The readings both deal with the denial of how frontstage and backstage racism work together projecting micro-aggressions. Eubanks, “The Digital Poorhouse” is an interesting piece about automated inequality because this reading aims to highlight how oppression is now digital through digital decision-making systems opposed to human discretion.
The main question the article begins to raise is “so can technology really be racist?” Technology can be engineered racist by engineers who are predominately white. To emphasize, behind the racist code of analytics and algorithms are white engineers. People in the United States have been bamboozled for what is known as artificial intelligence but in actuality racist artificial intelligence may just be an extension of whiteness, maybe if artificial intelligence was called artificial-whiteness then there would have been insinuation for “products by white men catered to white men” in the consciousness of so many Americans who are vulnerable to digital oppression which includes the so-called middle class.
Concerns over digital surveillance, hate speech detection basis, and voice recognition as well as facial recognition have led many conversations around techno-racism. Remember when everybody started saying “go online” for every little thing? Imagine being a member of any marginalized group, asking for job applications and instead of briefly conversing they [insert racist and or sexist oppressor here] just tells you “yeah, go online” is simultaneously coded language that can be used as a blow-off line for discriminatory practices. Arguably, this sort of language is a modernization of the old haunting signs spurring from the segregation era.
Speaking of old haunting history, the next reading is “We Still Haven’t Learned From Anita Hill’s Testimony” by Crenshaw whose piece deals with colorblind feminism. Does history repeat itself or is it just a cycle? What’s interesting about the internet as a resource for groups like the feminist movement, how well was the internet utilized to learn from women like an Anita Hill? Colorblind feminism has shown its own self-destructive path.
You Are What You Post 