Designs permeate the world, and the most effective designs operate seamlesslyboth present and invisible. Often, people dont think about why something is designed in a certain way. Instead, people tend to react to designs. Communities react the strongest when configurations break or fail in some capacity. Technology is built upon the codes engineers design, which embed equations that work algorithmically. These algorithms learn and adapt as they change in response to public inputs and outputs. When material designs fail, society can point to the designer, builder, or specialist, but how do you hold an algorithmic process accountable when the algorithm fails? Ruja Benjamin explores how technology reinforces racism in the book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Benjamin argues that technologys algorithmic failures point to the racial social systems and racist ideas already embedded in society, and that these failures are not strictly engineering problems. Racial bias and racial structures influence product development and the ways coded algorithms learn and move throughout the world. Benjamin explains that in technology, like most complex systems, the algorithmic medium makes it difficult to hold engineers, designers, and corporations accountable for racist products.
Benjamin presents numerous examples of technological failures built upon racist systems in their book. They cite that engineering teams were negligent in recognizing how their designs might interact in a racist world due to individual biases. Benjamin advocates examining these technological failures so we can start to understand how systemic racism operates in various coded systems and attempt to correct them. Benjamins book is essential reading for technical communicators because communicators can further develop perceptions in recognizing racist associations in coded systems, like language, and make corrections for these associations in their work. Addressing racism involves acknowledging that it exists and that it presents itself in nuanced varieties in practice. Technical communicators make judgements on language to include or exclude in various mediums, which offers an opportunity for genuinely contemplating the origins of our coded language and the racial contexts from which its derived.
Ruha Benjamin pulls back the technological curtain to expose the racialized realities behind technology and assists the community in realizing their existence. Benjamin recommends companies implement auditing systems that examine products; checking for biased and potentially racist coded technologies. Beyond contemplation, the technical communicator can also use this concept of auditing to closely examine coded forms of bias and racism in language. A technical communicator that understands the historical socioracial context and its current situated embodiment contains a powerful tool for reimagining a different future for encoded language as it applies to technical communication.
Resources
Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, by Dr. Ruja Benjamin
Viewpoint Written byLaura Soran, Texas State University
Edited byGrace Larner, Texas State University