Race After Technology

Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

By: Ruha Benjamin

Narrated by: Mia Ellis

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.

©2019 Ruha Benjamin (P)2021 Tantor

Will make you think

This made me think and I enjoyed it immensely, “The New Jim Crow” provides a really good scaffold for this conversation and is mentioned a couple times.

Tech isn’t inherently objective

This brilliant book helped me identify many assumptions I’ve made about the objectivity of tech and the look beyond the branding to recognize the harm that tech can do in precisely the situations where it claims to be “the solution”

Please buy and read this book

You’re here. You’re looking at it. You should buy it. Cool. Scroll up. Click buy. You’re welcome.

Incredible

The world must not become complacent simply because the oppressed look like others. Someday soon they will look like you!

Very Good

I really enjoyed this book. It was very informative and thought provoking. I would definitely recommend it.