One of the key insights common to all arguments is that there is a correlation between the concept of race and technological elements that go beyond just issues of access to computers, resources, etc. This week, we were introduced to methods of reading formats within technology parallel to the rise of the theorization of race. First, Biewen and Kumanyika provide context about the origin of the concept of race, its rootedness in Western Imperialism, its biological inaccuracy, and its prevailing realness in society. Through a historical overview of travel chronicles from Greek writer Herodotus, Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, and enlightenment thinkers Linnaeus and Blumenbach, they show how while “race” is a fairly recent term, due to socioeconomic gains, societies have always maintained biases against Other communities within themselves. Kumanyika concludes by iterating on the need to understand the underlying causes for the perpetuation of dehumanizing narratives against people of color. Second, McPherson picks up on issues of computation and devises an interesting parallel between the “modular” format of operating systems like UNIX (UNiplexed Information Computing System) and the “lenticular logic” in post-civil war USA both of which follow a system of disconnection and decontextualization. Postulating their argument as a conceptual framework for digital scholars, McPherson writes that we need to be aware of and somehow attempt to undo the “fragmentary knowledges encouraged by many forms and experiences of the digital [that] neatly parallel the logics that underwrite the covert racism endemic to our times, operating in potential feedback loops, supporting each other”. Third, Johnson introduces the idea of “markup bodies” to state the methodologies employed by black digital scholars as they attend to the descendants of enslaved people and provide attention to their narratives. Johnson writes with a critique of data arguing that “Black digital practice requires researchers to witness and remark on the marked and unmarked bodies, the ones that defy computation, and finds ways to hold the null values up to the light” (71-72). Finally, Ghorbaninejad, Gibson, and Wrisley decode a case study of the lack of programming tools, UI/UX design precision, and metadata settings, of right-to-left (RTL) languages like Arabic, Urdu, etc. They argue that because the RTL DH scholarship is distanced from academia in the Global North and provides little to no financial incentive to most DH scholars in the West, “Digital humanists must become advocates for broad-level RTL integration” (63). Overall, studying the technological backgrounds of racialized knowledge infrastructures allows us to question what an interdisciplinary perspective means i.e. how the “digital” and the “humanities” really work together. It urges us to ask how can we critique knowledge infrastructures when their seemingly “invisible” technical operations systematically influence our understanding of “race” today.

For me, I was deeply invested in the abundance of technical information in these texts, something I am new to as a scholar of English. So, I ask these questions:

1. McPherson traces the similarities in form between computational systems like UNIX/relational databases, and the liberal perception of “race” using the “Rule of Modularity” i.e. the separation of parts of a code into workable sections. She argues that computational systems and cultural imaginaries born in the 1960s “mutually infect one another”. To many scholars in the humanities aware of the Sokal affair, McPherson’s argument can seem a bit radical. Similar to the defense of “black boxing” in supply chains, digital technocrats might argue that “modularity” is necessary to produce simplicity during coding. Does our specialization in a particular academic department make us less susceptible to interdisciplinary arguments like these? How might our lack of interdisciplinary knowledge (eg. many DH scholars not being coders) affect our judgment of racial infrastructures?
2. Kumanyika ends the podcast by saying, “You know, I’ve seen things on race, like they pull Kanye, they might pull Shaquille O’Neal, like hey why are you interviewing these people to talk about race? It’s not their thing.” Do we need “experts” to talk about race? Can’t any person of color have the right to speak critically about race or is a certain mode of knowledge necessary? In other words, are knowledge infrastructures “invisible” only to a few?
3. Ghorbaninejad et al. argue that contemporary content in RTL languages seems to contain less “value” than LTR in the Global North today. In order to sustain RTL scholarship, they recommend Internationalization followed by Localization where “software is first designed to be locale-indifferent before it is localized to meet the regional, linguistic/cultural, and technical requirements of each locale” (55). Can we think of any examples where software is Internationalized but not Localized causing what the authors fear causes “cultural mistranslation.” Further, should the responsibility fall on people to whom the culture is “local” to produce such software? Do issues like funding further complicate this possibility?
4. Most of the readings this week recommend advocacy from the DH scholar. What does advocacy look like for you?
5. For Jhonson, “data” is the “objective and independent unit of knowledge”. It also signifies “the independent and objective statistical fact as an explanatory ideal party to the devastating thingification of black women, children, and men” (58). What might Jhonson say are the ethical challenges for “quantitative” digital studies like sentiment analysis or geospatial analysis?

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