When we first started this project in the summer of 2015, we were two 23 year old students: TK was in school for broadcast media, Lorraine for psychology and neuroscience research. We were friends who wanted to find a fun way to work together, wondering how we could somehow combine our shared interests in data, storytelling, and social justice. After a couple of late-night work sessions, we ended up with our very first blog post, where we looked at the underrepresentation of Black artists throughout the history of MTV’s Video Music Awards.
Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to cover a wide range of topics, from analyzing data on the biases in online media coverage, to creating infographics detailing Canada’s colonial and violent history. Working on this project over the last few years has been rewarding in ways that we’d never anticipated. We’re grateful for people who have made significant contributions to the site, such as Jody Chan and Marsha McLeod for their in-depth research and writing on the injustices of the Canadian prison system. We’re grateful, also, for those who have amplified our findings and work, including the lovely people at the Racist Sandwich Podcast, various community radio stations, and more. And of course, we’re grateful to our readers, who have shared our work with others, emailed us with ideas and questions, and sent us words of encouragement.
However, sustaining volunteer projects on top of our day jobs and community work is challenging—and we’ve learned that it’s natural for projects to come to a close. While we both continue to be committed to amplifying stories from communities of colour and addressing social justice issues, we no longer have capacity to update Intersectional Analyst with the care, thoughtfulness, and time investment that this kind of work needs. We do hope this site has highlighted the ways data can be used as a tool by communities of colour to illustrate the scope of systemic inequities and push for change.
Although our little project is wrapping up, there are so many other folks doing incredible and necessary work at the intersections of data and justice, and we encourage you to follow their work. Some of these groups use data as a tool for activism; others provide a critical analysis of the discrimination and biases embedded into algorithms and data systems, more broadly. Here’s just a small sample:
Thank you so much to all of those who have supported our work over these last few years.