Racial Cap Link Supplement - Michigan 2024 KLAB

Racial Cap Link Supplement---K Lab 2024
Notes
Big file for “racial capitalism” links to basically every aff in the Michigan Dropbox that isn’t covered in the Moten or Pessimism files. Also will work for the Capitalism K that will be put out in our lab’s Wave 2 as well.
Thanks to K Lab Leaders Sydney Pasquinelli, Marquis Ard, and Joshua Harrington.
Card Cutters: Davis Liang, Max Wong, Paloma Oh, Meryem Anderoglu
Organized by Max (again) (again)
Links---1NC
Link---African Instability---1NC
The aff has it wrong---it is decoloniality that is the key internal link to African state stability, not “sustainable development”---that is a veil for continued extractivism and military presence in African nations that undermines sovereignty and decks solvency.
---also AT: terrorism/religious extremism!
Agbanyim and Chikwendu ’23 [Chimezie Stella Agbanyim, Department of History and International Studies Nnamdi Azikiwe University, and Chinyere Phillis Chikwendu, Department of History and International Studies Nnamdi Azikiwe University. “NEO-COLONIALISM AS A FACTOR IN AFRICA’S STATE COLLAPSE SINCE INDEPENDENCE”, 2023, accessed Jul. 24.]//max
Political Instability: Neo-colonialism has also contributed to political instability in many African countries, which in turn has led to state collapse. Many African governments have been propped up by foreign powers that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo – dominance and exploitation. This has led to corrupt and authoritarian regimes that are more concerned with preserving their own power than with serving the needs of their citizens. In Somalia, for example, foreign intervention has contributed to a fragmented and unstable political landscape. The country has been embroiled in civil war for decades, and foreign powers have often supported rival factions in an attempt to maintain influence in the region.30 This has led to a lack of effective governance and a breakdown of institutions. Western powers have often supported authoritarian regimes in Africa, as long as these regimes are willing to cooperate with their economic interests. This has led to the suppression of democratic movements and the stifling of dissent. The result has been a lack of accountability and transparency in governance, which has contributed to the erosion of state institutions and the breakdown of the rule of law. Perhaps, a good example can be seen in France’s continuous influence on Africa. France has maintained its influence in its former African colonies, even long after they gained independence. This continued influence has been facilitated by several factors, including the maintenance of military bases, economic ties, and cultural influence. France’s military bases in Africa have been used to intervene in political conflicts in African countries, often at the behest of French-friendly governments. This has undermined the sovereignty of African states and contributed to political instability. Cohen31 argued that France’s political approach towards Africa has remained stuck in a pattern heavy on military action in countries like Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, and Mali, with little recourse for new foreign policy tools. The approach employed by France has ignored ongoing political and social dynamics in the Sahel, amongst other areas in Africa. It has also kept France from doing enough to discourage the militaries of countries like Chad and Mali from overthrowing their leaders in coups. In a nutshell, France’s political influence on African states has been criticized for promoting a colonial worldview of political domination and for contributing to ethnic conflicts and social unrest which is antithetical to nation-building in Africa. Another example can be seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The exploitation of mineral resources by foreign countries like China amongst others, in this country, has contributed to a cycle of political conflict and instability. The DRC is home to some of the world's richest deposits of minerals, including cobalt, copper, and coltan, which are used in the manufacture of electronic devices. The extraction of these minerals has often been carried out by armed groups, who use the proceeds to fund their activities. The involvement of foreign companies in the exploitation of mineral resources has further marginalized local communities and perpetuated the cycle of violence. China’s Sicomines deal secured with DRC is at the forefront of China’s big indirect role in the continued resource curse mineral-driven conflict in the DRC’s Eastern region driven by mineral resource wealth.32 All these have unarguably contributed immensely to Africa’s state collapse. The constant pressure from the West on the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to maintain a colonial geo-political set up that asserted boundary to new states, some of which cut across pre-existing ethnic group states and kingdoms, has also resulted in political instability and constant inter-boundary dispute in Africa. Moreover, some of the states that emerged were different in sizes with unequal natural resources and economic potentialities. For instance, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia are very rich in natural resources like gold, crude oil, coal etcetera; while Chad and Niger are not so fortunate. Also, Nigeria and Sudan tends to be larger than Gambia and Togo. Thus, the maintenance of these uneven boundary structures by African states, even at its peril, has further reinstalled the neo-colonial grip of the West on Africa, which will remain a cog in the wheel for an even successful nation-building to take place in the continent. Social and cultural Fragmentation/Marginalization and identity Crisis: Neo-colonialism has led to socio-cultural fragmentations and identity crisis in Africa. The imposition of western values, languages, and education systems has eroded local traditions and indigenous knowledge. This socio-cultural dominance has created a sense of alienation and disconnection amongst African populations, exacerbating social divisions and weakening social cohesion. Certainly, neo-colonialism has also contributed to social marginalization in many African countries, particularly for marginalized groups or communities such as ethnic minorities, etcetera. Foreign powers have often influenced and supported governments that discriminate against certain groups, perpetuating inequalities and exacerbating social tensions. More often than not, the leaders of such governments in Africa are enticed by material gains from foreign influences, at the peril of the citizens or group. Good examples can be drawn from Zimbabwe and South Africa. In Zimbabwe, the discrimination against the country's white minority, as well as the Ndebele ethnic group has fueled social unrest and undermined the legitimacy of the government.33 In South Africa, the legacy of apartheid has contributed to ongoing inequality and poverty, fueling social unrest and undermining the country's stability.34 Neo-colonialism has perpetuated social inequality in Africa, by entrenching the power of elites who benefit from the economic and political structures created by neo-colonialism. The neo-colonial model of development has favoured the interests of multinational corporations and foreign investors over the needs of local communities. This has resulted in the displacement of people from their lands and the destruction of the environment. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few has also led to a widening social gap between the rich and poor, exacerbating social tensions and fueling conflicts. Under such auspices, no meaningful development can take place in Africa. There have been several social upheavals and evictions as a result of the colonial geopolitical structure that imposed boundaries to new governments, some of which straddle pre-existing ethnic group states and kingdoms. For example, the Bakongo group is split into the borders of Angola, the Belgian Congo, and the French Congo35 amongst others. Today, some Ewe people reside in Ghana, others in Togo, and also in Benin.36 The Somali group is shared among Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Djibouti amidst the other countries that speak the language.37 One significant result of this has been the ongoing boundary conflicts that have hampered social relations between some of these independent African states, including Ghana and Togo, Somalia and Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda, and Nigeria and Cameroon, among others. Thus, each African nation-state is created by the arbitrariness of these borders. The nature of these boundaries further divides African nation-states made up of people or groups with diverse cultures, traditions, origin and languages. This in itself remains antithetical to the success of nation-building in Africa. The fueling of the religious crisis in Africa by the West has been another neo-colonial tool that has led to state collapse in the continent. Countries like Burkina Faso, Cameron, Mozambique, Chad, Nigeria, DR Congo, Mali, and Libya, have been recorded as African countries with extreme violations of religious freedom caused by Islamic extremism.38 Religion in Africa has been politicized and used by the elites and the West to mobilize support for certain government which is believed would serve the interest of these former colonial powers that be. Religious rivalry culminated in most civil wars in the African continent and the result was quite devastating. More often than not, these conflicts lead to displacement and migration of individuals from Africa which brings about brain drain; the looting and destruction of life, properties/infrastructures which in turn lead to economic down turn; as well as mutual mistrust and suspicion amongst ethnic groups within the diverse nation-states. All these negate the nation-building process.
Link---AI Development---1NC
All their AI development scenarios rely on exploitation of racial minorities for innovation---algorithmic governance and logistics turn bodies into commodities for profit---reinforcing a self-perpetuating cycle of racialization that encodes itself into AI.
Vargas ’24 [Nelson A. Colón Vargas, Lecturer (School of International and Public Affairs) at Columbia University. “Exploiting the Margin: How Capitalism Fuels AI at the Expense of Minoritized Groups”, May 2024, accessed Jul. 25]//max
Labor Tax: How Underpaying Minority Workers Fuels AI Development In their investigative piece The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence, Williams, Miceli, and Gebru [WMG22] expose the harsh realities faced by gig workers in the AI industry, who are disproportionately drawn from vulnerable populations. Big tech players in the AI industry such as Amazon and Facebook heavily rely on these laborers, including data labelers, content moderators, and delivery drivers. These workers, despite their indispensable contributions, often endure abysmal pay, constant surveillance, unrealistic quotas, and even safety hazards. Further details from the investigation reveal that data labelers, responsible for critical AI training data, can earn as little as $1.77 per task. In the troubling case of content moderators in Kenya, they are relentlessly monitored to make split-second decisions, even when confronted with disturbing content. These workers, whose labor sustains billion-dollar companies, are unjustly compensated. Izaguirre [I23] discussed a very recent example of labor exploitation within the gig economy 3 from the ridesharing giants, Uber and Lyft. In New York, these companies are set to pay a staggering $328 million to settle complaints that they wrongly imposed taxes and fees on their drivers that should have been covered by passengers. State Attorney General Letitia James unveiled this settlement, emphasizing how Uber and Lyft—which incorporate AI technologies for routing and pricing algorithms—had systematically deprived their drivers of millions of dollars in earnings and essential benefits. The drivers, akin to those engaged in data labeling for AI models, toiled for long hours in challenging conditions while being undercompensated. The repercussions of such labor exploitation have wide-ranging implications, demonstrating the persistence of these issues across different sectors of the gig economy. These drivers, often working long hours in challenging conditions, waited an arduous eight years for justice, emphasizing the enduring time burden in their battle for rights–we will explore the time dimension in the next subsection. Moreover, racial capitalism also rears its head in other ways in generative media AI applications. Startups have built systems to synthesize fake profile photos by exploiting images of minority models without consent or payment. The marginalized provide raw material—their unvalued data and likenesses—to advance technologies from which they do not benefit. An example of this is the Argentina-based design firm, Icons8, which built generative AI systems to synthesize fake profile photos by exploiting minority likenesses [H20]. Though the models’ images provided core training data, they received no payment for this labor, nor any share of the systems’ profits derived from their inputs. Once again, capitalism fueled AI development by commodifying bodies. The models’ data and likenesses became raw materials for tech advancement from which they did not equally gain. This case provides further evidence that we must scrutinize and address the human exploitation underlying much AI progress. Time Surcharge: The Burden on Minorities to Fix Biased Systems In 2019, a pivotal federal study by NIST unveiled the entrenched racial biases within facial recognition algorithms, revealing higher false positive rates for Asian, African American, and Native American faces compared to white counterparts [H19]. This disparity is not merely a technical oversight but a reflection of a broader societal issue where fairness is often assessed through a predominantly white lens, perpetuating and amplifying harmful racial stereotypes. These algorithms, failing more frequently with Black and Asian individuals, not only reinforce the misconception of homogeneity within these communities but also echo Cedric Robinson’s argument that capitalism morphs pre-existing social differences into racial disparities, using technology to further these divides. These biases extend beyond race to gender and age, with algorithms showing elevated error rates for women, the elderly, and the young compared to middle-aged white men. Simone Browne, in Dark Matters [Br15, p. 113], elucidates how these systems perpetuate stereotypes, such as misclassifying Asian males as females and Black women as men, illustrating how AI models, like capitalism, disseminates racial and gender stereotypes on a massive scale under the guise of technological neutrality. The case of Brandon Mayfield, as discussed by Browne, exemplifies how biases in AI systems can have real-world consequences. A veteran and a lawyer who had recently converted to Islam, Mayfield was erroneously matched by FBI algorithms to a fingerprint found on a bag containing a detonating device linked to the 2004 Madrid bombing [Br15, p. 115]. Despite being one of twenty matches, his recent conversion to Islam and status as a veteran, both associated with prejudicial stereotypes, led authorities to single him out. Mayfield’s personal life and beliefs were publicly exposed under a false accusation, and he remained entangled in legal battles to clear his name until November 2010. This wrongful identification underscores how minoritized groups not only bear the brunt of these biases but also face a “Privacy Levy,” paying a significant personal and financial price due to prejudiced technological systems. This systemic bias embedded within AI technologies serves capitalist ends in several ways. Firstly, it perpetuates a cycle where the burden of correcting and navigating biased systems falls disproportionately on marginalized communities, consuming their time and resources—a “Time Surcharge” that benefits the status quo by 4 maintaining existing power dynamics. Secondly, the deployment of such technologies, especially in law enforcement and surveillance, opens lucrative markets for tech companies, capitalizing on the state’s desire to monitor and control, often at the expense of those already marginalized. In essence, these biased algorithms are not just products of existing societal inequalities; they are tools that capitalism exploits to further entrench its dominance, ensuring that the costs of innovation are borne by those least able to bear them, while the profits accrue to those already in positions of power. It is important to point out that the concept of a “Time Surcharge” extends beyond the realm of AI and technological bias, reflecting a broader systemic issue that minoritized communities face across various bureaucratic and social systems. This enduring burden of time, as analyzed in the context of racialized administrative burdens by Ray, Herd, and Moynihan in Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State [RHM22], is often utilized as a means to punish and control, reinforcing poor living conditions. Similar to the ways in which biased algorithms require marginalized groups to navigate and correct flawed systems, these bureaucratic processes consume excessive amounts of time, serving as barriers that maintain social and economic inequalities. These practices are reminiscent of historical strategies designed to disenfranchise and exploit marginalized populations, perpetuating a cycle where the costs of bureaucratic inefficiency and technological innovation are disproportionately borne by those least equipped to handle them, while the systems in place continue to benefit those in power. The development and implementation of biased AI systems are stark manifestations of racial capitalism, where technological advancements are leveraged to amplify and profit from racial and social disparities. The need for a concerted effort to address these biases is not just a matter of technical accuracy but of challenging the capitalist structures that incentivize and benefit from the perpetuation of inequality.
Links---Climate Change---1NC
The 1AC’s narrative of a ‘climate crisis’, and subsequently of progress mobilizes temporality as a neoliberal means of organizing social relations and obscuring capitalism as the root cause.
Agathangelou ’21 [Anna M. Agathangelou, Lecturer at the University of Houston-Clear Lake and Director of the Global Change Institute; “On the question of time, racial capitalism, and the planetary”; Globalizations; doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2021.1906006; accessed via University of Michigan libraries, 07-28-2024] dliang
Liberalism: always too late, or capitalism’s colonial and enslaving proactivity?
In the IPCC reports, time as a linear human orientation is placed in the context of timescales of forces requiring human intervention but out of human control: climate change. The recent SRl.5 (IPCC, 2018), ‘Global Warming of 1.5°C’, representing the ‘newer instalment of the scientisation of climate change’, situates ‘the issue beyond democratic debate by declaring it a matter for the scientific expertise of the IPCC’, and inscribes it as an emergency (Garrard, 2020, p. 1). The report suggests ‘climate change is moving faster than we are’ (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018, p. v), and its urgency demands our intervention. However, the moral and ethical articulation of the climate as a linear temporal ‘urgency’ does not allow us to understand ecological shifts or even climate change in a larger trajectory, including human conquest, property relations, and competition. Rather, the report’s ‘foreshortened timeframe’ speaks to the urgent need of global concerted efforts to mitigate climate change and signals how temporary responses and procrastination are not going to do the 

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