Ruha Benjamin

More sociologists! It's almost all that I read, if you haven't noticed. This covers what should be but isn't widely known by 2021, that our systems--especially the tech platforms that mediate so much of our lives--are hiding enormous amounts of racist bias that their human creators put into them. What I like best, though, is that Benjamin provides constructive and realistic solutions to these problems so that we reject white-dominant culture as a baseline for the systems that we all use. And show more it is about time because these problems aren't new (she goes back to Polaroid, y'all. Polaroid!) show less

A phenomenally important book, for anyone who has even interacted with any technology and especially if you are involved, in some way, in the creation, design, or ideation process for any tech. This book will dispel any notion about how technology inherently represents progress of any kind, or how technology is 'neutral' - somehow, such myths have been fed to all of us, and it is important to unlearn these blind spots about the development and use of tech in our lives.

This is an excellent social justice book about systemic racism and how we can work against it in many small ways. It is easy to read, well organized, full of pieces of the author's life and statistics and data to support all of her points. This is very similar to other anti-racism books I've read, but this has a strong undercurrent of hope and optimism, which can be a bit frustrating when it isn't actually giving us concrete things to do to help. But again, it is not on Black individuals to show more tell us how to fix problems of our own creation. Also, this lady is way smarter than I am, which isn't always a feeling I get from books. show less

Content Note: (critical treatment of) racism

“Plot”:
Benjamin looks at new technologies to understand how they don’t neutralize (racial) discrimination and bias, but exacerbate them instead. Understanding race itself as a social technology, she shows how other technologies – from apps to algorithms – actually incorporate race into their own programming, creating what she calls the New Jim Code. With this analysis, she also presents ways how to recognize the contradictory mechanisms show more behind technological promises.

I’ve read a couple of books on the topic of algorithms and how they further inequality instead of reduce it, as many people would like to think (like Weapons of Math Destruction or Automating Inequality). Race After Technology works along a similar vein but with a specific focus on race and was therefore an excellent addition to my own little study project.

Read more on my blog: https://kalafudra.com/2025/08/09/race-after-technology-abolitionist-tools-for-th... show less