Type: E-book

Language: English

Suitable for: Amazon Kindle Fire®, Apple iOS-toestellen en macOS-computers.

Synopsis: 100 years in the future, the U.S.A. has become the divided states of America and all of the citizens have been grouped in racial colonies. This story takes place in the black colony, known as New Jungle City (formerly New York City). Not long after the very first afrocentric A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) mechanism was created named A.B. (Artificial Blackcellence).

Concept: Usually when futuristic stories deal with concepts such as war, division and injustice there is a very strong tribal or ideological aspect linked to it, but not so much a focus on the racial aspect of the division (at least that's my perspective of it).

This inspired me to create a fictional futuristic storyline that delves deeper into the racial tensions (black focus) of the U.S.A. , it was important for me to set the story in the future because it served as the ideal opportunity to bring together the past, present and 'future' interpretations of The Black Experience in one interrelated platform.  

Premise: Since A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is always a big theme in the future I based my futuristic story on the current problems that we are facing with the development of A.I. technology, the racial bias, systemic racism and marginalization of minority communities (see videos below).

The idea was to create a world where these A.I. problems grew so large that there was a need to create and develop an A.I. mechanism that would work solely for the black community.

Crackface definition: Crackface doesn't have a direct definition, it serves more as an umbrella term for all of the different situations in which an element of blackness (speech, music, culture, dance, stories) receives more praise and celebration when someone from a non-black ethnicity appropriates it rather than the black person who originally created the content.

One (of many) example for this appropriation is the 'black girl persona', many non-black content creators have received many success when they adopt this persona because society often perceives them as edgy, unique and desirable. Whereas a black woman who is simply being herself and speaking/behaving in the way she was raised is often viewed by society as less desirable/unique and will not receive the same level of praise that a non-black person would get for displaying the same behavior.

This definition serves more as a greater narrative, it's not explicitly mentioned in the E-book but is rather discussed as a greater concept as the storyline progresses.

Video references:

- Artificial intelligence can be biased against certain people. Here's how.

- How AI Preserves Systemic Racism

- How To Stop Artificial Intelligence From Marginalizing Communities? | Timnit Gebru | TEDxCollegePark

- Is AI racially biased?

- Is AI Racist? - Why Machine Learning Algorithms Are Biased Towards Black People

- Racial bias found in health care company algorithm

- Racial Disparities in Healthcare are Pervasive

- The danger of AI is weirder than you think | Janelle Shane

-  We're Training Machines to be Racist. The Fight Against Bias is On