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.