29 pages • 58 minutes read
Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code
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IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary: “Introduction”
Benjamin describes the significance of naming. She offers an anecdote about the racial profiling her son will experience in the post-9/11 US because of his Arabic name. Names influence the way we interact with the government technologies that are designed to monitor us. She aims to demonstrate how such technologies are often agents of perpetuating racism in the name of public safety.
Technologies designed to filter job applicants have been shown to reinforce anti-Black bias. This constitutes part of the “New Jim Code,” the use of new technologies that are perceived as unbiased and objective but reproduce, reinforce, and speed up the inequities that exist in biased human society. Even if the technology is framed as colorblind or designed to celebrate racial difference, its supposed optimization is always infiltrated by the biases that have existed for centuries.
Human bias impacts technology’s quick fixes. Facebook’s original motto “Move Fast and Break Things” does not account for the people broken in the name of progress. “Data sharing,” for example, allows smoother access to services for some but also divulges information that can unfairly block individuals from bank loans. Thus, users have been collectively calling for more regulation of private tech companies.
Race is a tool for arranging social injustice. Multiculturalism has led to algorithms that target viewers from marginalized groups with content, as well as a tendency to present aesthetic diversity where practical change should be implemented instead. Marketing promotes products that target consumers—such as a pink pen for women. But such tailoring can also be weaponized by law enforcement to target racialized people.
Social media algorithms reward engagement. White supremacy has both run rampant and faced public condemnation, as with the popular 2018 hashtag #CancelRoseanne after Roseanne Barr’s racist Twitter messages. Hypervisibility for beloved Black celebrities tokenize these individuals as signs of progress, and can blind people to the reality of Black oppression. As data and tech manipulate the public, they raise questions of identity, sovereignty, and rights. Race After Technology aims to uncover the anti-Black racism encoded into technologies that purport to be race neutral. If race is a technology for injustice, Benjamin flags the human toll of unchecked technological advancement.
Introduction Analysis
Benjamin’s introduction lays out the context and argument for Race After Technology. She asks us to consider how racial stratifications as old as society itself manifest in the new technologies of the modern age. We have paid so much attention to the more blatant forms of racism that we have overlooked how technologies we regard as neutral can perpetuate inequality in more subtle ways. The danger, Benjamin argues, is that this inequality goes unchecked because we believe technology is impartial.
Benjamin addresses contemporary readers. First, she articulates the subject’s relevance during 2019, the time of publication. She draws on contemporary events, such as the call for Facebook in 2018 to be held accountable for harm on its platform, and the increasing invasion of privacy allowed by smartphones and other devices. While the book is relevant to current times, it also speaks to issues that transcend them. The “New Jim Code” evokes Michelle Alexander’s 2012 book The New Jim Crow, about how the US carceral system has reinvented a racial hierarchy like that in the Jim Crow era. The “old” Jim Crow refers to the system of laws—named after a racially stereotyped minstrel character—in the American South between the 1890s and the 1950s. These laws legalized racial segregation and discrimination. Institutionalized inequality and surveillance are as relevant in 2019 as they were centuries ago.
Though a professor at Princeton University, Benjamin departs from the standard tone and style of an academic book. Instead of complex jargon and academic language, Benjamin has a more informal tone, using exclamation points and drawing on popular culture, such as Netflix and hashtags. With a conversational style, she invites readers from any educational background to think with her: “So let’s get to work” (2). In prioritizing accessibility, Benjamin writes in the spirit of Race After Technology’s argument for equity.
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