From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even…
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Perhaps you've heard of Micro-Aggressions. They're the steady drip-drip-drip of poison which gradually wears you down. "Where are you really from?" or "I can't pronounce your name, can I call you Jo?" or "Your lot are good at running, right?" or "You're clever, for a ...". Individually, they are tiny pinpricks of discrimination. None of them large enough to be worth kicking up a fuss. Each one…
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A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. …
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For millennia, dominant societies have had the habit of believing their own people to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural, as well as cultural. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning. In the twenty-first century, we like to believe that we have moved beyond scientific…
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Philosophy of Race: An Introduction provides plainly written access to a new subfield that has been in the background of philosophy since Plato and Aristotle. Part I provides an overview of ideas of race and ethnicity in the philosophical canon, egalitarian traditions, race in biology, and race in American and Continental Philosophy. Part II addresses race as it operates in life through…
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I've got a "fun" new hobby! Step 1) Find a racist sticker. Step 2) Remove it. Decentralised sticker production is a mixed blessing. Anyone with a printer and an Internet connection can print off dozens of lo-fi propaganda hits. Of course, the crappy stickers were of crappy quality. All the stickers in my community were removed. I reported them to the police, which took the issue seriously …
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Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism. It is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today. …
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During my commute home I like to listen to podcasts. The London School of Economics has a regular lecture series which it is gracious enough to record and podcast. The lectures are consistently interesting - although of inconsistent audio quality - and offer a fascinating glimpse into the minds of its speakers. Last night, the crackly audio gave way to a familiar voice; Nelson Mandela. In this …
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One of the interesting aspects of privilege is how it lays bare our unconscious assumptions about the world. A male software developer may never consider that a user would want or need to change their name. Thus they would design a product which ignored the millions of women changing their names after marriage. It's very temping to see software as racist when, in reality, it's more likely to…
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