Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

Race After Technology explores the challenges of being seen that Black people face in contemporary American society. The politics of visuality involves both an experience of being overlooked and of being excessively looked at. This ignorance and targeting couple in ways that infringe on the inclusion, privacy, and safety of Black people.

A history of white supremacy has led to the development of technology that leaves Black individuals unseen. Benjamin offers the example of a webcam user remarking: “I think my Blackness is interfering with the computer’s ability to follow me” (97). Likewise, the TV sitcom Better Off Ted explores the issue of a “new state of the art system” installed at a workplace (97). The system was comprised of automated devices, all of which did not work for Black employees because the technology could not recognize darker skin. Such technologies, Benjamin explains, are too often created by white designers with white users in mind. They exclude populations that have already been historically excluded from other public activities. It is in cases like these where excluded communities push to be seen.

However, technology does not always render these communities invisible. In the realm of surveillance, Black bodies are made hypervisible. For example, Polaroid has faced criticism for its partnership with apartheid South Africa when it provided a flash “boost button” to enhance photos for passbooks.