{"id":6536,"date":"2019-10-20T12:25:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T16:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/?p=6536"},"modified":"2019-10-21T02:05:46","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T06:05:46","slug":"race-after-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/2019\/10\/20\/race-after-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Race After Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRemember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the worlds you cannot live within\u201d <\/em><\/p>RUHA BENJAMIN<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruha Benjamin, an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founder of the JUST DATA Lab, author of two books – People\u2019s Science and Race after Technology, gave an eye-opening talk on the racist practices of technology. She began by giving a trailer of her latest book Race after Technology, moving on to provide some real-life examples of how racism in technology is exercised. She finally talks about the \u2018New Jim Code\u2019, also mentioning the various approaches undertaken in order to counter it. I was also able to identify correlations with the various readings done for the class, addressing it where relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRAILER OF THE BOOK \u201cRace after Technology<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Ruha Benjamin gives a brief of her book Race\nafter Technology, she brought forth her three provocations. The provocations,\nas she puts it, are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Racism is productive or is it?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She states that racism is productive, not in the\nsense of being good, but in the literal capacity of racism to produce things of\nvalue to some, even as it creates havoc on others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Social inputs make some inventions appear inevitable.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Ruha Benjamin, when we think about how\nracist technology shapes us, we tend to limit this thinking to the social and\nethical impacts of technology, but we fail to remember, how all this existed\nprior to the birth of technology. So, it\u2019s not just the impact of technology,\nbut the social inputs that make some inventions appear inevitable and\ndesirable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 People are forced to live in someone else\u2019s imagination.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Benjamin declares, imagination is not the\nafterthought where we have the luxury to dismiss or fantasize, but it is a\nresource, a battleground that involves the input and output of tech and social\norder. In fact, she states that most of the people are forced to live inside\nsomeone else\u2019s imagination. In other words, racism among other axes of\ndominance helps produce this fragmented imagination, misery for some and\nmonopoly for others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EXAMPLES OF RACIST TECHNOLOGY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Citizen app<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruha\nBenjamin continues to talk about the real-life practices of racism in\ntechnology. She gives an example of a relatively new application called\nCitizen. This app sends real-time crime alerts based on a curated selection of\n911 calls. It also offers a way to report, live-stream and comment on a\nreported crime act. It shows incidents as red dots on a map so you could avoid\nsupposedly dangerous neighborhoods. According to Ruha Benjamin, the Citizen app\ngave people the privilege to avoid crimes, rather than stopping it. Likewise, Citizen\nand other tech fixes for social problems are not simply about technology’s\nimpact on societies, but also about how racial norms and values shape what\ntools are imagined necessary in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Racist Robots<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further, Benjamin talks about Racist Robots another apt example of how racism works in technology. There were a series of waves that seemed shocked at the idea of how artifacts can have politics. In contrast, some declared, technology inherits its creator\u2019s biases. According to Benjamin, one of the challenges we now face is how to meaningfully differentiate technologies that are used to differentiate us. This coded bias and imagined objectivity is what she termed the \u2018New Jim Code\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE NEW JIM CODE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michelle Alexander’s analysis of the New Jim Code\nconsiders how the reproduction of racist forms of social controls and\nsuccessive institutional forms entails a crucial sociotechnical component, that\nnot only hides the nature of domination but allows it to penetrate every facet\nof social life under the guides of progress. Benjamin provides an example of a\ntargeted ad from the mid-20th century, which entices white families to purchase\na home in the particular neighborhood of Los Angeles. Developers were trying to\ndo this by promising them beneficial restrictions, that restricted someone from\nselling their property to Black people or other unwanted groups. Followed by\nthe rise of the Black Power movement, Fair housing act of 1968, that thought to\nprotect people from housing discrimination when renting or buying a home. She\nstates the four conceptual offspring of the \u2018New Jim Code’, around which the\nchapters are organized. The offsprings of the New Jim Code, as she declares\nare: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Engineered inequity<\/li>
  • Default discrimination<\/li>
  • Coded exposure<\/li>
  • Techno benevolence<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    There have been some strong restrictions on the New\nJim Code. One of the most heartening revelations is that tech industry insiders\nhave recently been speaking out about the most outrageous forms of corporate collusion\nthat involves racism and militarism. She elaborates by citing an example where\nthousands of Google employees condemn the company\u2019s collaborations on a\npentagon program that uses Artificial Intelligence to make drone strikes more\neffective. This kind of informed refusal is certainly necessary as we build a\nmovement to counter the New Jim Code. However, according to Benjamin, we can\u2019t\nwait for the workers\u2019 sympathy to sway the industry. Initiatives like Data for\nBlack Lives and the Detroit Community Technology Project offer a more\nfar-reaching approach, the former brings together people working in a number of\nagencies and organizations in a proactive approach to tech justice, especially\nat the policy level. One of the concrete collaborations that has grown out of\nData for Black Lives was last year when several government agencies, including\nthe police department and public support system, formed a controversial joint\npower agreement called Innovation Project, giving agencies broad discretions to\ncollect and share data on young people with the goal of developing predictive\ntools to identify drug use in the city. There was an immediate and broad-based\nbacklash from the community with the support of Data for Black Lives. In 2017,\na group of over 20 localizations formed what they called \u201cStop the cradle to\nprison algorithm\u201d. This coalition asks for a better process moving forward, and\nstructural input into advancing upstream interventions. In “Finding\nAugusta” Heidi talks about how people are getting accustomed to Google\nwhich in return of their free service, stores your data and history in order to\ntrack users’ preferences and interests to get targeted ads, as the one\nmentioned previously by Benjamin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    CONCLUSION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    She concludes by talking about Harvard Professor\nDerick’s radical assessment of reality through creative methods and racial\nreversals insisting \u201cTo see things as they really are…\u2026you must imagine them\nas what they might be\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    All in all, the talk was a great one with enlightening thoughts about technology\u2019s racist side, something I had usually overlooked. Her thoughts were strong and to the point with solid examples to back them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cRemember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the worlds you cannot live within\u201d RUHA BENJAMIN Ruha Benjamin, an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founder of the JUST DATA Lab, author of two books – People\u2019s Science and Race after Technology, gave an eye-opening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":688,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,245,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event-reviews","category-sula","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/688"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6536"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6559,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions\/6559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}