The Neverending History of Discrimination
Hi! It's Teddie - let's talk discrimination.
I recently had the opportunity to read Mar Hicks’ “A Feature, Not a Bug” where Hicks discussed the explicitly ingrained role of gender discrimination and privilege in Silicon Valley and technology as a whole. One particular quote stuck out to me:
"[…] gender discrimination is baked in to the structures of high tech economies themselves, a critical part of their focus on concentrating power in the hands of those who already traditionally wield it. Gender discrimination is not a bug—it’s a feature."
What interested me the most was the way that Hicks’ article describes exactly how gender, sexuality, racial, ethnic, and other discrimination was incorporated into the evolution of modern technology, so that not only does it enforce pre-existing biases and prejudices against marginalized identities, but it also hides it behind a relatable valuation of talent. This connected deeply to a philosophical author George Yancy, who introduced the white gaze into a discussion of embodiment for racialized bodies. In his essay, “Confiscated Bodies,” Yancy literally coins the term white gaze to represent the way that in his, and quoted, experience, white people look and otherwise physically interact with “black bodies”. Interestingly, Yancy discusses the way that black bodies are singled out; objectified, sexualized, “problematized” – just for existing against a backdrop of white “normalcy”. By establishing a social norm of whiteness (this can be similarly extended to ability, beauty, gender, sexuality, and other races), the world, we, have conditioned the “abnormal” (those deviating from our previously established norms) to be something to be seen, confiscated, even owned. Then, even in situations where no one is being explicitly racist (/sexist/ableist/etc – you get it), these ingrained concepts of normalcy are still portrayed and act discriminatorily against these marginalized groups. This is exactly what Hicks is discussing, just on a larger scale; even if this scenario wasn’t intentional, it still allows these misguided norms to persist and exist despite decades of protest.
What’s more, Hicks perfectly describes another behaviour that Yancy writes about in his text: where this “metanarrative structure of whiteness” a large portion of its power is the fact that each time the white gaze acts, regardless of how intense the act might be, it continually suggests that racism (among all discrimination) is something that is historical, something natural, something not man-made. But this is false – racism is not a historical fact, it majorly came into play when colonizers stole human beings from their homes and treated them like garbage.
All those arguments that say we’re naturally trained to recognize abnormalities, that ancient civilizations were also racist, that it takes a long time to unlearn racism, are just not true. Sure, we as humans have exceptional pattern recognition, and can isolate things that don’t fit that pattern – but nowhere in that psychology does there exist a natural tendency to point out these differences and shame or discriminate against them. And unfortunately, the sentimentality that some people have for these “historical” acts of discrimination are not only unfounded, but just completely not an excuse…? Just because several generations were raised believing that the colour of your skin determines your worth, that does not mean you have any right to believe that same thing. Be better than them. (Like honestly, they also believed the sun revolved around the earth. But also, people still believe the earth is flat. So do with that what you will.)
(LMAO)
As Hicks claims, there’s not really any way we can just add more women to the field of technology, or idolize the women that make it far (because this only engenders more discriminatory behaviour by recognizing the outliers, or special cases of success). Unfortunately, we can’t demand these racist, ableist, sexist, “misguided but destructive” technologies and social constructs to collapse, as it would be impossible to undo everything that has already happened and start at the very beginning. But what we can do is see these hidden forms of misogyny, racism, discrimination, and from them learn how we can better understand one another as human beings and stop being “trapped by its negative effects”.