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Race After Technology
webruhabenjamin.com·ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology
Influential work in AI ethics and fairness literature; highly relevant for understanding how algorithmic systems can cause real-world harm through encoded bias, particularly in high-stakes domains like criminal justice, healthcare, and hiring.
Metadata
Importance: 62/100bookprimary source
Summary
Ruha Benjamin's 2019 book examines how automated systems and algorithmic technologies encode and perpetuate racial bias, introducing the concept of the 'New Jim Code' to describe how discriminatory social hierarchies are embedded in ostensibly neutral technical systems. The book argues that technology is never a neutral extension of society but always reflects and amplifies existing inequalities, while also offering frameworks for resistance and equitable design.
Key Points
- •Introduces the 'New Jim Code' concept: technological systems that replicate racial discrimination under the guise of objectivity and neutrality.
- •Argues that algorithms, facial recognition, predictive policing, and other tools systematically deepen racial and social hierarchies.
- •Challenges the assumption that automation removes human bias, showing tools are always extensions of their creators' values and social context.
- •Provides 'abolitionist tools' — frameworks for critically analyzing and redesigning technology toward more equitable and inclusive outcomes.
- •Winner of the 2020 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award for anti-racist scholarship from the American Sociological Association.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Erosion of Human Agency | Risk | 91.0 |
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# Race After Technology
## Race After Technology
**Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code**
(Polity 2019)
### [FREE DISCUSSION GUIDE](https://www.dropbox.com/s/p4x4bzn4fl8126s/RAT%20Discussion%20Guide.pdf?dl=0)
- 2020 WINNER OF THE OLIVER CROMWELL COX BOOK AWARD (for anti-racist scholarship) from the American Sociological Association Section on Race & Ethnic Minorities
- 2020 HONORABLE MENTION FOR THE COMMUNICATIONS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, AND MEDIA SOCIOLOGY (CITAMS) BOOK AWARD
- 2020 BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY LITERARY PRIZE FOR NONFICTION ( [here](https://www.bklynlibrary.org/support/bpl-literary-prize))
[Buy Now](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Race+After+Technology:+Abolitionist+Tools+for+the+New+Jim+Code-p-9781509526437)
## Reviews
“What’s ultimately distinctive about _Race After Technology_ is that its withering critiques of the present are so galvanizing... This is perhaps Benjamin’s greatest feat in the book: Her inventive and wide-ranging analyses remind us that as much as we try to purge ourselves from our tools and view them as external to our flaws, they are always extensions of us. As exacting a worldview as that is, it is also inclusive and hopeful."
**— Stephen Kearse,** [**The Nation**](https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/ruha-benjamin-race-after-technology-book-review/)
“This book is worthy of the widest readership, leaving us not only with a deeper understanding of the mutual and shifting roles of race and technology, but also, importantly, with the manageable and doable tools with which to create alternative, equitable, inclusive and prosperous futures."
**— Shakir Mohamed,** [**Nature Machine Intelligence**](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-020-00228-4?proof=t)
“ _Race After Technology_ is a brilliant, beautifully argued, engagingly written, and groundbreaking work. Ruha Benjamin is that rare scholar whose sophisticated understanding of science and technology is matched by her deep knowledge of race and racialization. Here she guides us into fresh terrain for understanding and tackling the persistence of racial inequality. This book should be read by everyone committed to creating a more just world.”
**— Imani Perry, Princeton University, author of _Vexy Thing_ and _Looking for Lorraine_**
“ _Race After Technology_ is essential reading, decoding as it does the ever-expanding and morphing technologies that have infiltrated our everyday lives and our most powerful institutions. These digital tools predictably replicate and deepen racial hierarchies — all too often strengthening rather than undermining pervasive systems of racial and social control.”
**— Michell
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