Race, Rhetoric, and Technology

NCTE-LEA Research Series in Literacy and Composition

by Adam J. Banks

In this book Adam Banks uses the concept of the Digital Divide as a metonym for America's larger racial divide, in an attempt to figure out what meaningful access for African Americans to technologies and the larger American society can or should mean. He argues that African American rhetorical traditions--the traditions of struggle for justice and equitable participation in American society--exhibit complex and nuanced ways of understanding the difficulties inherent in the attempt to navigate through the seemingly impossible contradictions of gaining meaningful access to technological systems with the good they seem to make possible, and at the same time resisting the exploitative impulses that such systems always seem to present.
Banks examines moments in these rhetorical traditions of appeals, warnings, demands, and debates to make explicit the connections between technological issues and African Americans' equal and just participation in American society. He shows that the big questions we must ask of our technologies are exactly the same questions leaders and lay people from Martin Luther King to Malcolm X to slave quilters to Critical Race Theorists to pseudonymous chatters across cyberspace have been asking all along. According to Banks the central ethical questions for the field of rhetoric and composition are technology access and the ability to address questions of race and racism. He uses this book to imagine what writing instruction, technology theory, literacy instruction, and rhetorical education can look like for all of us in a new century.
Just as "Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground" is a call for a new orientation among those who study and profess African American rhetoric, it is also a call for those in the fields that make up mainstream English Studies to change their perspectives as well. This volume is intended for researchers, professionals, and students in Rhetoric and Composition, Technical Communication, the History of Science and Society, and African American Studies.

Genres: Nonfiction

186 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the fast pace at which technologies and discourses about technology turn over, this 2005 book offers a variety of compelling and still-relevant arguments about the intersections between race, rhetoric, and technology. The book's continuing relevance is a credit to Adam Banks, though it's also a sad reminder of the extent to which inequalities in technological access, as well as the racial inequalities with which they're bound up, are still with us in 2014.

Among Banks' most notable arguments: [1] The way "access" gets talked about--as nothing more than material access to digital technologies--is way simplistic. He subdivides it into "material," "functional," "experiential," and "critical" access (pp. 41-43). [2] Discourse about digital technologies and access to those technologies tends to elide/erase/ignore race. [3] Scholars and teachers of rhetoric and composition, as well as a variety of activists and professionals in other areas, need to consider technological design as a rhetorical issue, thinking of ways to denaturalize Whiteness in the ways digital technologies are discussed, designed, produced, etc. (p. 135).

Given my own projects and inclinations, I especially appreciated that Banks calls out the irresponsibility of those who've been privileged enough to drive technological design in the past years/decades/centuries. Consider the following:

The problem with the Digital Divide as a concept for addressing systematic differences in access to digital technologies is that it came to signify mere material access to computers and the Internet, and failed to hold anyone responsible for creating even the narrow material conditions it prescribed. Beyond the tools themselves, meaningful access requires users, individually and collectively, to be able to use, critique, resist, design, and change technologies in ways that are relevant to their lives and needs, rather than those of the corporations that hope to sell them. (p. 41)

In short, he not only notes the importance of "transformative [technological] access" for the empowerment of marginalized groups--which is frequently noted even by tech CEOs--but that those already in power (tech CEOs, for instance) have to take responsibility/be held responsible for making possible more nuanced and robust kinds of access.

There were a few points where, due to my own lack of familiarity, I found myself wanting a little more context for some of the book's examples--Malcolm X's appearance on The Hate That Hate Produced, for instance--but the breadth of his examples left me persuaded by his broader points.

[Dr. Breeze Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was extremely helpful for the work I was doing on my Masters Thesis, looking at how systemic whiteness is performed in cyberspace.

In the introduction, he starts by quoting Kali Tal's article, "The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: African American Critical Theory and Cyberculture." from Wired Magazine, Oct 1996. He quotes Tal:

"In cyberspace, it is finally possible to completely and utterly disappear people of color. I have long suspected that the much vaunted 'freedom' the shed the 'limiting' markers of race and gender on the Inernet is illusory, and that in fact it masks a more disturbing phenomenon-- the whitenizing of cyberspace..."

Banks then tells the reader the goal of his book:

"This project is an attempt to chart some ways African Americans have struggled to make real difference in a nation whose existence depends on rigorous commitments to technological advancement and exclusions based on race. African American rhetoric as read through a technological lens allows a thorough documentation of that struggle, and ways it can contribute to broader digital and rhetorical theory. It can also help us all-- leaders, activists, scholars, and lay persons involved in dismantling the system supports for racism-- reconfigure a sense of what that collective struggle might mean and how it can be taken up at such a difficult time in American history." (page 2)

On page 3 he continues with

"My understanding of African American rhetoric acknowledges and builds on the focus of the power of the spoken word and Black orators, but also attempts to open it up to all of the means employed throughout Black history-- to value the uses to which rhetors have employed design, visual communication, electronic communication, and performance that are often appreciated by dealt with only tangentially."

If you're looking for a brilliant, coherent and well written book that brings technology, critical race theory, and african american rhetoric to the table, Banks' book is the one.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Race, Rhetoric, and Technology (2006), Adam Banks explores African American rhetoric — the discursive practices used by individuals and groups toward full participation in American society (2-3) — in relation to technology, especially in regards to access. He questions the digital divide binary because they focus solely on access to tools without questioning the full meaning of access. Banks proposes understanding access in terms of meaningful access, which involves a) meaningful access, b) functional access (the knowledge and skills to use a tool), c) experiential access (the access to make a tool relevant to one's life), d) critical access (ability to assess the benefits and costs of technologies), and e) transformative access (the use of technology for inclusion and transforming the conditions of inclusion) (41-42, 45).

[Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a teacher of English composition and rhetoric, I found the discussion of writing expectations in a classroom particularly apt, even though the issue of how to evaluate student work written in non-standard English (or digital work not even done "in writing") was not mentioned. Understandably, this is a work written, in a sense, as a Jeremiad, and practical advice is not expected, but I would love to see how other instructors are "transforming" their classrooms. Overall, a fascinating argument and a great introduction to the critical race theory and technology access.

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to issues of the digital divide, less technical than more LIS-focused stuff (which is a good thing) and an interesting focus on rhetoric specifically.

[Mills College Library]

305.89607 B2185 2006