All In National Meeting Keynote Plenaries: A Masterclass on Racial Literacy for the 21st Century

By Solomon Collins, Communications Associate at Data Across Sectors for Health

Dr. Ruha Benjamin

In her keynote, Racial Literacy for the 21st Century, critically acclaimed author and sociologist Dr. Ruha Benjamin shows how racism isn’t a historic relic, but it is productive: adapting and manifesting into new forms during new times to mirror biases that lie in ourselves and our society.

While methods of data collection, facial recognition, and artificial intelligence are a few examples of advancements in tech that have become relatively normal in our lives, they have also come under fire for how they can enable discrimination. But technology isn’t the sole culprit – it’s a tool that can: bring age-old racism into the future or lay a path for both health equity and racial literacy. But before we start building new solutions, Dr. Ruha Benjamin advises us to: address our distorted views and unlearn racist undertones (and overtones) in the medical industry and our society to better equip ourselves to create equitable outcomes moving forward.

Fixing Distorted Views 

In her presentation, she uses policing, education and opinions of Americans to show how racism distorts our abilities to: read reality, relate to one another and self-identify. In the case of adulthood and profiling, she shares the case of the Miami Police Department and how its use of Black male photos for target practice was leaked – showing how racism can be institutionalized so people literally practice anti-Black violence in their training. Next, she shares a case study of how eye tracking technology was used in a school and found how teachers’ implicit bias was to focus on Black students for disciplinary action – even when the students were child actors trained to act similarly. And lastly, she cites a survey done by Stanford that showed that some New Yorkers supported more punitive policies when they were shown data of higher incarceration along with images of Black people.

“Anything that has been made can be counteracted.”

By breaking down this type of behavior among people in different industries, Dr. Benjamin highlights her main point: only showing people data about systemic bias, etc. doesn’t make people choose equitable actions. She argues that because much effort has been put into telling anti-Black narratives that “rely on narratives of criminality”, etc. that a denaturalization (or unlearning) needs to take place to counteract the constructs society has made.

Unlearning Old Doctrine 

In the second half of her session, Dr. Ruha Benjamin dove deep into examples of old racially-charged doctrine in the medical field and made many parallels to how certain concepts manifest in people’s mindsets today. “The more we think of racial categorization as God-given or imputable, the less likely we are to question and less likely to try to change the inequalities that persist,” she said. And to do so, she advised that people actively unlearn the concept of a racial hierarchy and to highlight anti-racist science / medical practices.

From the highly contested propaganda of French naturalist Georges Cuvier, to contemporary images that evoke symbolism of a racial hierarchy, she gave many examples in media and also referenced Google Search to show how Cuvier-era preference for Eurocentric features manifests on the internet in a simple search for “professional hair styles”. She notes that a pattern emerges in which our technology “mirror[s] our racist associations and social practices – Black women’s natural hair styles are under unprofessional hair.”

As it relates to the medical establishment, she highlighted the establishment’s initial reporting on George Floyd’s death as a prime example of the “medical racism playbook” that put the onus of Floyd’s death on him rather than excessive force. “The medical establishment has not simply been a bystander, but has aided and abetted explicit and implicit forms of racism in part by creating scientific sounding alibis for the powers at be.”

Key Takeaway: Racism Is Productive

“Race and technology shape one another.”

Dr. Ruha Benjamin concluded the presentation portion of her session by honing in on how we are taught about racism: we’re taught to think of it as outdated or a glitch in human behavior. Contrarily, she presents another way for viewing it as innovative, systemic and forward looking so as not to exclude it from technological advancement but to re-evaluate how they relate to one another.

“Race and technology shape one another…social norms, values and structures all exist prior to any given tech development. It’s not simply the impact that we need to be concerned about, but the inputs – that make some inventions appear inevitable and desirable.”

To experience Dr. Ruha Benjamin’s complete session, watch the video here.