Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

Benjamin describes the significance of naming. She offers an anecdote about the racial profiling her son will experience in the post-9/11 US because of his Arabic name. Names influence the way we interact with the government technologies that are designed to monitor us. She aims to demonstrate how such technologies are often agents of perpetuating racism in the name of public safety.

Technologies designed to filter job applicants have been shown to reinforce anti-Black bias. This constitutes part of the “New Jim Code,” the use of new technologies that are perceived as unbiased and objective but reproduce, reinforce, and speed up the inequities that exist in biased human society. Even if the technology is framed as colorblind or designed to celebrate racial difference, its supposed optimization is always infiltrated by the biases that have existed for centuries.

Human bias impacts technology’s quick fixes. Facebook’s original motto “Move Fast and Break Things” does not account for the people broken in the name of progress. “Data sharing,” for example, allows smoother access to services for some but also divulges information that can unfairly block individuals from bank loans. Thus, users have been collectively calling for more regulation of private tech companies.