Toward an Anti-Racist Theory of Computational Curricula

Ibram X. Kendi, in his book Stamped from the Beginning, lays out the argument that structures (political, economic) drive inequitable systems, and it is our enculturation in those systems that lead to ignorance and bigotry. Our goal, in this BOF, is to discuss the dominant social, political, and curricular structures of the discipline of computing, and how we might strengthen or challenge those structures to increase access, equity, and justice within computing. To do so, we must confront the manifold ways in which the existing structures and practices of computing are exclusionary, from curricula to epistemology and the expressions of identity that typically represent what it means to be (and be recognized as) a computer scientist.