What a Time to Think about Race and Tech
Call an inflection point, a paradigm shift, or just interesting times, but we are living through something extraordinary
The cataclysm of events in 2020 — a the spread of a global pandemic and the dangerous conspiracies about it, the gruesome suffering and death of George Floyd recorded on cell phone video, an unprecedented election cycle, and the rise of a militant and a mainstream far-right adept at using technology — has meant that for many of us, it is a year that will be remembered as our annus horribilis.
Call an inflection point, a paradigm shift, or just interesting times, but we are living through something extraordinary in the confluence of race and technology. All of this prompted one critic to mark 2020 as the year when tech companies have embraced their role as gatekeepers.
As 2021 began, and a violent mob of far-right militia, conspiracy theorists and white supremacists stormed the Capitol building (after organizing online and quite publicly), it began to dawn on many of us that perhaps 2020 wasn’t exceptional but rather another point in a much longer history of how race and digital media technologies have worked together in insidious, and often unintentional, ways. Seeing these connections between race and tech is work lead by Black feminists, people of color, queer people, and those who stand outside the centers of power and, as a result, have a particular “angle of vision” on those systems.
I’m launching this newsletter to begin an exploration of race and technology, and to continue what is for me a much longer investigation into the ways these areas overlap.
If we haven’t met, let me tell you a little about my work in this area.
I’m an internationally recognized expert on Internet manifestations of racism, and in that capacity I’ve presented my work to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (April 2019). For going on 30 years, I’ve studied race and racism in various forms of media. My first book, White Lies (1997), I examined far-right groups' printed newsletters. I followed that with a second book, Cyber Racism (2009), which looked at some of the same groups and how they had, or hadn't, moved onto the popular Internet. In that research, I included interviews with young people (ages 15-19) about how they navigate what she calls "cloaked sites," an early form of online propaganda. That book (which maybe should have been three different books, but that’s another story), also considered the meaning of a globally networked white supremacist movement.
In 2017, I wrote about the problem Twitter had with white supremacy and a certain high-profile user. In 2018, I described the way that the far-right takes advantage of any advance in tech and media to further their cause, referring to them as “innovation opportunists.” And, in 2019, I pointed out how a ‘colorblind’ approach to AI reproduces racism.
I’m now working on a book that’s (tentatively) called: Tweet Storm:The Rise of the Far Right, the Mainstreaming of White Supremacy, and How Tech and Media Helped.
When I was a Faculty Fellow at Data & Society (2018-2019), I wrote (along with collaborators Mutale Nkonde and Darakhshan Mir), a report suggesting a new approach to addressing a set of persistent problems in tech, called Advancing Racial Literacy in Tech. I continued this as a Faculty Affiliate at the Harvard Berklman Klein Center (2019-2020), and will do so as a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute (2020-present).
So, all that to say, I’m starting this newsletter to work on these ideas. I’m really creating this space for people who are already smart about technology (much smarter than me, no doubt) and want to get smarter about race. This newsletter will include:
analysis and reviews of existing research on race and technology, in other words, whatever I’m reading;
reporting and interviews with people, both in the tech industry and academia;
personal stories, from me and other people.
I plan to do this 2-4 times monthly (depending on my schedule and stamina) with several goals in mind:
develop a curriculum on Racial Literacy in Tech that can be used in computer science programs and in the tech industry;
work on a draft of my next book, about race and tech; and,
develop a community of people interested in this set of ideas.
This newsletter will be my scratch pad where I work out new ideas, think through things, and share that all with you as I do it.
Thanks for joining me here!