LIS 202 Exam 2

scientific racism

the construction of race via the encoding of white supremacy in the definition of race and in discussions of the supposed nature of racial difference

ruha benjamin’s concept of the new jim code

describes the encoding of racial discrimination not in the law but rather within digital technological

jim crow (character)

racist minstrel character by which white performers wore blackface makeup to mock Black people. became the most prominent representations of African-American people in US popular culture

jim crow (legal)

a set of laws that responded to Black emancipation, citizenship, and enfranchisement (13,14,15 amendments). prevented equal access to private and public places

new jim crow

mass incarceration. there are stark racial disparities in mass incarceration that are historically and deliberately produced.

new jim code

the encoding of racial discrimination between digital tools. these discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies and ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions

algorithm

a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or perform a computation

what can an algorithm do?

optimize, amplify, and distort

optimization

the values an algorithm is constructed to weigh in its decision tree

amplification

when certain results are favored by being more heavily weighed

distortion

the degree of discrepancy between some factors

whiteness

an ethnic identifier, a descriptor of skin tone, a legal category, a set of cultural ideas about beauty, behavior, and power. flexible over time

naturalization act of 1790

limited citizenship to “free White persons”

where do health information divides come from?

clinical date systems, measurement tools, algorithms, and medical knowledge production

biases become embedded in systems:

medical tools are built on assumptions which become standard practice, bias becomes infrastructure, affects real decisions and outcomes