A Black History Month book report
by Matt May
Hi, all. This is the first Monday of Black History Month, so I’m going to attempt to write about Black history. It’s hard to write about a community you’re not part of, and even more tedious to have to read. So as a white guy, I know I’m walking a fine line. But part of equity work is making oneself aware of where one is situated relative to others, and why. I think it’s worse for us as a whole to avoid addressing a given issue for fear that our ignorance will show, because the alternative is to let that ignorance go unchallenged, and fester.
With that in mind, I’d like to share a book recommendation: Charlton McIlwain’s Black Software: the Internet and Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (Oxford University Press, 2020). Being of an age where I experienced some of what took place, from dialup bulletin board services to the old walled-garden version of AOL, really brought home some of the disparities faced by Black internet pioneers. And once you get into it, the book takes a turn.
As he explains in the introduction, McIlwain wrote two books in one. The first is about those pioneers, who he calls the Vanguard. They were the nerds and community builders who started Usenet groups, mailing lists and BBSes, and later, CompuServe’s GoAfro and AOL’s NetNoir boards. Book One is about Black folks connecting with and informing one another, usually by bootstrapping their own tech solutions. It’s not smooth sailing by any stretch, but at its core it’s a celebration of the Vanguard, as well as a testament to the value of community and self-determination.
While Book One positions the Black Vanguard as creators and beneficiaries of technology, Book Two reframes the Black community as its target. McIlwain returns to the 1960s to show how the civil rights movement gave rise to tech as an instrument of government surveillance and control. The book tells the story of Simulmatics, a data mining company of the era, supported by the compute power of MIT, which built models of cities based on demographic data. This work is the precursor to stats-based policing, which directed more municipal resources into both high tech, and larger and larger precincts in predominately Black neighborhoods. The need for tech to have big problems in order to grow effectively reduced Black communities in the US, in their own government’s eyes, to numerical objects to count and cross-tabulate, rather than empowering them as agents in their own governance. It’s not at all hard to draw parallels to the modern day.
As I read this book, and seeing the patterns therein, I started to think of alternative histories. Black Software features mostly struggles between the Vanguard and existing institutions: IBM, MIT, AOL the US government, and so on. A black engineer is hired by IBM as a diversity project, hits resistance as he works his way up, and bootstraps his own company instead. Black entrepreneurs struggle to get relatively small investments from companies worth billions, in order to make their communities larger and more profitable.
Underlying all this is the fact that capital has been consolidated for so long among white Americans. We can’t know what a Black-run IBM would have created, or what a Black-owned venture capital firm would have invested in, because they didn't—couldn't—exist. That fact has come at an obvious material cost to Black (and other nonwhite) American communities. But the lack of diversity of resource allocation, of the capacity to create, of who got to throw money at problems that mattered to them—that’s a loss for us all. I don’t know what a multiracial capital market would have done over the last century, but my gut tells me it would have led to fewer rich dicks with yacht and rocket fetishes, at a bare minimum. And maybe, just maybe, some of that money would have gone into problems worth solving.
I have noticed a tendency for Black History Month’s narratives, like those around Martin Luther King Day, to fall on the “look how far we’ve come” side. That’s worth celebrating, of course. But it’s also the easiest to package with a quote and a logo for your company’s LinkedIn page. I think historical pride is still praiseworthy—as long as it doesn’t squeeze out historical criticism. So, yes, let’s celebrate the “look how far we’ve come” side. But there is also a “shit is still broken and fucked up” side. It doesn’t get the same attention, because it’s not meant to make you feel good. It’s meant to challenge you. We need to acquaint ourselves with this body of work, because we don’t get anywhere close to equity by looking away.
With that in mind, here are some books by Black authors I can recommend:
- Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook by Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall
- Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Noble
- Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
- Unmasking AI by Joy Buolamwini
- Black Futures, edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham
- Le dérangeur: Petit lexique en voie de décolonisation (Fr: The Troublemaker: Decolonization Glossary) by Collectif Piment
Office hours
I’ve got my Thursday open for office hours, both free and paid.
Book a session (paid) (Thursdays, up to 28 days in advance)
Book a session (free) (Thursdays, up to 7 days in advance)
That’s all. Have a great week.