text by Erika Chapman
THE UNTOLD HISTORY
Technology’s power can solve marginalized communities’ problems, but it presently favors certain groups and impinges on others. How can the technology industry effectively support all communities? What are the motivations for and challenges of public interest technology? A look at the history of race and technology can help answer some of these questions.
Bruce Sinclair is a Senior Fellow at the Dibner Institute at MIT. In his collection of essays published in his work Technology and the African-American Experience Needs and Opportunities, he looks at two subjects, race and technology. Although, they shaped American history, we seldom discuss them as related subjects.
Integrating the Histories of Race and Technology is the introductory essay of Sinclair’s work. It’s words enlighten us that “there are reasons why the past we seek to reveal has been so long denied, and racial prejudice dominated all of them,” a statement that still holds immense truth in other subjects of American history. As I read, it was clear that history will repeat itself if we are not intentionally amending wrongs.
ILLICIT INVENTIVENESS
Technical competence is not related to race, but historical, societal norms showed a different narrative. Benjamin Banneker, an astronomer, and almanac maker, who corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, is rarely mentioned in history books. He is one example of how “Racism may have colored all our history, but it whitened the national narrative.” Sinclair also suggests that “Just as it took new approaches to put women back into the story of America, so we now seek the means to write blacks back into the history of American Technology.” One day, we will all recognize names like Mr. Banneker and celebrate the black inventors that emerged when inventiveness in people of color was considered illicit.
FORWARD PROGRESS
Today we have an opportunity to halt a repeat of an unacknowledged, exclusionary past. Our utilization of technology in history is different yet similar to today, from a Black family using the automobile to escape the Jim Crow south to protestors in 2020 using smartphones to record unlawful arrests during a racial pandemic. Everyone should have access and the opportunity to engaged with emerging technologies.
As Sinclair points out, “Technology may be socially constructed, but the players are not all on the same footing,” but being more involved and vocal about what technologies are deployed and how they affect different communities changes the narrative. Let us revoke the unevenly distributed benefits and consequences of past technologies, insist on an inclusive technological future, and be equitable players in an ever-changing enterprise.
Reading essays like Sinclair’s evokes feelings that quickly turn into action. Tears streamed down my face uncontrollably, a salty reminder of hundreds of years of inequalities consistently elided. COVID-19’s economic and healthcare disparities, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others, and systemic racial injustice, all reflect the need for change. This generation has whole-heartedly accepted the challenge and pressed forward with action. We all are important pieces of the puzzle.
This blog is just a glimpse of history. I desire to encourage people to look back then press forward into exploring today’s technology. Each Race and Technology blog will explore the Technology and the African-American Experience Needs and Opportunities essays and answer our own questions about race and technology. How can technology be used to better your individual life? What tool can you imagine that would help your community? I encourage you to operate, optimize, and even develop technology that advances social good.
Please use the link below to Bruce Sinclair’s Technology and the African-American Experience Needs and Opportunities for further reading. Also, tune in to Techcess Granted’s Race and Technology Blog as we explore the essays.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/technology-and-african-american-experience
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