Antiracism in the Digital World

Our virtual spaces replicate and amplify the dangerous inequities and biases present in our physical spaces. When we think of racism in digital spaces, some of the more obvious examples include the use of racist and offensive language, imagery, or other multimedia. While it’s important to acknowledge the harmful effects of such material, we must also recognize the more subtle ways that racism is encoded in technology.

For example, the very algorithms that drive much of our online activity can reproduce and amplify racist thinking and behavior and cause harm for students on the receiving end. Instances of algorithmic bias include racist search results and facial recognition tools that fail to recognize darker skin tones. The use of surveillance technology such as online proctoring software often encodes those who are not white, cisgender, and able-bodied as “other.” If you’re booted from an exam because your proctoring software’s facial recognition tech doesn’t recognize you as a person, that has both emotional impact (dehumanization) and material impact (potential of a bad grade on test/class).

Microaggressions are another form of racism found in all types of digital spaces. They are “everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups” (Microaggressions Are A Big Deal: How To Talk Them Out And When To Walk Away).

Additionally, access to high speed internet and private computers is often correlated with race and income. The choice of technology platforms and modalities for online learning, as well as how that technology is implemented, is also a question of racial equity.

It’s critical that we acknowledge all the various ways online learning can perpetuate racism and that we use this awareness to take action. Read on to find out what steps you can take.

A great place to start is to educate yourself about antiracist pedagogy. There are a wealth of resources on this topic. The Antiracist Pedagogy Reading List and the Student-generated, Annotated List of Resources on Trauma-Informed, Antiracist Pedagogy and Remote Teaching and Learning are two lists worth exploring.

You might also consider attending workshops, lectures, and reading groups to continue learning and discussing these ideas with others. Check the event calendars at the College and the Institute for upcoming programming.

It’s important in the process of learning more that you reflect on your own privileges and biases as well. You should also think about ways to (re)design your courses to be more antiracist. Some elements to consider include the course content, how you communicate with your students and how they communicate with each other, opportunities to give and receive feedback, and your approach to assessment. DLINQ offers an online course design rubric for faculty that includes suggested antiracist practices and resources you can incorporate into different aspects of your course design, from overall structure and organization to specific content, activities, and technology choices.

We realize it can be overwhelming to implement everything at once. If that’s the case for you, we recommend starting with small adjustments, being open to learning and iterating on your changes, and continuing to strive toward an antiracist pedagogy.

Self-education and self-reflection are good places to start. We’ve included resources on this page to help you get started. It’s important in the process of learning more that you reflect on your own privileges and biases.

Raising your awareness about bias inherent in software, data, and surveillance is also recommended. Become an advocate for yourself and others in revealing and fighting against the more subtle ways that racism is encoded in technology.

We also recommend that you learn to spot microaggressions, recognize when you may be engaging in them, and practice ways to confront them if you see others engaging in them. Microaggressions are “everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups” (Microaggressions Are A Big Deal: How To Talk Them Out And When To Walk Away).

If you are experiencing microaggressions or other forms of racism in your online classes or digital spaces (or you see that others are), you can reach out to your instructor, your campus office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (links in the Middlebury Resources below), and/or the Civil Rights and Title IX office at Middlebury (serves all campuses). Students at the College can also report bias incidents to the Community Bias Response Team.

We are committed to continued self-education and self-reflection, individually and as a group. As a team of largely white scholars and educators, we feel it’s important to recognize and call out our own biases and privileges, and to recognize the impacts and privileges we’ve experienced, having lived and been educated in a society rife with systemic and individual racism. Some of the steps we have been taking individually and as a group include:

• Reading and discussing articles and books such as Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun’s Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture, Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, and Andratesha Fritzgerald’s Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning.
• Committing time during our weekly team meetings to discussing antiracism and antiracist inclusive pedagogy and practices, how it appears in our daily work, and steps we might take to better address it there.
• Attending internal and external workshops, trainings, and webinars that focus on antiracism, including Middlebury’s Inclusive Practitioners workshops, Bookclubs for Change sessions, and Teach-in on Democracy webinars.
• Holding conversations about antiracism with, and seeking feedback from, our student interns, faculty, DEI teams, and others with whom we work.
• Writing and reflecting on antiracism in our ongoing blog and Digital Detox series.
• Hosting CryptoParties that engage our Middlebury communities in reflecting on, exploring, and sharing inclusive digital practices and tools that promote equity and wellbeing for all.
• Explicitly incorporating suggestions for antiracist practices and resources into our online course design rubric and Camp Design Online materials for faculty.

In addition, through our daily work, student internship program, studio spaces, scholarship, and workshops, we are striving to:

• Build and improve inclusive, sustainable design and pedagogy practices and processes that center antiracist, equitable, and humanizing approaches to teaching and learning through
• Model teaching and learning that is antiracist, inclusive, and humanizing, and in which students have the opportunity to contribute their voices, experiences, and identities.
• Design and nurture spaces, events, and opportunities, both physical and virtual, where staff, faculty, and students engage together in inquiry, research, and cultivation of topics like inclusive design and information environmentalism that help advance social justice.

• Critical data literacy tools for advancing data justice: A guidebook from the Data Justice Lab (June 2020)
• Student-generated, Annotated List of Resources on Trauma-Informed, Antiracist Pedagogy and Remote Teaching and Learning, Sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, Created by Bryn Mawr and Haverford College TLI Student Partners, Summer 2020
• Anti-Racist Critical Design
• Design Justice
• Bias in Online Classes: Evidence from a Field Experiment
• 6 Quick Ways to Be More Inclusive in a Virtual Classroom
• Cameras Optional, Please! Remembering Student Lives As We Plan Our Online Syllabus
• Unmasking Racism: Students of Color and Expressions of Racism in Online Spaces by Rob Eschmann published in Social Problems
• Racism in a networked world: How groups and individuals spread racist hate online

• Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter by Charlton McIlwain
• Race after Technology by Ruha Benjamin
• Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media by Sarah T. Roberts
• Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy by Cathy O’Neil
• Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
• Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble
• Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing by Marie Hicks
• Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World by Meredith Broussard
• Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
• Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning by Andratesha Fritzgerald