The Datafication of Racialization and the Pursuit of Equality: The Case of the “Barometer Culturele Diversiteit”

In this chapter, I show how the investigation of racialization in datafied
applications can be done through an instrumental, epistemological, and
ontological approach to datafication and that the results of each approach
do not necessarily match. By analyzing the attempted implementation
of a tool aimed at measuring the composition of personnel in terms of
migration background called Barometer Culturele Diversiteit (BCD) at
Utrecht University in the Netherlands, I show how the tool is using ideas
about race (instrumental), shaping knowledge through colonial politics
(epistemological), and producing race (ontological) simultaneously. Aided
by this analysis, I will advocate for an understanding of the use of raceethnic data for affirmative purposes in terms of strategic essentialism,
making epistemic imperfection regarding race warranted only in antiracist
data systems working toward their own obsolescence.