Wikipedia and the Outsider Within: Black Feminism and Social Inequality in Knowledge Sharing

Abstract

This paper examines the politics of knowledge on Wikipedia through a Black feminist lens, with particular attention to Patricia Hill Collins’s concept of Black women as “the outsider within” in intellectual spaces. We present an assignment in which a class of predominantly Black, female undergraduate students were tasked with analyzing and then improving content on Wikipedia. Wikipedia strives to be unbiased through a transparent writing and editing process that draws on reliable, published sources. These protocols regularly help catch and fix hoaxes and content vandalism. Nonetheless, we build on existing scholarship to show that Wikipedia has other kinds of biases that result in racist and sexist knowledge gaps, euphemisms, stereotypes, and misrepresentation. These problems are a result of (1) the personal experiences and opinions of Wikipedia editors, who are predominantly white and male; (2) the requirement for subjects to be deemed “noteworthy” through citing multiple sources that meet Wikipedia’s standards of reliability; and (3) gatekeeping practices by the existing editors. As a result, we argue that Wikipedia can not only extend but also exacerbate pro–white male biases present in the source materials that Wikipedia draws on. We note the potential for more diverse editors to improve Wikipedia content, but we also offer cautionary observations on this strategy. Last, we suggest that college instructors can teach students to better understand racialized and gendered knowledge processes through assignments to contribute to Wikipedia that are paired with supportive readings.