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: www.dropbox.com

The technological imagery of twentieth century literature reveals that the profound fusion of technology with the human body altered the way people considered their bodies. In this period, a special attention was drawn to the representation of ethnic bodies, such as African Americans, Latino Americans or Asian Americans, through technology. The study of technology and ethnicity is relevant to American Studies because it highlights the nature of technology which can be gendered or racialized. Historically, mainstream American fiction can be identified as colorblind, because it has produced racial stereotypes of the ethnic others depicting them as inferior to the whites. For example, Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1982) or Larry and Andy Wachowski’s the Matrix (1999) reveal how the ethnic bodies of African Americans or Asian Americans can be marginalized and objectified through technological means in fiction. Most of the analysis of ethnicity in this fiction has been done within postcolonial theory but less attention has been drawn to critical race theory. This paper intends to analyze the popular representation of Asians and Asian Americans as cyborgs and technological beings in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984), Mamoru Oshii’s cyberpunk film Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Larissa Lai’s post-cyberpunk novel Salt Fish Girl (2002) within critical race theory. These speculative fictions represent images of Asians and Asian Americans as cyborgs and technological objects, at the same time questioning and challenging the issues of ethnicity, gender and ethnic identity representation in fiction. While Gibson, an American mainstream fiction writer, provides exotic images of Asian cyborgs, the Japanese writer Oshii and the ethnic writer Lai use cyborgs in their narratives to address the issues of white supremacy and marginalization of ethnic bodies.

Ethnic Studies Research synthesizes and benchmarks ethnic studies methodologies as interdisciplinary modes of inquiry, providing state-of-the-art summary chapters on key methods and issues, extensive bibliographies, and promising new directions for the future. The study of ethnic groups and race relations has always existed in academia, primarily in the areas of sociology and anthropology. However, grassroots movements for ethnic studies programs and departments developed with very different agendas for the study of these groups. It is surprising, then, that relatively few books devoted to these methods exist to document and promote this innovation among succeeding generations of graduate students, as well as current academics and professional practitioners. Ethnic Studies Research is a step toward ending that void. Book jacket.

With overview essays and more than 400 A-Z entries, this exhaustive encyclopedia documents the history of Asians in America from earliest contact to the present day. Organized topically by group, with an in-depth overview essay on each group, the encyclopedia examines the myriad ethnic groups and histories that make up the Asian American population in the United States. "Asian American History and Culture" covers the political, social, and cultural history of immigrants from East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Pacific Islands, and their descendants, as well as the social and cultural issues faced by Asian American communities, families, and individuals in contemporary society. In addition to entries on various groups and cultures, the encyclopedia also includes articles on general topics such as parenting and child rearing, assimilation and acculturation, business, education, and literature. More than 100 images round out the set.

In this unprecedented study, leading scholars and emerging voices from around the world consider how race and ethnicity continue to shape our everyday lives, even as digital technology seems to promise a release from our "real" social identities. How do people use the new expressive features of digital technologies to experience, represent, discuss, and debate racial and ethnic identity? How have digital technologies or digital spaces become racialized? How have the existing vernacular traditions, or folklore, surrounding identity been reshaped in digital spaces? And how have new traditions emerged? This interdisciplinary volume of essays explores the role of traditional culture in the evolving expressions, practices, and images of race and ethnicity in the digital age. The work examines cultural forms in exclusively digital environments as well as in the hybrid environments created by mobile technologies, where real life becomes overlaid with digital content. Insights from academics across disciplines—including anthropology, communications, folkloristics, art, and sociology—consider the interplay between race/ethnicity, everyday vernacular culture, and digital technologies. Six sections explore traditional cultural affordances of technology, folklore and digital applications, visual cultures of race and ethnicity, racism and exclusion online, political activism and race, and concluding observations. The book covers technologies such as vlogs, video games, digital photography, messaging applications, social media sites, and the Internet.