The unbearable whiteness of tech bros

That title may feel a little in-your-face. 

It happened because I got mad. I got mad at myself for not just coming right out and saying that the problem was white people, and then I got mad that it felt so necessary to cushion the blow because white people are so sensitive about their skin color. 

Allow me to insert my periodic reminder that I am white and I do know it. I'm not trying to fool anyone about that. I am also not ashamed of it, nor am I trying to make anyone else feel ashamed of being white. However, our society has a legacy of patriarchy that has reflected and sustained a certain power structure, and we have to deal with that. As much as I love kindness, an individual commitment to niceness will not fix this.

Now let's get back to the movie.

In The Social Dilemma we get a parade of white men (Jaron Lanier's dreadlocks do not make him any less white), most of whom got rich off of social media and now feel bad about it. They have been thinking about it deeply - one has co-founded a center - and yet somehow they don't offer anything really helpful. 

Maybe they are talking to the wrong people.

Personally, I wanted to scream "Where are the Black women?"

I had included multiple links in the previous posts that approached that, but here is another article I like:

https://techonomy.com/2020/09/the-social-dilemmas-blindspot/

We disagree somewhat on the statistics - I remember an additional brown guy - but I am not going to watch it again. It wasn't that great, and it's more important to follow the information that will help. There are people who have been working on this. I want to say more about that later. Today I want to focus on the reasons for the gap.

Early in the film, the interviewer asked several of the subjects to name the problem and got a bunch of blank stares. I was saying "People. It's people. Say people." Then someone did say it, so we're getting closer, right? But still not doing anything with it.

They did kind of poke at how structural racism can be a factor. There was a line about it being white guys, and they showed some footage related to white supremacists. The family was carefully made a blended family, so you had two races represented. And yet, they still just couldn't come out and identify racism as a key problem. The white family members had more character development; the white talking heads got more screen time.

Here's the thing: people - at least especially white people - get easily offended about racism. I felt that pressure myself in just writing about the movie, and yet, I know that I am not going to get anywhere without addressing it; I would like to see proof that Jeff Orlowski knows that too. 

Even more, I would like to see Tristan Harris (no relation) talk about the conversations he has had with people who have traced the spread of white supremacy through different aspects of internet use. I would like to see him talk about seeking out people who have faced online harassment. Many of those people will be women, and women of color, and Black women, and they will be queer and non-binary and some will have disabilities and knowing all of that WHY IS THIS A PARADE OF WHITE MEN?

No offense, white men. I am fond of many of you. I also know that society has prioritized you in a way that can make it very uncomfortable for you to have to consider the opinions of people who are not white and male. I have seen levels of offense taken at some questions that should be really surprising (because the questions are actually pretty mild), but then it happens often enough that it loses the ability to surprise. No, it doesn't mean that everything is easy for you; but that was never the point. When you won't listen to that, though, and when you won't allow a point that doesn't have you at the center, well, then you suck.

And when a subset of white men - and mind you, they are frequently not poor white men but raised in affluent areas and getting good educations with connection to capital - controls the conversation around technology, there should be nothing surprising about the technology reflecting and exacerbating patriarchy. It would require effort and awareness to change that.

Therefore, it is also completely logical that these are not the best people to solve the problem.

I mean, I guess it's nice that some of them acknowledge there is a problem. When we say "If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem", I can see how they think they should become the solution. Great. It's going to require de-centering. It's going to require listening to people who do not look or sound like you, and paying them and crediting them. 

"Disrupt" is a very popular word in tech, but if the only disruption is that some new white men become rich, it's not that big a disruption, is it? 

To be fair, The Social Dilemma focused on the bad that is done, while briefly mentioning the good in the beginning. There is a lot of good, and people from the margins have used that bandwidth effectively, and then been targeted for it. Listen to them.

And because I think a lot of people have heard that we need to listen to Black women but don't really understand what that means or why it is important, that is what I am going to try to address next.