing on bias in maps. We were able to provide each other with inspiration and insight and build upon ideas. Working together really helped the project move forward, because when one of us would have trouble with one area, someone else could jump in with an idea.By splitting our project up into multiple sections, we each became a mini expert on our topic. The section on maps was very interesting to me and I plan on pursuing more research that uses maps. I got to think more critically about how maps are used and the biases that are embedded within them. I will be more critical of research methods in the future and be more aware of my own identity and biases when conducting research and displaying my findings.
Throughout the past year, I, like most people in this class I imagine, spent a lot of time online and on social media. I found a lot of people posting very charged, angry posts about Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s new progressive District Attorney. Apparently, recall fever has taken over the city and a campaign to have the DA recalled is gaining signatures at the moment. As someone who has studied restorative justice and justice reform I was taken aback by their claims about how crime has changed in the city since he took office, so I decided to look at the data. Using publicly available crime and prosecutorial data from data.sf.gov, I tested three claims. They were:
1: Crime has increased in San Francisco since Boudin assumed office and it is a less safe place to live than it was before
2: Boudin is letting criminals go free and not pursuing charges
3: San Francisco has been getting more dangerous than other similarly sized cities
I made timelines of crimes reported and looked into how many of those crimes actually faced the DA and were prosecuted. In addition I looked at how SF’s homicide rate compares to other large cities. I found that San Francisco’s crime rate has actually stayed consistently lower since Boudin took office than before, I also found that he prosecutes a similar rate of cases to his predecessor, and SF’s homicide rate, though it rose in 2020, actually rose LESS than the average for large cities. I did not have the chance to get into more critical theory about crime or into information regarding demographics of criminals, crime victims, police, and those confronted by police, but these are all topics I’m interested in pursuing in the future. I am also interested in looking at crime heatmaps and comparing them to other heatmaps, looking into the history of redlining and exclusionary housing, food deserts, etc. in San Francisco. The topic of crime and justice is infinitely interesting to me and I see myself doing more research with the datasets from this project.