The day I discovered the metaverse and how it brought me here

Obirin Odara shares her personal experience of meeting the digital world as a black woman in today's society.

TECHNOLOGY

PEOPLE

12 MINS READ

DATE

JUNE 28, 2023

AUTHOR

Obirin Odara

Obirin Odara, has experience as a project coordinator in the third sector and in public administration, and as a researcher. She is the creator of the course “Coloniality and Whiteness”, as well as the autonomous project "ORÍentação Afetiva" and the study group "Djeuti - a critical decolonial discussion about technologies, blockchain and metaverse for black and indigenous people".

This text has the intention of providing some information about the path I took to discover more about the digital worldand to serve as an antidote to that which I could not yet find. I realised I was facing so many technological innovations that were emerging and impacting our lives that were not only restricted to science fiction. This is a sharing of part of my story, as a black person, a cis woman, 28-years-old, from the diaspora. I am the daughter of an upholsterer father with a high school education and a homemaker mother with an elementary school education, born in Brazil. I will speak, above all, for black people; who, just like me, thought or still think that technology is something in which we cannot intervene and build beyond what already presides.

My name is Obirin Odara, but this is not my registered name. It is part of the process of re-signifying my place in a racist country with a strong African presence that exists in the phenotype, in the culture, in the past, and, given our resistance to the colonial process, of dispute in the present and construction of the future. As Lélia Gonzales teaches us, "blacks have to have a name and a surname, otherwise the whites will come up with a nickname... to their liking". That is why I am Obirin Odara, a Yoruba name that evokes my femininity and my strength beyond the subjection they forge over black people and, above all, over black women.

A quick search on Google is enough to have some dimensions of the data that is held upon black women in this country. As an effect of this structure, I was also held to this simplistic view by believing for so long that certain places were mine and others would not be. Lélia Gonzales also teaches us about this, that there are places socially demarcated for black women in colonised societies like Brazil, namely: the "mulata" - object of objectification; the Black Mother - the place of permanent care for the Other through self-effacement; and/or the Doméstica - the one who would be "almost of the family", but who only serves to serve and never sits at the table. Certainly, as these are the places that destine and condition us, the areas of technology also appear and become fixed in our imagination as distant and inaccessible places.

Despite all the racism, I went on to higher education and achieved my master's degree. At the age of 25, I already had my bachelor's degree in Social Work and a master's degree in Social Policies from the University of Brasilia. This place is the exception, when considering the situation of the black Brazilian population, which was only possible through the conquests of the black movement. Also because of the black movement, my education was not de-racialised. In ...