We imagine the Critical Race Quantum Computer being used by people with no or developing critical frameworks as a tool to support the understanding of a non-binary, complex existence that actively works to see the ways in which power and privilege work to the benefit of some and the detriment of others. For those working in tech, this may be a valuable entrypoint into conversations around how tech and anti-racism must intersect. For those inside tech making things, this is a tool meant to support them in their making and life more generally so as to maintain a level of criticality necessary to live and advance liberatory-- as opposed to oppressive-- contributions to our planet.

Scholarship on the decolonization and development of socially just technology points towards the important need for those creating our technology to develop anti-racist critical frameworks. Cathy O’Neil’s 2016 Weapons of Math Destruction claims that “Big Data processes codify the past. They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that’s something only humans can provide. We have to explicitly embed better values into our algorithms, creating Big Data models that follow our ethical lead. Sometimes that will mean putting fairness ahead of profit” (p. 204). Some have called this digital justice or coded equity (Benjamin, 2019; Noble, 2018). Regardless of the name, a clear need exists for tools designed to support the development of technologies that contribute to a more equitable, liberated planet for all people. This tool helps fill that need by supporting the development of the mindsets necessary to code for equity and justice.

To further unpack how the CRQC functions, we understand that a computer needs code. One thing we can provide is the identification of that code; i.e. critical race theory and its accompanying body of work. The code to the CRQC is the knowledge established to-date that promotes and supports the end goal of collective liberation--written by people like Sojourner Truth, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Kimberle Crenshaw, and others.

While we as authors each hold nuanced perspectives on the specifics of the shared, collective end-goal we have stated, we hope this concept gets taken up as a form of technology, equitably coded, as one contribution to the movement towards digital justice. We now turn to our own positionality and its possible influence upon this tool to better understand how our own approach to justice and liberation might influence this contribution.