Book SummaryRace After Technology, by Ruha Benjamin

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Race After Technology

In Race After Technology, Ruha Benjamin argues that race is a technology: a tool we use to organize society into hierarchies that benefit the people who have the most power. This technology has evolved over centuries, and one way it operates today is through digital systems, from search engines to surveillance systems to predictive algorithms. As these systems increasingly shape our access to employment, healthcare, housing, and justice, they amplify historical patterns of discrimination—while hiding behind claims of objectivity and fairness. Benjamin refers to this phenomenon as “the New Jim Code” and characterizes it as the latest evolution in America’s long history of racial control and discrimination.

Benjamin is a...

Race After Technology Summary What Is Race? What Is Racism?

Benjamin argues that race is a powerful social technology used to separate people into groups, stratify those groups, and explain away injustice. Racism functions as the operating system for this technology: the set of beliefs, practices, and structures that make race “work” as a tool of control. Throughout American history, this operating system has been deliberately engineered to maintain hierarchies of power and to justify inequitable distributions of resources.

What Does It Mean to Understand Race as a Technology?

We tend to think of race as a biological reality—something encoded in our DNA. But other scholars agree with Benjamin that racial categories are deliberately engineered rather than naturally occurring. Sociologists Michèle Lamont and Virág Molnár (2002) explain how “symbolic boundaries” (conceptual distinctions used to categorize people) become “social boundaries” (social divisions based on those categories that engender unequal access to resources).

While Lamont and Molnár don’t explicitly use the term “technology,” they argue, like Benjamin, that racial...

Race After Technology Summary What Is ‘The New Jim Code’?

After explaining the history of racism in the US, Benjamin contends that we’ve entered a new phase in the evolution of racism. She calls this “the New Jim Code,” a term that echoes Alexander’s “New Jim Crow” to emphasize the continuity of racial control mechanisms throughout American history. This latest iteration involves racism embedded in digital technologies and algorithms—for example, facial recognition software that struggles to accurately identify darker-skinned faces and risk assessment algorithms that disproportionately flag Black individuals as “high risk” for committing crimes.

Digital technology increasingly mediates access to opportunities and resources, so when these systems embed racial biases, they exacerbate inequalities. Consider healthcare algorithms that determine patient care: When these systems use past medical spending as a proxy for medical need, they recommend less care for Black patients than for white patients with the same symptoms—not because Black patients are healthier, but because historical racism in healthcare meant they had less access to...

Race After Technology Summary How Does the New Jim Code Operate?

Now that you know what the New Jim Code is, let’s discuss how it works. Benjamin explains that the New Jim Code operates through four key dimensions, where racial hierarchies become encoded in seemingly neutral technological systems. These dimensions don’t operate in isolation but interact with and reinforce each other, creating multiple layers through which racism becomes embedded into the technologies that shape our lives.

(Shortform note: Benjamin presents these four dimensions in a different order, but we’ve reorganized them from most visible to most insidious in order to highlight how technological racism increasingly operates through hidden mechanisms that are difficult to identify and challenge.)

Asymmetric Visibility: The Paradox of Being Watched But Not Seen

Asymmetric visibility—what Benjamin calls “coded exposure”—describes how technologies selectively focus attention on certain aspects of marginalized groups while rendering other aspects invisible. Benjamin explains that algorithms tend to amplify stereotypical views of marginalized communities—often as threats or problems to be managed—while simultaneously failing to recognize their individuality,...

Race After Technology Summary How Can We Challenge the New Jim Code?

Benjamin doesn’t just diagnose the problem of racism in technology. She also offers a path forward to a future where we design technologies that challenge rather than reinforce racial hierarchies. She recommends two ideological shifts—taking a race-conscious approach to technology and shifting from reform to abolition—as well as some practical strategies for changing how technology is developed. Let’s explore each of her recommendations.

Take a Race-Conscious Approach to Technology

Benjamin argues against “colorblind” approaches to technology that dominate the tech industry today. These approaches typically either treat race as irrelevant to technology development or focus narrowly on hiring a few people of color without changing how technologies are designed. Many companies believe that simply adding one or two Black or Brown faces to their teams “solves” technological racism, but they continue to build products that ignore how race shapes users’ experiences.

Meanwhile, developers often operate under the false assumption that they can build neutral tools in a biased world—that if they simply ignore race in their design process, their technologies will work...

Shortform Exercise: Unmasking the New Jim Code

Benjamin argues that we often miss how racism operates through technology because it’s hidden behind claims of objectivity and neutrality. This exercise helps you identify potential manifestations of the New Jim Code in technologies you regularly encounter.

Think of a digital technology you use regularly (social media, search engine, ride-sharing app, hiring software, etc.). How might this technology create different experiences or outcomes for people of different racial backgrounds?