The AntiBlack Box and Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

• In Event: The Master’s Tools: Innovation, Interruption, and Regeneration as Technologies of Whiteness

Abstract

“Black box” is a metaphor commonly used in STS to describe how the social production of science and technology is hidden from view. From everyday apps to complex algorithms, what I term the antiblack box links race-neutral technologies that hide, speed, and even deepen social inequity to race-neutral legal codes that serve as powerful tools for white supremacy. As such, I consider how race itself is a kind of tool designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice, but not without eliciting many forms of resistance that rethink justice and retool solidarity. These forms of tech-mediated resistance are what I think of as abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code (which is a shorthand for the way that automated systems can encode inequity while appearing better and even benevolent when compared to racisms of a previous era). Ultimately this paper asks, what do abolitionist tools entail? And (how) can STS contribute to an emancipatory approach to science, technology, and knowledge production more broadly?

Author

• Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University