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Open Access

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

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

Keywords

racegenderethicstechbiasequitysocietypolicy

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Journal of Social Computing
Volume 2 Issue 4,
December 2021
Pages 357-364
DOI: 10.23919/JSC.2021.0026
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

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Received: 22 June 2021
Revised: 22 November 2021
Accepted: 25 November 2021
Published: 30 January 2022
© The author(s) 2021

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/).
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