The Invisible Engine: Data...

The Invisible Engine: Data, Power, and the Modern Struggle for Liberation

In an era defined by widespread movements for equity—where slogans like Black Lives Matter echo through streets, courtrooms, and digital platforms—there remains a more insidious, less visible apparatus sustaining disparity in the United States. This isn’t a question of rhetoric or well-meaning reform. It is a deliberate architecture of systemic exploitation, one that thrives on ambiguity, cognitive dissonance, and the piecemeal application of justice through case-by-case loopholes. While protestors demand accountability for police killings and racial violence, and while viral videos expose “Karens” weaponizing their privilege against Black children and adults, the deeper question persists: who designed the system in which these tragedies unfold?

Beyond the glaring headlines—of officers acquitted without consequence, of banks routinely charging Black borrowers higher interest rates, of tech platforms quietly hoarding data for corporate advantage—there lies an uncomfortable truth. The machinery of injustice is not only physical but digital, not only visible but embedded within the very institutions trusted to deliver relief. From the health care system to the federal government, excessive data collection now determines access to basic human rights. People are profiled, scored, and filtered by algorithms before they ever reach a doctor, a courtroom, or a voting booth.

This is the new frontier of systemic control: the commodification of identity under the guise of service delivery. And in this datafied democracy, the American dream mutates into a digitally enforced nightmare. Activism has focused justifiably on police brutality, voter suppression, and economic inequality—but what happens when the real source of suppression is not the aftermath of injustice, but the bureaucratic systems that quietly enable and scale it?

It is time to scrutinize the foundational infrastructure of exploitation—not just its symptoms, but its source. And that means confronting the role of institutions like the health care industry and government agencies in weaponizing data, controlling access, and reinforcing inequality through what should be basic human services.

Data Mandates and the Machinery of Disposability

It is not a coincidence that the mortality rate of Black Americans remains disproportionately high, that incarceration statistics continue to reflect racial disparity, or that wealth inequality in the United States grows more entrenched with each passing decade. These outcomes are not disconnected from the bureaucratic rituals of data collection imposed by hospitals, clinics, and government-contracted agencies. Under the pretense of necessity, these institutions routinely demand intimate personal information far beyond what is required for care or crisis relief. Yet when that data is weaponized—through denial of services, targeted policing, risk-based profiling, or the mismanagement and sale of information—there is rarely accountability. The burden of exposure rests on the individual; the consequence of misuse rests with no one.

In truth, America has created a marketplace of vulnerability. Data that should be protected—records of health, income, family structure, education, mental state—is now the currency of access. You want medical treatment? Submit your identifiers. Need housing? Provide your full history. Seeking to avoid jail or reduce a sentence? Surrender your psych profile, your family details, your so-called risk score. Even as civil rights language softens the appearance of these interactions, the function remains the same: to extract and store as much as possible, often without meaningful limits or transparent purpose.

Worse still, the individuals handling this information—within healthcare, law enforcement, finance, education, and social services—are not exempt from the corruption that infects every other sector of American life. Racism, greed, implicit bias, and perverse incentives are not magically erased at the door of public institutions. Criminals, racists, and opportunists hold positions of power and influence across all sectors, yet the system continues to ask vulnerable citizens to trust these gatekeepers with some of the most personal, consequential information of their lives.

This is not trust. It is forced faith in an unaccountable system. It is mandated exposure in exchange for survival.

If a system has the power to hunt, detain, and kill based on the data it demands under the banner of care or justice, then that system has too much power. What is needed now is not another round of reform that fails to touch the core, but a radical redistribution of information control—returning ownership of personal data to the people from whom it is taken. Human beings must regain the right to decide what is shared, what is stored, and how it is used. Only then can the machinery of systemic exploitation begin to shut down.

Until that happens, no protest, no policy change, no plea for justice will be enough—because the architecture of oppression will still be intact, humming beneath the surface, converting pain into profit and exposure into power.

Crisis Capitalism and the Evolution of Data Exploitation

The roots of this data-centered regime are not recent. The mechanisms for collecting, sharing, storing, and misapplying personal information were seeded in the post-Depression New Deal era, a time heralded as a great social and economic equalizer. But the truth is more complicated. While sweeping reforms were introduced to stabilize the economy and expand public welfare, Black Americans were deliberately excluded from many of the benefits—barred from full access to housing programs, job protections, and education opportunities. The system’s selective generosity laid the foundation for what would become a recurring cycle: national crisis followed by state intervention, followed by the expansion of bureaucratic data systems, with the cost borne most heavily by Black and poor communities.

This pattern continued through the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War's aftermath. In response to urban unrest and demands for equity, new social programs were launched—but these came with intensified data surveillance. Federal agencies began requiring deeper documentation of identity, behavior, and household structure, framing poor Black communities as high-risk subjects to be managed, not supported. “Welfare reform” became a code word for scrutiny and suspicion. Assistance required compliance. Compliance required exposure.

Post-9/11, the Patriot Act era expanded this dynamic from the streets to the server farms. The federal government’s massive appetite for data exploded under the guise of national security. But the tools used to monitor potential threats abroad were quickly turned inward, especially toward marginalized populations. Predictive policing programs, racial profiling in airports and on city blocks, and expanded biometric data collection normalized the idea that privacy was conditional—something to be given up by the vulnerable in exchange for safety, even if that safety never materialized.

Then came the 2008 housing crash and the subsequent banking collapse. Again, the state moved to “stabilize” the economy—not by protecting the most exploited, but by rescuing the institutions that had created the crisis. In exchange for relief, citizens were once again required to give up more data: income statements, household demographics, credit histories, work records. And once again, Black families—already disproportionately impacted by subprime loans and predatory lending—were the first to fall, their personal information fueling an industry that profited from their dispossession.

These cycles are not coincidences. They are part of a long arc of systemic dispossession that uses data not for care, but for control. Each era of crisis extends the reach of surveillance, embeds new tools of compliance, and tightens the grip on those already struggling to survive. And while Black Americans have borne the brunt of this for generations—pushed into poverty, incarcerated under false narratives, or left to die without access to adequate care—the scope of harm has broadened. Today, all working- and middle-class Americans are feeling the psychological and financial pressure of living in a society that treats their private lives as exploitable assets.

This is not merely a civil rights issue. It is a human rights crisis.

As long as the default approach to public service is data-first, dignity-second, the nation will continue to unravel. Until we question not just what data is collected, but why it is collected, who it serves, and who it harms, the architecture of oppression will remain firmly intact—ready to be activated with each new national emergency.

Legislating Liberation: From Data Extraction to Restorative Justice

There is a rare opportunity before us—not merely to reform a broken system, but to begin dismantling the structures that have long facilitated systemic war on Black Americans and, increasingly, on working-class communities across the United States. Any honest assessment of U.S. policy toward Black communities over the past century must begin with one word: war. Not metaphorical, not rhetorical, but material. A war marked by redlining, mass incarceration, medical neglect, forced surveillance, and social abandonment. Its casualties are visible in mortality charts, incarceration rates, school closures, eviction numbers, and untreated trauma. These are not failures of assistance. These are the results of sustained, targeted policy.

To address this humanitarian crisis, a new kind of legislation is needed—one not rooted in charity, oversight, or data-driven efficiency, but in the uncompromising return of power to the individuals and families who own it. Relief programs must no longer be seen as handouts for the needy, but as reparative lifelines for people made prisoners and refugees in their own land. The starting point for any restorative vision must be simple: end the war. No policy, program, or institution has the moral authority to narrate a new future until it first reckons with the damages it has inflicted.

Central to that reckoning is the immediate and permanent limitation of data collection by institutions that claim to serve. Personal information must no longer be a prerequisite for dignity. Individuals must regain full control over when, how, and why their data is used. No more coercive forms. No more digital dossiers shared between agencies. No more silent profiling behind the scenes. Human beings are not datasets. They are not research subjects. They are not product inventories. They're not criminals under investigation for meeting hardship in life—therefore the data collected for the purpose of monitoring them rather than supporting destabilization must be reformed.

From this baseline of autonomy, we can begin to imagine a restorative model of relief that builds from the ground up. Those most severely impacted must be prioritized—not for scrutiny, but for restoration. Not as cases, but as human beings. Implementation must begin at the individual level, expanding to the community level, with full administration by residents who live—not merely work—in those same communities. Cultural proximity, lived experience, and longevity of residence must replace professional distance as the primary qualifications for service—based on data entry which really has no oversight as far as accuracy of profiles and documents created by staffers and that the public doesn't have access to review and clarify.

Even in communities marked by poverty, there are residents capable of leading—those with the wisdom, compassion, and vision to step into these roles. For those not yet qualified, systems must invest in long-term development, not short-term fixes. Every phase of implementation should allow mandatory time windows—six months to two years— for the free unfolding of recovery. No invasive reporting. No constant monitoring. Just time, space, and freedom. The system must learn to step back and allow individuals to take shape on their own terms.

The waiting wave—those next in line—can be the support network, not as passive recipients but as active learners, visiting others, building bonds, becoming friends and neighbors instead of subjects of oversight. Knowledge should be shared relationally, not commercially. There is no need for research labs, white papers, or endless metrics. If the community opens itself to you, you will learn. If not, it is your place to respect the boundary.

This is the philosophy of restorative governance: no master, no savior, no overseer—only humans with equal power. Fear of failure or disorder cannot be used to justify intrusion. Trust must replace paternalism. Freedom must replace control.

Until this principle is legislated into the very fabric of public policy—until community sovereignty replaces systemic dominance—the cycle of harm will continue, dressed up in new language, packaged in new programs, but rooted in the same old lie: that some people must be monitored, measured, and managed for the good of the whole.

They do not. We do not. No one does.

No Freedom Built on the Captivity of Others

What must finally be accepted is this: comfort in the United States has been built and maintained through the exploitation and captivity of others. And not only in the past, but in the present. A sense of security—whether national, institutional, or individual—has been found in violating the freedom of others. That is the reality. And for those who find this difficult to accept or surrender, I offer this question: if one nation can rightly be condemned for building its power by abusing another’s freedom, why should the United States be exempt from that same truth?

What was taken must be returned. What was denied must be restored. The nation cannot claim the moral high ground while its systems rely on the extraction of information, labor, and life from people it made refugees in their own land. It cannot preach liberty abroad while criminalizing autonomy at home. The freedom of West Africans in America has never existed in the true sense—because freedom without discretion over one’s own body, data, life path, and dignity is not freedom at all.

Let ambition be the full labor of the ambitious. Let service be the domain of volunteers. Let the lives of human beings return to their rightful owners. Participation in any collective vision must be voluntary, not coerced. The time has come to dismantle the illusion that centralized control produces collective good. The real collective good begins when individual sovereignty is restored.

One concrete place to begin is in the domain of mandatory data access—a quiet but violent pillar of systemic domination. In the administration of public services like healthcare, food assistance, and emergency relief—programs that overwhelmingly serve Black and poor communities—there exists a form of information extraction that is both excessive and unnecessary. Individuals seeking aid are often required to sign away broad rights to their personal information, including behavioral, psychiatric, familial, and financial data. This kind of blanket surveillance is not needed to deliver care. It is a holdover from a system built on mistrust and control.

And yes, I say this with intention: the majority of these services are funded on the premise of need among those who have been structurally dispossessed—Black Americans, particularly descendants of West Africans, along with other poor and marginalized people. These are not just statistics. These are real human beings. Prisoners of war. Refugees. Neighbors. Brothers and sisters. If these programs are truly meant to serve, then they must do so without demanding the surrender of dignity in return.

What I offer here is not a finished blueprint—it is a cornerstone. A foundational idea laid down for those with the clarity, skill, and heart to pick it up. I may not have the time or space in this moment to craft the polished essay, the sweeping narrative, the persuasive case study. But I have what I need: the truth. And I trust that somewhere, someone—a brother or sister in freedom—will carry it forward.

Because the call is not mine alone. It belongs to anyone who still believes that no person is born to be mastered by another. That no amount of fear can justify intrusion. That freedom, if it is to mean anything, must belong to everyone—or it will belong to no one at all.