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Race and racism in Internet Studies: A review and critique Race and racism in Internet Studies: A review and critique
Jessie Daniels
CUNY Hunter College
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DOI: 10.1177/1461444812462849
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Race and racism in Internet
Studies: A review and critique
Jessie Daniels
City University of New York, USA
Abstract
Race and racism persist online in ways that are both new and unique to the Internet,
alongside vestiges of centuries-old forms that reverberate significantly both offline and
on. As we mark 15 years into the field of Internet studies, it becomes necessary to
assess what the extant research tells us about race and racism. This paper provides
an analysis of the literature on race and racism in Internet studies in the broad areas
of (1) race and the structure of the Internet, (2) race and racism matters in what we
do online, and (3) race, social control and Internet law. Then, drawing on a range of
theoretical perspectives, including Hall’s spectacle of the Other and DuBois’s view of
white culture, the paper offers an analysis and critique of the field, in particular the use
of racial formation theory. Finally, the paper points to the need for a critical understanding
of whiteness in Internet studies.
Keywords
DuBois, Internet, race, racial formation theory, racism, review, whiteness, white racial
frame
Introduction
During the early days of the Internet, some scholars theorized that the emergence of
virtual environments and a culture of fantasy would mean an escape from the bounda-
ries of race and the experience of racism. A few imagined a rise in identity tourism, that
is, people using the playful possibilities of gaming to visit different racial and gender
identities online (Nakamura, 2002; Turkle, 1997). There were early edited volumes that
suggested race and racism would be foundational to Internet studies (e.g., Kolko et al.,
Corresponding author:
Jessie Daniels, CUNY-Graduate Center and Hunter College, 365 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10016, USA.
Email: jdaniels@gc.cuny.edu
462849
NMS15510.1177/1461444812462849new media & societyDaniels
2012
Article
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696 new media & society 15(5)
2000; Nelson et al., 2000). Yet, the reality that emerged is quite different from either of
these initial imaginings. The Internet has not provided an escape route from either race
or racism, nor has the study of race or racism proven to be central to the field of Internet
studies. Instead, race and racism persist online in ways that are both new and unique to
the Internet, alongside vestiges of centuries-old forms that reverberate both offline and
on. As we mark 15 years into the field of Internet studies, it becomes necessary to assess
what the extant research tells us about race and racism. In this paper, I provide an analysis
of the literature on race and racism in Internet studies in the broad areas of (1) race and
the structure of the Internet, (2) race and racism matters in what we do online, and (3)
race, social control and Internet law. Then, drawing on a range of theoretical perspec-
tives, including Hall’s spectacle of the Other (1997) and Du Bois’s view of white cul-
ture (2003/1920), I offer an analysis and critique of the field, in particular the use of
racial formation theory. Finally, I point to the need for a critical understanding of
whiteness and the white racial frame in Internet studies.
Race and structure of the Internet
The Internet was developed in specific geographic places, institutional contexts and his-
torical moments that helped shaped the technological innovations known as ‘the web’
(Berners-Lee and Fischetti, 2008). While tracing those narratives is beyond the scope of
this paper, an examination of the ways that race was, and continues to be, implicated in
the structure of the Internet is relevant.
Infrastructure and design
The role of race in the development of Internet infrastructure and design has largely been
obscured (Taborn, 2008). As Sinclair observes, ‘The history of race in America has been
written as if technologies scarcely existed, and the history of technology as if it were
utterly innocent of racial significance’ (Sinclair, 2004: 1). Yet, race is implicated in the
very structure of the ‘graphic user interface’ (GUI). For example, Everett observes that
she is perpetually taken aback by DOS-commands designating a ‘Master Disk’ and
‘Slave Disk,’ a programming language predicated upon a digitally configured ‘master/
slave’ relationship with all the racial meanings coded into the hierarchy of command
lines (2002: 125). Nakamura writes about drop-down menus and clickable boxes that are
used to categorically define ‘race’ online, tracing them back to race as a key marketing
category (Nakamura, 2002). Beyond selection and targeted marketing via race, elements
of the interface are racialized. The nearly ubiquitous white hand-pointer acts as a kind of
avatar that in turn becomes ‘attached’ to depictions of white people in advertisements,
graphical communication settings and web greeting cards (White, 2006). The images of
racial or ethnic minorities and their relationship to IT infrastructure and design are either
as consumers or operators of the technological wizardry created by whites (Kevorkian,
2006; Taborn, 2008). Assumptions about the whiteness embedded in the infrastructure
and design get spoken when there are ruptures in that sameness, such as the introduction
of an African-American-themed web browser, Blackbird, in 2008. While Blackbird
caused quite a stir among those who had operated on the assumption of a race-blind
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Daniels 697
Internet,
1
the development of a racially themed browser is not qualitatively different
from, but rather an extension of, the racially targeted marketing facilitated by drop-down
menus and clickable boxes.
Industry
Race is built into the Internet industry. Many of the technological advances originally
developed that gave rise to the Internet and Internet studies were created in Northern
California, much of it in and around Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Those techno-
logical innovations made possible the rise in a new industrial sector centered in the
Santa Clara Valley area dubbed ‘Silicon Valley.’ Scholars working in this area note that
while the industry and the Valley touts itself as ‘diverse’ in web advertisements, the real-
ity is much different (Pitti, 2004). The industry, like the region, carried with it the ine-
qualities of race, class and gender of the social context. The tech firms in Silicon Valley
are predominantly led by white men and a few white women, yet the manual labor of
cleaning their offices and assembling circuit boards is done by immigrants and out-
sourced labor, often women living in the global south (Gajjala, 2004; Hossfeld, 2001;
Pitti, 2004; Shih, 2006). These inequalities are often also resisted in important ways by
and through networks based on race, class and gender. Shih’s work, for example, com-
paring the work experiences of immigrant Asian men and women to native-born white
women in the hi-tech industry of Silicon Valley suggests that racial/ethnic and gender
bias are actually ameliorated by the fact that highly skilled workers cultivate gender-
based and ethnic-based networks as resources that enable them to circumvent bias (Shih,
2006: 200).
Digital divides and mobile technology
Early in Internet studies, race was identified as an important variable for predicting
access and use of computers. In an initial study conducted by the Census Bureau under
the direction of the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
African-Americans were found to have lower rates than whites in both computer equip-
ment ownership and telephone service (NTIA, 1995). This finding was highly publi-
cized and quickly became known as ‘the digital divide,’ and launched a subfield of
research within Internet studies relating to race. The initial focus on computer owner-
ship shifted in subsequent versions of the study to Internet access (NTIA, 1999). Now,
these initial divides in ownership and access have largely converged (Leggon, 2006).
Researchers subsequently identified ‘second-level divides’ that focused on the relation-
ship between skills and Internet usage (Hargittai, 2002, 2012; Lenhart and Horrigan,
2003). Selwyn (2004) contends that digital divide formulations rely on the assumption
that Internet access and usage is desirable and beneficial for everyone when, in fact,
people might not be using the Internet because there is no perceived social benefit in
doing so. Brock (2006b) extends this argument to explain racial disparities and argues
that the paucity of Internet content relevant to Black interests may have more to do with
the slower Internet adoption rates than with current formulations of technological illit-
eracy. Much has changed since the mid-1990s when ‘digital divide’ research began and
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698 new media & society 15(5)
computer ownership and Internet access meant sitting before a desktop machine with a
wire plugged into a wall (Warschauer, 2003).
As Rheingold (2002) accurately predicted, the ‘next social revolution’ in computing
would be the advent of mobile technologies, and this development has had important
implications for race, racism and Internet studies. Mobile phones enabled with Internet
access are approaching ubiquity and, with that, bridging some of the divides noted in an
earlier era. According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project,
cell phone and wireless laptop Internet use each grew more prevalent between 2009 and
2010, and African-Americans and English-speaking Latinos continue to be among the
most active users of the mobile web. Cell phone ownership is higher among African-
Americans and Latinos than among whites (87% versus 80%) and minority cell phone
owners take advantage of a much greater range of their phones’ features compared with
white mobile phone users. In total, 64% of African-Americans access the Internet from a
laptop or mobile phone, a seven-point increase from the 57% who did so at a similar
point in 2009.
2
Along with these trends toward convergence, there are both hopeful and
troubling aspects of collective action centered on how race and racism became impli-
cated in these technologies (more about this below).
Race and racism matter in what we do online
Sassen (2002) has noted the way that the digital and the material are imbricated, that is,
the way they overlap significantly rather than exist in distinct, disparate realms. While
acknowledging these imbrications, my focus in the following section is on the digital and
the ways that race and racism matter in what we do online.
Identity and community
Several works early on in Internet studies pushed identity and community to the top of
the research agenda. Howard Rheingold’s Virtual Community (1993) captured the imag-
ination of a broad audience and influenced a generation of scholars, such as those in
Smith and Kollock’s edited Communities in Cyberspace (1999). Two volumes published
in the late 1990s highlighted the importance of identity, Sherry Turkle’s Life on the
Screen: Identity in the Age of Internet (1997) and Manuel Castells in The Power of
Identity, the second volume of his pioneering The Information Age trilogy (1997).
Although neither Rheingold nor Turkle explicitly address race,
3
Castells devotes a portion
of the second volume to a discussion of race and ethnicity (1997: 84–97). Since then, a
growing body of research points to the fact that people seek out racial identity and
community online. People use the Internet to both form and reaffirm individual racial
identity and seek out communities based on race and racial understandings of the world
(Byrne, 2008a, 2008b; Everett, 2004, 2008; Nakamura and Chow-White, 2011). Castells
notes that there is a constant struggle between globalization and identity (1997: 1). This
tension plays out in the global connectedness the web facilitates, which simultaneously
scaffolds identity and community within and among multiple diasporas that are a result,
at least in part, of the forces of globalization (Gajjala, 2004; Ignacio, 2006; Mitra, 2010).
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