Race against Technology: Coded Exposure

--- tags: ADS-S22 robots: noindex, nofollow --- # Race against Technology: Coded Exposure ## What does exposure mean? What are some examples of technologies that fail to see Blackness? What are some technologies that make Blackness hypervisible? What is scopic resistance? [Brandon Trahms] Exposure refers to the amount of light that a camera takes in when capturing a photo. The author talked about an example of which photo exposure was first calibrated with a white woman which caused black skin not show up as clearly as white skin. Polaroid invested in making improvements to their exposure technology but only as a result of Apartheid. ## Is photography objective? Why or why not? What were some of the consequences of using whiteness as the default setting for film? Why did the photographic industry begin to adapt film? What did you learn about the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers’ Movement? [Derek Borders] Photography is not just one thing. For that matter, objectivity itself is open to some interpretation. Photography, to me, brings to mind an art, craft, and profession more than a technology. The art of photography, being an art, is obviously not objective. We would like to think that photography equipment and technology are objective, or reasonably so at least. In this section, Benjamin makes a strong argument about the technology not being objective because it was initially designed and developed to capture white people, and did not do as well at capturing other skin tones. Personally, I see less nefariousness and more a recurring story of engineers developing products that are never as good as they'd like before they have to become profitable. I know it's not easy to get a good pic on my phone in varying light conditions, or even in the same conditions if they aren't optimal and I'm trying to capture my black dog and my brown dog in the same image. I don't see hidden racism there though. I see a technological inconvenience that looks and feels like about 10,000 other minor user experience issues I've experienced. Of course kodak use an attractive white woman for thier cards in the 50s. This was before the civil rights movement. Who was going to be buying cameras and film? White, middle class people. Every product has a target market. Were there undesirable and unequal (unintentionally racist even) effects from that choice? Of course. But what else, realistically, would Kodak have chosen in the 50s? When we're talking about for-profit, private companies, it makes sense that they would follow demand, albeit with some small influence from embarrasment and sustained public outrage, eventually. With adapting film to work better for more skin tones, demand was the driver, as we would expect, behind Kodak finally deciding to 'ethnicize' their Shirley Cards. Competition in Asian markets from Fujifilm. Corporations, by definition, exist for specific purposes, usually to make money. When their bottom line is affected is when they have to care about equality. This isn't ideal, but it's part of the economic model we've adopted as a society. The modern era of visibility and social media is at least lowering the bar for what it takes for social concerns to impact a corporation's bottom line. Though I'm not a huge fan of the more aggressive and toxic flavors of cancel culture that seem to thrive in this same environment. (It's also worth noting that these new cards still featured thin, traditionally attractive women, which is a whole other bag of issues somebody could write a book or ten about.) The Polaroid Revolutionary Workers' Movement was an organization founded by several African American employees of Polaroid in the US. This movment objected to Polaroid supplying 'photo-identification units' to the government of South Africa during Apartheid. These units were used in the production of 'passbooks'-like a passport you need all the time but only if you're black- that were one tool used to restrict the movement of black South Africans. The pressure eventually led to Polaroid pulling out of South Africa completely. I have mixed feelings about the situation. The movement is great, it's good that they affected real change that likely inconvenienced the government of South Africa in some measurable way. Increasing global awareness about Apartheid generally during that time is also good. On the other hand, I don't really care about the political and social stances of the companies that make products I use. If I found out Putin uses an iPhone, it wouldn't make me want to switch to Android. It might be different if I found out Apple supplied all kinds of technology to the Kremlin in some big shady contract deal it might be different, but only as a matter of security, rather than principle. I also don't care if a tech entrepreneur is a deadbeat dad or if the world's best golfer cheats on his supermodel wife everywhere he goes. [Rica Rebusit] - More subjective than objective because pictures say a lot more than words and are up for anyone’s interpretation. They tell a story in a way, to convey feelings and emotions therefore making it difficult to make a picture unbiased. The polaroid Revolutionary Workers’ Movement taught me that South Africa has a policy that segregates and discriminates on their race. Polaroid took pictures of passbooks which people of South Africa were to carry at all times and people did not like that and I can see where they are coming from. To deprive someone of basic human rights and capture that on film to make a profit is frustrating because their suffering is giving them profit. ## What did you know about the eugenics movement prior to reading this text? What did you learn about this harmful movement? What are some negative eugenic practices that are still practiced today? How does modern eugenics technology reinforce racist and ableist beliefs? How is the Movement for Black Lives implicitly an anti-eugenics movement? [Joseph Shifman] Before reading the text, I had learned about a eugenics movement in the United States and secret attempts to eugenicize Latina women working in the United States. I also knew about "fitter family contests", something i always found strange. I had not heard of *Buck v. Bell* which allowed involuntary sterilization of intellectually disabled people. Practices of negative eugenics are currently occurring all over the world. In the United States, prisons are offering prisoners lower sentences in exchange for sterilization. In China, Uyghurs are being sent to prison camps where there is speculation of eugenics. Embryo scanning and other eugenics technologies project inner forces of racism and ableism. Parents make the conscious decision to reject or accept an embryo that falls within their acceptability range. Of course a parent would never deliberately choose for their child to be disables, right? Would a parent go through the same process if they knew their child's future skin color? The BLM movement is anti-eugenics because it aims to uplift and sustain the Black community. This is the opposite of eugenics, which aims to stop less desirable people from reproducing and having a future. ## How has predictive guilt operated as a cornerstone of police work? What are some examples of how crime and victimization are visually represented? Can algorithms be used to accurately detect innocence and criminality? Why or why not? [Matt Solone] - Predictive guilt has operated as a cornerstone of police work ever since the Supreme Courts hearing on Terry v Ohio where they stated that the police can stop and 'frisk' if they belive that an individual "reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person ‘may be armed and presently dangerous." It gives the police the right to stop whoever they want based on appearance alone. Crime and victimization are visually represented, I would say, mostly by the big news media and the same incident could have the ciminal and victim switched depending on the audience the news provider is trying to adhere too.I do not think that algorithms could accuratly detect inoocence or criminality as to all algorithms, whether we mean to or not, there is a bias to them that could favor one side of spectrum and thus make it almost a weapon against a certait part of society. ## What did you know about Saartjie (“Sara”) Baartman prior to reading this text? How was Baartman subjected to violent exposure throughout her life and after her death? Why did the South African committee that negotiated the return of her remains decline to test them? How can privacy be created or upheld for people who are already publicly exposed? [Ethan Nguyen] I did not know anything about Saartjie Baartman prior to reading this text. Baartman was subjected to violent exposure throughout her life as she was forcibly taken from her home in South Africa to Europe, in 1810, where she was publicly displayed for audiences. After her death, she was dissected and her remains were put on display. Despite some claims that questioned the veracity of the remains returned to South Africa by France in 2002, the South African committee that negotiated the return of her remains declined to test them as they viewed doing as repeating the insulting experience that Baartman endured throughout her life. Benjamin argues that privacy can be created for people who are already publicly exposed through strategic exposure citing Emmett Till and the organization Stop LAPD Spying Coalition as examples. [Skip Moses] I had never heard of Saartjie Baartman prior to reading this text. Baartment was not only displayed like an object, she was the subject of inhumane experiments. The committee declined to test her remains because it would only serve to put Sara through further unwilling experimentation. The question is not clear to me. Entropy only flows one way, so once information is exposed I do not see how we could retroactively create privacy. It seems we would need to follow the South African committee's example and not conduct the experiment. Even if the information is publicly available, we would need to refrain from using it to draw conclusions. [Faith Fatchen] I too did not know anything about Saartjie Baartman prior to reading this text. She was taken from her home to Europe to then be displayed to audiences. She was displayed as a part of "freak shows". She was eventually studied and dissected by a lead scientist at the time. She continued to be exploited after her death. Her skeleton, brain and genitals were displayed until 1974. Ethan recapped the reasoning of the South African committee perfectly. Privacy for those already exposed does not just mean keeping things from view but also strategically displaying. In essence I believe Benjamin means to shed light on what is happens , so we can understand what is happening to others. ## What did you learn about the UK’s Human Provenance Pilot Project, India’s Unique Identity Project and Kuwait’s National DNA Initiative? How do these initiatives interact with global borders? How do they create and reinforce a digital caste system? What could resistance to these forms of exposure look like? [Joshua Vong] - One thing I learned about the Human Provenance Pilot (HPP) is that employers could request human samples if they find someone suspicious. From here it would trace back their origin if they were from Kenya for example they could be deported, this is also known as “nationality swapping.” For India’s unique identity project I learned that it’s for residents called Aadhaar , each Aadhaar has a unique number used for identification and other social services. What surprised me about Kuwait’s national DNA initiative is that it’s required and failure to do so could result in a large fine or even prison. These initiatives interact with global borders by having an identification of sorts from a person’s background, basically being able to label a person. These types of systems could create or influence a digital caste system by having people being organized into groups. They would check your background and place of origin, from there people are put into a grouping system in which one group will have an advantage over the other, whether it’s by accessing social services or denied by a job, these systems will enforce these types of behaviors. One of the types of resistance I see from these is to just simply refuse these systems, however in doing so could result in an employer rejecting a job application, being outcast from a group, or even paying a large fine. Another possible resistance would be forging documents or identification, which happens today in some cases, but could also lead to jail time.