Journal of Social Computing 2021, 2(4): 357-364 https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0026

Open Access | Issue | Published: 30 January 2022

Connecting Race to Ethics Related to Technology: A Call for Critical Tech Ethics

Show Author's Information Hide Author's Information Jenny Ungbha Korn^¹(

)

1 Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Keywords:

policy, gender, ethics, race, tech, bias, equity, society

Cite this article:

Korn JU. Connecting Race to Ethics Related to Technology: A Call for Critical Tech Ethics. Journal of Social Computing, 2021, 2(4): 357-364. https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0026

Download citation

EndNote(RIS)

BibTeX

752

Views

761

Downloads

Citations

Crossref

N/A

WoS

Scopus

N/A

CSCD

Abstract Full text About this article

Abstract

Critical tech ethics is my call for action to influencers, leaders, policymakers, and educators to help move our society towards centering race, deliberately and intentionally, to tech ethics. For too long, when “ethics” is applied broadly across different kinds of technology, ethics does not address race explicitly, including how diverse forms of technologies have contributed to violence against and the marginalization of communities of color. Across several years of research, I have studied online behavior to evaluate gender and racial biases. I have concluded that a way to improve technologies, including the Internet, is to create a specific type of ethics termed “critical tech ethics” that connects race to ethics related to technology. This article covers guiding theories for discovering critical tech ethical challenges, contemporary examples for illustrating critical tech ethical challenges, and institutional changes across business, education, and civil society actors for teaching critical tech ethics and encouraging the integration of critical tech ethics with undergraduate computer science. Critical tech ethics has been developed with the imperative to help improve society through connecting race to ethics related to technology, so that we may reduce the propagation of racial injustices currently occurring by educational institutions, technology corporations, and civil actors. My aim is to improve racial equity through the development of critical tech ethics as research, teaching, and practice in social norms, higher education, policy making, and civil society.

Full text

Abstract

Full text

Outline

About this article

Connecting Race to Ethics Related to Technology: A Call for Critical Tech Ethics

Show Author's information Hide Author's Information Jenny Ungbha Korn^¹(

)

1 Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Abstract

Keywords: policy, gender, ethics, race, tech, bias, equity, society

References(53)

J. U. Korn, Asian embodiment as victim and survivor: Surveillance, racism, and race during COVID, Surveillance & Society, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 494–500, 2021.https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v19i4.15107

DOI

J. U. Korn, Privileged technology-mediation: Gendered and racialized (re)productions within online image searches, presented at the 41^st Annu. Meeting Organization of Communication, Language, and Gender, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 2014.

J. U. Korn, Black nerds, asian activists, and caucasian dogs: Online race-based cultural group identities within Facebook groups, International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 14–25, 2015.

DOI Google Scholar

J. U. Korn, Bystander conjecture over lived experience: #Whitesplaining race and racism, presented at the 17^th Annu. Meeting Association of Internet Researchers, Berlin, Germany, 2016.

J. U. Korn, Black women exercisers, Asian women artists, White women daters, and Latina lesbians: Cultural constructions of race and gender within intersectionality-based facebook groups, in The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online, S. U. Noble and B. Tynes, eds. New York, NY, USA: Peter Lang, 2016, pp. 115–128.

J. U. Korn, Expecting penises in chatroulette: Race, gender, and sexuality in anonymous online spaces, Popular Communication, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 95–109, 2017.

DOI Google Scholar

J. U. Korn, From academia, to programmers: Critical race training to incorporate race into ethics and technology, presented at Honoring all Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2018.

J. U. Korn, Equitable cities instead of smart cities: Race and racism within the race for smart cities, Journal of Civic Media, https://elabhome.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/JCM_fall2018_v2.pdf, 2018.

J. U. Korn, Race and resistance amid feminism, priming, and capitalism: The (surprisingly-globalized) visual of an Asian American woman activist, https://adanewmedia.org/2018/11/issue14-korn/, 2018.

J. U. Korn, Failures in ethics in training and praxis: The values embedded within race, technologies, and justice, presented at the 43^rd Annu. Meeting Society for Social Studies of Science, New Orleans, LA, USA, 2019.

J. U. Korn, #IfTheyGunnedMeDown: How ethics, gender, and race intersect when researching race and racism on Tumblr, Journal of Digital Social Research, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 41–44, 2019.

DOI Google Scholar

A. Denis, Intersectional analysis: A contribution of feminism to sociology, International Sociology, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 677–694, 2008.

DOI Google Scholar

D. Roithmayr, Introduction to critical race theory in educational research and praxis, in Race Is... Race Isn’t: Critical Race Theory and Qualitative Studies in Education, L. Parker, D. Deyhle, and S. Villenas, eds. New York, NY, USA: Taylor and Francis, 1999, pp. 1–6.https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429503504-1

DOI

K. Crenshaw, Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color, Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 1241–1299, 1991.

DOI Google Scholar

A. K. Wing, Introduction, in Critical Race Feminism: A Reader, A. K. Wing, ed. New York, NY, USA: New York University Press, 2003, pp. 1–19.

K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, and K. Thomas, eds. , Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement. New York, NY, USA: New Press, 1995.

K. Crenshaw, On Intersectionality: Essential Writings. New York, NY, USA: New Press, 2015.

C. Ess, Digital Media Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013.

B. Green, The contestation of tech ethics: A sociotechnical approach to technology ethics in practice, Journal of Social Computing, doi: 10.23919/JSC.2021.0018.https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0018

DOI

D. Jones, The representation of female athletes in online images of successive Olympic Games, Pacific Journalism Review, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 108–129, 2006.

DOI Google Scholar

J. E. McNealy, Framing and the language of ethics: Technology, persuasion, and cultural context, Journal of Social Computing, doi: 10.23919/JSC.2021.0027.https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0027

DOI

J. Hemsley and J. Snyder, Dimensions of visual misinformation in the emerging media landscape, in Misinformation and Mass Audiences, B. G. Southwell, E. A. Thorson, and L. Sheble, eds. Austin, TX, USA: University of Texas Press, 2018, pp. 91–108.https://doi.org/10.7560/314555-007

DOI

F. Vis, A critical reflection on big data: Considering APIs, researchers, and tools as data makers, First Monday, doi: https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v18i10.4878.

DOI

D. W. Chambers, Stereotypic images of the scientist: The draw-a-scientist test, Science Education, vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 255–265, 1983.

DOI Google Scholar

F. Zamudio-Suaréz, Professors are nerds. Or so your iPhone would have you believe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, https://www.chronicle.com/article/Professors-Are-Nerds-Or-So/237817, 2016.

S. Hussain, From indiana jones to Minerva Mcgonagall, professors see themselves in fiction, The Chronicle of Higher Education, https://www.chronicle.com/article/From-Indiana-Jones-to-Minerva/240308, 2017.

D. Polan, Professors, Discourse, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 28–49, 1993.

Google Scholar

L. S. Lewis, Students’ images of professors, The Educational Forum, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 185–190, 1968.

DOI Google Scholar

D. D. McFarland, Self-images of law professors: Rethinking the schism in legal education, Journal of Legal Education, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 232–260, 1985.

Google Scholar

C. Fisanick, “They are weighted with authority”: Fat female professors in academic and popular cultures, Feminist Teacher, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 237–255, 2007.

Google Scholar

M. Dagaz and B. Harger, Race, gender, and research: Implications for teaching from depictions of professors in popular film, 1985–2005, Teaching Sociology, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 274–289, 2011.

DOI Google Scholar

N. Gotanda, A critique of ‘our constitution is color-blind’, Stanford Law Review, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 1–68, 1991.

DOI Google Scholar

D. G. Solorzano, Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience of Chicana and Chicago scholars, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 121–136, 1998.

DOI Google Scholar

T. Ebede and A. Papier, Disparities in dermatology educational resources, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 687–690, 2006.

DOI Google Scholar

D. Prichep, Diagnostic gaps: Skin comes in many shades and so do rashes, NPR, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/11/04/774910915/diagnostic-gaps-skin-comes-in-many-shades-and-so-do-rashes, 2019.

B. Hooks, Eating the other: Desire and resistance, in Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works, M. G. Durham and D. G. Kellner, eds. Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, pp. 366–380.

J. U. Korn, Teaching digital media ethics in computer science to improve racial Justice in technologies and artificial intelligence, presented at Mozilla’s Responsible Computer Science Challenge, Mountain View, CA, USA, 2019.

C. Fiesler, N. Garrett, and N. Beard, What do we teach when we teach tech ethics?: A syllabi analysis, in Proc. 51^st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Portland, OR, USA, 2020, pp. 289–295.https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366825

DOI

M. Muro, A. Berube, and J. Whiton, Black and Hispanic underrepresentation in tech: It’s time to change the equation, Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/research/black-and-hispanic-underrepresentation-in-tech-its-time-to-change-the-equation, 2018.

R. Speer, How to make a racist AI without really trying, ConceptNet, http://blog.conceptnet.io/posts/2017/how-to-make-a-racist-ai-without-really-trying, 2017.

J. Buolamwini and T. Gebru, Gender shades: Intersectional accuracy disparities in commercial gender classification, in Proc. 1^st Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, New York, NY, USA, 2018, pp. 1–15.

S. Corbett-Davies, E. Pierson, and A. Feller, A computer program used for bail and sentencing decisions was labeled biased against blacks. It’s actually not that clear, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/17/can-an-algorithm-be-racist-our-analysis-is-more-cautious-than-propublicas, 2016.

N. Diakopoulos and S. Friedler, How to hold algorithms accountable, MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602933/how-to-hold-algorithms-accountable, 2016.

L. Sweeney, Discrimination in online ad delivery, Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University, http://dataprivacylab.org/projects/onlineads/1071-1.pdf, 2013.https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2208240

DOI

B. Green, Data science as political action: Grounding data science in a politics of justice, Journal of Social Computing, doi: 10.23919/JSC.2021.0029.https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0029

DOI

K. Kirkpatrick, Battling algorithmic bias: How do we ensure algorithms treat us fairly? Communications of the ACM, vol. 59, no. 10, pp. 16–17, 2016.

DOI Google Scholar

W. Knight, Biased algorithms are everywhere, and no one seems to care, MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608248/biased-algorithms-are-everywhere-and-no-one-seems-to-care, 2017.

S. U. Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York, NY, USA: New York University Press, 2018.https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1pwt9w5

DOI

D. A. Bell Jr, A critique of ‘our constitution is color-blind’, in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, and K. Thomas, eds. New York, NY, USA: New Press, 1995, pp. 302–314.

R. L. Brooks, Racial Justice in the Age of Obama. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press, 2009.https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400831043

DOI

M. Broussard, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand The World. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2018.https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11022.001.0001

DOI

E. S. Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Boston, MA, USA: Beacon Press, 1992.

Y. Beyene, K. Kumodzi, and D. Simms, Institutional racism lives at HKS, compromising its effectiveness as a public service institution, The Citizen, https://citizen.hkspublications.org/2019/11/29/institutional-racism-lives-at-hks-compromising-its-effectiveness-as-a-public-service-institution, 2019.

About this article

Publication history

Rights and permissions

Publication history

Received: 22 June 2021

Revised: 22 November 2021

Accepted: 25 November 2021

Published: 30 January 2022

Issue date: December 2021

Copyright

Rights and permissions

The articles published in this open access journal are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).