So yesterday we talked about race and technology and someone asked why we were focusing on that for a specific session and not any number of other issues. I like to consider these two issues as my proverbial “wheelhouse” as an academic so I thought I should probably speak up to this community about the issue. I have a tendency to think in terms of my own research being a second year PhD student so I think this is a good opportunity to try and do a better job here articulating why I think race/ethnicity and technology/new media should be addressed constantly. I have avoided addressing issues of “access” here because, as a group, I feel we have a pretty good handle on that issue. I’ve tried to end each statement with a question I feel is something that each of us must ask ourselves individually and as a community of scholars. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter. Here is the list bits of what I wrote as a much longer post. That length seems to be messing up blogger so if you would like the more elaborated version head over to my DMAC blog and look for the post with the same title here.
1) The stakes are higher for people of color dealing with technology in front of other people.
2) New media, like literacy, can be used as a form of violence.
3) Scholars can learn from semiotic systems other than print based that are closer to the rhetoric structure of new media.
4) Identity is information and behaves like information in digital systems.
5) New Media doesn’t do us any good if it just replicates unjust power structures and is continued to be used to dehumanize folks.
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2 comments:
This is my first blog post EVER...
When I reflect on what I've learned these past weeks at DMAC, probably one of the most important would be the reminder to look for/be deliberately and intetionally attententive to what my positionality makes both visible and invisible. That's why i really appreciate this post. As a teacher, I want to have a generous mindset -- one that resists suturing semiotic/historical constructions with student identities. With that as an on-going goal, I need to be remind myself -- always remind myself -- of how construction works, how easily sediminitation/hegemony occur, and what the real lived effects of those processes are.
Beverly Moss mentioned that one of racism's best tricks is to make itself invisible. With that in mind, I've taken pieces from Doug's posts (one's from the linked blog) and put them in an order that helps me to think like and be reminded of the kind of teacher I want to be:
Remember,
"Folks are categorized, labeled, placed into groups, associated through language, media, and informatics in complex ways."
One of the main ways those associations are made within our society is through race/racist logic; therefore,
"the stakes are higher for people of color dealing with technology in front of other people."
In knowing this, as a teacher, I must
"understand how information and media does work [in order to] understand how identity and point of view is constructed"
as a way to interrogate my own invisible assumptions that may guide classroom practices.
Exactly, Doug.
I know that Doug knows this already, but I'm not sure how many of you have talked to me about my research. I am currently looking at race in virtual spaces (and as an aspect of digital identity-- working in large part from the work of Lisa Nakamura).
I was floored recently by someone asking me why race would matter to the study of gaming (my current area of inquiry). I responded by asking if we all turn white and male (and heterosexual, and Christian, and middle-class) when we sit down in front of a keyboard).
I likewise was sort of jolted by our discussion starting with "why consider race and technology?" My question would be "why aren't more people foregrounding race and class (and gender, and sexual orientation) in their considerations of technology?"
We all know that the utopian narrative about technology was a myth (one that barely survives to this day), but one of the bedrock ideals of technology-- that it could be a democratic force-- depends on constant and recursive consideration of race, gender, class, faith, etc. If we don't continue to interrogate difference, we'll end up with a digital society that-- like the gentleman who asked me that question about my gaming research-- assumes a specific audience in digital space even without knowing he is assuming it.
And that scares me.
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