Student Technology Support Equity Promise:
Our Madison College Libraries’ Student Technology Help team is dedicated to providing accessible, equitable and inclusive academic technology support. We strive to meet the technical needs of all students regardless of lived experience and empower our users to thrive in a digital world.
Racial Equity
- Black Spaces/White Spaces: Black Lives, Leisure, and Life Politics. Racial neutrality does not exist within digital and virtual spaces. Our racialized identities are imported into these spaces, as are the ideologies of our respective societies. This reality begs the question, how do Black people situate themselves in digital White leisure spaces, especially when these spaces maintain and replicate off-line spaces of racial discrimination and overt racism? This article presents a background on Black Internet users and highlights how Black people have used digital spaces to counter and disrupt messages that perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes and social inequalities. Examples are offered to support this claim. This article underlines how behaviors of Black people in digital spaces can demonstrate the presence of Black leisure and highlight the realities of Black life. Finally, critical technocultural discourse analysis will be introduced as a technique for advancing this discussion within the context of race and leisure.
- Encouraging Equitable Decision-Making in Academic Technology Keywords; Academic Technology; Techno-racism
- George Floyd: Twitter drops 'master', 'slave' and 'blacklist' Twitter drops the terms "master", "slave" and "blacklist" for more inclusive language."
- Is Technology Capable of Being Racist? McWhorter, John. “Is Technology Capable of Being Racist?” TIME Magazine, vol. 188, no. 10/11, Sept. 2016, p. 23. EBSCOhost.
- Linux team approves new terminology, bans terms like 'blacklist' and 'slave' Change to inclusive coding and away from racist language.
- The metaverse is shaping up to be a racist hellscape... Keywords: Facebook; Metaverse; Techno-racism; algorithms.
- New Technologies of Resistance Hatch, Anthony Ryan. “New Technologies of Resistance.” Radical History Review, vol. 2017, no. 127, Jan. 2017, p. 125. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1215/01636545-3690906. "No longer exclusively reliant on traditional corporate media to cover racism, African Americans increasingly use their smartphones and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with one another about what is going on in their own communities, nationally and globally, and when, where, and how to protest against racist violence." "...the space of social media is a private space that, compared to the public square activisms of the 1950s and 1960s, can more easily be targeted for surveillance and harassment."
- Of Course Technology Perpetuates Racism: it was designed that way McIlwain, Charlton. “Of Course Technology Perpetuates Racism. It Was Designed That Way.” MIT Technology Review, vol. 123, no. 4, July 2020, p. 12. EBSCOhost The article discusses the alleged role of public health technology in perpetuating racism and racial stereotypes since the Simulmatics company's voter profile and data collection tool in the 1960's. The author examines the role of contact tracing and other health surveillance tools in managing the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the alleged disparate social impact of such tools on Black Americans.
- Social Media Posts About Racism Leads to Evaluative Backlash for Black Job Applicants "Black individuals whose posts were about racism were evaluated less favorably than Black individuals whose posts were race neutral. Specifically, they were perceived as being less likable. In addition, Black individuals whose social media posts were related to racism were less likely to be offered an interview for a job."
- The U.S. has a “racial tech gap” problem, Deutsche Bank study shows "The part which sets people back the most is access to training. Most professors we spoke to felt that the digital inequity, which starts early in life, especially middle school, is what sets people back the most in the digital generation."
- Who Is Making Sure the A.I. Machines Aren’t Racist? "The big thinkers of tech say A.I. is the future. It will underpin everything from search engines and email to the software that drives our cars, directs the policing of our streets and helps create our vaccines. But it is being built in a way that replicates the biases of the almost entirely male, predominantly white work force making it."
- ‘Whitelist,’ ‘Blacklist’: The New Debate Over Security Terminology An exploration of racist terminology in the cybersecurity field.
Economic Equity
- Digital divide persists even as lower-income Americans make gains in tech adoptionMAY 7, 2019 from the Pew Research Center:
Roughly three-in-ten adults with household incomes below $30,000 a year (29%) don’t own a smartphone. More than four-in-ten don’t have home broadband services (44%) or a traditional computer (46%). And a majority of lower-income Americans are not tablet owners. By comparison, each of these technologies is nearly ubiquitous among adults in households earning $100,000 or more a year. - California State University Students’ Experiences with Connectivity and Technology in the Pandemic"In early 2021, EDUCAUSE reported on a survey related to students' experiences with connectivity and technology in the pandemic."
Gender Equity
- By the Numbers (Women in Technology)Statistics on Women's participation in Technology professions.
How to Keep Human Bias Out of AI
Rural vs. Urban Internet Access - Wisconsin
- Gov. Tony Evers Creates Task Force On Broadband AccessJULY 14, 2020 from WPR: Wisconsin currently ranks 30th in the nation for broadband coverage. More than 5.4 million residents, or roughly 93 percent of the state's population, now have access to broadband internet in Wisconsin, according to the most recent data from the Federal Communications Commission. However, challenges with access remain in rural areas of the state, where roughly 398,000 people or nearly 23 percent of the rural population lack high-speed internet. The number of rural residents lacking broadband access has decreased from 748,000 in 2018.
- Broadband internet access a pain for many rural Wisconsin residentsSEP 8, 2020 from the Reedsburg Times-Press: More than 40% of rural residents lack access to high-speed internet, according to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. Nationally, about 31 % of rural households lack access. Actual percentages might even be higher due to poor FCC mapping, experts say.
Books
Dignity in a Digital Age by
Congressman Ro Khanna offers a revolutionary roadmap to facing America's digital divide, offering greater economic prosperity to all. In Khanna's vision, "just as people can move to technology, technology can move to people. People need not be compelled to move from one place to another to reap the benefits offered by technological progress" (from the foreword by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics). In the digital age, unequal access to technology and the revenue it creates is one of the most pressing issues facing the United States. There is an economic gulf between those who have struck gold in the tech industry and those left behind by the digital revolution; a geographic divide between those in the coastal tech industry and those in the heartland whose jobs have been automated; and existing inequalities in technological access--students without computers, rural workers with spotty WiFi, and plenty of workers without the luxury to work from home. Dignity in the Digital Age tackles these challenges head-on and imagines how the digital economy can create opportunities for people all across the country without uprooting them. Congressman Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley offers a vision for democratizing digital innovation to build economically vibrant and inclusive communities. Instead of being subject to tech's reshaping of our economy, Representative Khanna argues that we must channel those powerful forces toward creating a more healthy, equal, and democratic society. Born into an immigrant family, Khanna understands how economic opportunity can change the course of a person's life. Anchored by an approach Khanna refers to as "progressive capitalism," he shows how democratizing access to tech can strengthen every sector of economy and culture. By expanding technological jobs nationwide through public and private partnerships, we can close the wealth gap in America and begin to repair the fractured, distrusting relationships that have plagued our country for far too long. Moving deftly between storytelling, policy, and some of the country's greatest thinkers in political philosophy and economics, Khanna presents a bold vision we can't afford to ignore. Dignity in a Digital Age is a roadmap to how we can seek dignity for every American in an era in which technology shapes every aspect of our lives.
Call Number: 330.973 K454ISBN: 9781982163341Publication Date: 2022
Race after Technology by
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the "New Jim Code," she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide here.
Call Number: 303.48330973 B468ISBN: 9781509526406Publication Date: 2019
Algorithms of Oppression by
A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithms.
Call Number: 025.04252 N752ISBN: 9781479837243Publication Date: 2018
Automating Inequality by
WINNER: The 2019 Lillian Smith Book Award, 2018 McGannon Center Book Prize, and shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice Astra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: "The single most important book about technology you will read this year." Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: "A must-read." A powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination?and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years--because a new computer system interprets any mistake as "failure to cooperate." In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems--rather than humans--control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values. This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.
Call Number: 362.560285 E86ISBN: 9781250074317Publication Date: 2018
Diversifying Digital Learning by
How does the digital divide affect the teaching and learning of historically underrepresented students? Many schools and programs in low-income neighborhoods lack access to the technological resources, including equipment and Internet service, that those in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods have at their fingertips. This inequity creates a persistent digital divide--not a simple divide in access to technology per se, but a divide in both formal and informal digital literacy that further marginalizes youths from low-income, minoritized, and first-generation communities. Diversifying Digital Learning outlines the pervasive problems that exist with ensuring digital equity and identifies successful strategies to tackle the issue. Bringing together top scholars to discuss how digital equity in education might become a key goal in American education, this book is structured to provide a framework for understanding how historically underrepresented students most effectively engage with technology--and how institutions may help or hinder students' ability to develop and capitalize on digital literacies. This book will appeal to readers who are well versed in the diverse uses of social media and technologies, as well as less technologically savvy educators and policy analysts in educational organizations such as schools, afterschool programs, colleges, and universities. Addressing the intersection of digital media, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic class in a frank manner, the lessons within this compelling work will help educators enable students in grades K-12, as well as in postsecondary institutions, to participate in a rapidly changing world framed by shifting new media technologies. Contributors: Young Whan Choi, Zoë B. Corwin, Christina Evans, Julie Flapan, Joanna Goode, Erica Hodgin, Joseph Kahne, Suneal Kolluri, Lynette Kvasny, David J. Leonard, Jane Margolis, Crystle Martin, Safiya Umoja Noble, Amanda Ochsner, Fay Cobb Payton, Antar A. Tichavakunda, William G. Tierney, S. Craig Watkins
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781421424361Publication Date: 2018
Weapons of Math Destruction by
We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true.
The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can't get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he's then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a "toxic cocktail for democracy." Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.
Call Number: 005.7 O586ISBN: 9780553418811Publication Date: 2016
