Algorithmic criticism is when people look at algorithms and discover the bias’ that exist within the algorithm. Algorithms themselves don’t have bias’ but the people that create them do, so often times people don’t realize the racism or sexism that is apparent in their work 1. Many scholars and activists suggest that people go more in depth into their research and don’t just blindly trust what your device tells you.
The Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM) impacted the 1930’s because it paved the way for the civil rights movement in the 1960’s by beginning the start of trying to get black people’s rights, even though a lot white people felt like they didn’t want black people to have equal rights, but they were sympathetic towards them. The actions of the 1930’s movement are what made our society today. The WPA-activists are what led to the civil rights movement in the ‘60s, which granted many people of color rights, and continues to inspire many people today. Discrimination in the New Deal programs brought civil rights to the forefront of American politics and it continues to this day to be a defining cause in many politicians campaigns 2.
WPA-activists and contemporary digital activists are similar in that they fight against something that is very ingrained into society that many people don’t realize. Until people of color protested how they were treated in the New Deal, nobody except them realized what was happening. People today don’t realize how racist and sexist a lot of algorithms are until people like Safiya Noble point it out and how we often don’t go very in depth into our internet research and just take the first results at first glance. I think a lot of the contemporary techno- and algorithmic critics are using some of the same tactics as WPA-activists of speaking out and I think people are also reacting in the same way. When the WPA activists pointed out the racism in the New Deal and how people of color were treated in society, a lot of white people agreed but didn’t want to do anything about it, and it’s the same way here. When people learn about bias in algorithms, many are sympathetic but don’t want to change how they do research.
- Noble, Safiya. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l0nncfvgpnd5s59/AABVeDfbIkwnJdX6YEjXGHkBa/Readings?dl=0&preview=Noble%2C+Algorithms+of+Oppression+excerpt.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1
- Ritterhouse, Jennifer. “INTRODUCTION: The Same Journey, Writ Small, That the United States Was On.” In Discovering the South: One Man’s Travels through a Changing America in the 1930s, 1-19. CHAPEL HILL: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. http://www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu/stable/10.5149/9781469630953_ritterhouse.4
