Engineers designing technologies and systems produce problems when they do not account for existing biases in society. Designers have a mandate to make technologies efficiently, economically, and ethically. This textbook is written for both students and practicing designers, engineers, researchers, or artists who want to create more ethical designs; it aims to help readers understand how race is implicated in technology design. Learning from historical and contemporary case studies of engineering and architecture projects will help readers see clearly the power of design decisions to either perpetuate or contest racism. Chapter exercises will change engineers’ mental models to see the bias inherent to existing technological design. By incorporating the knowledge and insights of community-based experts into design projects, readers will begin to practice anti-racist leadership and counter-expertise.
Author(s): Logan D. A. Williams
Series: Synthesis Lectures on Engineers, Technology, & Society, 27
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 168
City: Cham
Preface and Acknowledgements
About This Book
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction: Anti-Racism and Counter-Expertise
1.1 How Can We Create Anti-Racist Design?
1.2 Designers Facilitating Anti-Racist Social Change
1.3 Industrial Place Norms and Counter-Expertise
1.4 Conclusion
1.5 Reflexive Design Tool: Activist Engineering Reflection Questions
References
2 Rational and Moral Black Artisans, Inventors and Engineers, 1680s–1920s
2.1 The Racist Foundations of American Engineering
2.1.1 Africans Knowledge and Labor Built the Southern Agricultural Economy
2.1.2 Land Grabs Built Endowments for US Land-Grant Universities
2.1.3 Black Congressmen Built Southern Education Infrastructure
2.2 Harassed and Threatened Black Artisans and Inventors
2.2.1 Post-Civil War Black Education of Artisans and Engineers
2.2.2 Origins of Tuskegee
2.2.3 The Second Morrill Act and Deliberately Dismantling Black Civil Rights
2.2.4 Tuskegee Trained Stationary Engineers
2.2.5 Post-Civil War Black Inventors
2.2.6 Migrating for Employment and the Hope of Justice
2.3 Case: Countering the Myths that Blacks Are Primitive and Lack Morality
2.3.1 Myth: Blacks Are Primitive and Not Capable of the Independent Thought and Reasoning Required of Participants in a Civil Pact for Shared Governance
2.3.2 Myth: Blacks Lack Morality, Are Unreliable, Lazy and Superstitious
2.3.3 Black Progress as Educated Business and Property Owners
2.4 Conclusion
References
3 Intelligent Black Technicians and Engineers, 1920s–1950s
3.1 Educating Black Engineers
3.1.1 Black Students at Northern Predominantly White Colleges
3.1.2 Public Land-Grant Engineering Curriculum and Accreditation
3.1.3 Segregationists Believe Blacks Cannot Be Engineers and Managers
3.1.4 Black Public Land-Grant Universities Were Deliberately Underfunded
3.1.5 Engineering at Howard University
3.2 Federal Employment Provides Opportunities to Black Engineers
3.2.1 Training Black Technicians in World War I
3.2.2 Federally Employed Black Workers During the Great Depression
3.2.3 Training Black Technicians in World War II
3.2.4 Stereotypes About Black Americans as Engineers and Researchers
3.2.5 Black Engineers Conducting Military Research and Development
3.2.6 Exceptions to the Racially Segregated Military-Industrial Complex
3.2.7 HBCU Engineering Programs Become Accredited
3.3 Case: Countering the Myth that Blacks Lack the Intelligence to Do Mathematics
3.4 Conclusion
References
4 Your Diverse Design Team is Competent: How to Lead Relationally
4.1 Aversive Racism
4.1.1 Minority Engineers’ Technical Competence Underestimated
4.1.2 Diverse Teams Have Better Ideas
4.1.3 Valuing Diverse Leadership Combats Aversive Racism
4.2 Relational Leadership
4.3 Case: Countering Racist Businesses in Greensboro, North Carolina
4.3.1 Meeting Each Other
4.3.2 The First Six Days
4.3.3 Success After Almost Six Months
4.3.4 Allies as Relational Leaders
4.3.5 Students as Relational Leaders
4.4 Conclusion
4.5 Reflexive Design Tool: Practicing Relational Leadership
References
5 The Race Audit: Mitigating Environmental Racism in Civil Infrastructure
5.1 Foundations of Environmental Racism
5.1.1 Bigoted Discourses
5.1.2 Creating the National Parks and the EPA
5.1.3 Racist Policies and Practices to Segregate Neighborhoods
5.2 Environmentally Racist Outcomes
5.2.1 Disproportionate Harm by Hazards
5.2.2 Unequal Access to Benefits
5.2.3 Disproportionate Harm by the Extractive Economy
5.3 Designing the Built Environment to Exclude
5.3.1 Exclusionary Designs Create Confusion and Limit Access
5.3.2 Blight, Arterial Highways and Slum Clearance
5.4 Race Audits of Infrastructure
5.5 Case: Countering Racist Urban Planning in Chicago
5.5.1 Introducing the Black Women of Wentworth Gardens
5.5.2 From Slum Clearance to a New Shopping Center
5.5.3 Public Interest Architecture
5.6 Conclusion
5.7 Reflexive Design Tool: Visual Chronology Exercise
References
6 Data Racism, Machine Learning and Contextualizing Design
6.1 Data Racism and Racialization of Technology
6.2 State Power and Technology Design and Implementation
6.2.1 IBM, Prediction Algorithms, and State Power
6.2.2 Resisting State Power with Sousveillance
6.3 Case: Countering State-Supported Data Racism
6.3.1 Gender Shades
6.3.2 The Argument for Contextualizing Design: Afrotectopia
6.4 Conclusion
6.5 Reflexive Design Tool: Pyramid of White Supremacy
References
Index
