Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

by Ruha Benjamin Narrated by Mia Ellis

Overview

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.



Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the "New Jim Code," she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.



This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

06/14/2019

Benjamin (African American studies, Princeton Univ.; editor, Captivating Technology) has written a book that follows her previous areas of writing: how technology reinforces or breaks apart power dynamics in the United States as related to race. The author accomplishes this by exploring how demographic information is pulled together by major Internet companies and then used to target people based on, say, where they live—and by their race. In tandem with this, the author addresses the issue of facial recognition software, its failure to recognize the features of persons of color, and the reverse side, when it can be used in surveillance of persons or neighborhoods that tend to get a lot of policing. Benjamin refers to this process as modernized, coded versions of Jim Crow and draws out some of the many features of technology that have built-in personal or cultural prejudices hiding behind the supposed "objective" processing of mathematics and code. VERDICT Fascinating reading from start to finish. Benjamin's work is ideal for anyone who is unafraid to look at the historical intersections of racial injustice, technology, and where these topics inform possible solutions for the future.—Jesse A. Lambertson, Georgetown Univ. Libs.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177068336
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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