Session Summary: Systemic Racism: Racism Without Racists

Brian Lowery: Today, I want to talk about racism. When you use the word “racism,” what do you mean?

Charlton McIlwain: That’s a good question to start off with, because the term is complicated and people have varied definitions for it. One thing I think racism is not is individual people who do “racist things.” Racism for me is institutional, systemic, and structural. To break it down some more: When I say “institutional” or “structural” racism, I’m talking about the laws that govern our everyday lives that produce differential access to power, privilege, opportunity, and resources. For example, African Americans and other groups of color have less access to quality healthcare in the U.S. That is something that I would define as institutional, systemic racism; healthcare as an institution works differently and less well for African Americans and people of color than it does for white people. I also want to address the systemic nature of racism, which is that racism permeates and connects across institutions, resulting in racism policies in one institution triggering and sustaining those in another. This can be compared to the system in a thermostat: We program it to maintain a certain temperature, and it acts and reacts based on outside forces to remain at that temperature. The disparate effect COVID has had on African Americans can be seen as an example of this: The move to remote learning, for example, has disproportionately affected those who don’t have access to the necessary technology required to actively participate in school, which primarily consists of Black and brown folks. 

Brian Lowery: Is every difference in the outcomes of Black, white, and Latinx people an indication of racism from your perspective? 

Charlton McIlwain: From my perspective, yes. People often ask, “What about the role of the individual? Are these simply things that happen, or are people causing them to happen?” Most of the time I leave individuals out of it, not because I think individuals don’t play a role, but because we get overly concerned with individual people and begin to think that only one racist person can create all of these institutional racist practices or lead to these kinds of disparate outcomes. I like to focus on the outcomes rather than the intentions of particular individuals. 

Brian Lowery: When you look at things like the civil rights movement and desegregation, it’s clear that there have been a lot of positive changes in this country. Using your analogy of the thermostat, we can compare the state of our country to the setting or temperature on the thermostat. Who sets the thermostat’s temperature?

Charlton McIlwain: First, I think we need to take historical context into account. The depth of which racism is institutionalized comes from the founding of our country as a fundamentally racist country, who did not see nonwhite people as fully human. Many of those policies, practices, and sentiments have all lingered and continued. So, in one sense, we could talk about historical context as being a driver. There are also very real ways in which influential people who are at the head of major institutions that govern our lives perpetuate racism. In my book, Black Software, I discuss how in the 1960s, the introduction of new and more powerful technology led to many questions of how this new power and ability should be used to better society. Almost immediately, it was put to use to attempt to solve the problem of Black people fighting for their rights on the streets. The leadership of the country, from the president to the heads of major corporations, gathered together to discuss how they could solve this particular problem of crime — but more specifically, the problem of Blackness. A confluence of those two factors — history, and people in charge of these large institutions that continue to renew these sorts of racist practices — are really what determine the outcomes we think about when it comes to race in our country. 

Brian Lowery: In your book, it’s not clear to me whether you think the uses of the technology are problematic and racist, or if the technology itself is problematic and racist. In other words, is it inherent in the tools, or is it just the use of those tools? 

Charlton McIlwain: I don’t think it is inherent in the tool. Ethernet cables, bits and bytes, hardware, software, and other forms of technology have no individual motivation. They do, however, have politics, because human beings decide what interests they will serve. It’s difficult to separate technology, purely and simply because it exists, from the ways in which we use it. The problems that we ask technology to solve are framed by humans — whether it’s the problem of people illegally crossing the border, or of certain groups of people who are said to disproportionately commit crime. When we ask computers to solve these problems, we don’t have an objective problem in mind. Instead, we already have a perception of who the source of the problems is, and allow the technology to unleash on them negatively and devastatingly.

Brian Lowery:  In your book, you talk about how these tools were used during the civil rights movement to push back against some of the progress that had been made. Could you elaborate on that?

Charlton McIlwain: I largely lay the blame on those who were in power at that particular time — specifically, President Johnson and his attorney general. They were the ones who decided that the U.S. had a problem of crime, and that this crime had a Black face. Many of Johnson’s reports and crime commissions clearly laid out that the problem of crime primarily came from Black people in urban areas and indicated that they were the problem that needed solving. When the scientists and engineers were then brought in and asked to address this problem, they were in a situation where they were already designing for something very specific,  something that had already been framed. 

Brian Lowery: We’ve been discussing the civil rights movement that took place in the 1960s, but as you know, something very similar is going on in our country today, which is that many Black folks are openly expressing their frustration through rioting and taking to the streets. Obviously, technology has only continued to evolve. Help me think about how this is playing out right now.

Charlton McIlwain: I would say it doesn’t look too different now from how it looked back then. In 2018, a report came out about how the NYPD had placed video analytics into its cameras and was sharing all of their data with IBM so IBM could develop an AI tool that could identify criminal suspects based on race. It was about a real, ongoing relationship between the NYPD and IBM since the mid 1960s to build these types of surveillance technology. They were essentially developing technological tools to racially profile. When we saw Black people protesting and clashing with the police following the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, we saw an increase in the usage of the same facial recognition technologies, which resulted in many Black folks being rounded up, questioned, and even jailed. We are still seeing the same people as problems, and it still shapes how we decide to use our technology.

Brian Lowery: It’s really hard for me not to think of it as individual people, even though you have said that it’s deeper than just that. But if we could change who’s in charge of the police departments, for example, why would that not be enough?

Charlton McIlwain: I think it’s great when a city council decides that they want to make a fundamental change in their policing system. But what happens when that city council gets turned over? How does this continue? The question, I think, is not how we can shut something down in this immediate moment, but how we can do so consistently. Even if we are able to make a change in law enforcement, we would still need to make a change in the courts, which consist of an entirely different set of actors. This is where we get back to the systemic nature of racism; it’s all tied together. 

Brian Lowery: You have also said that it’s not enough to stamp bias out of algorithms. So what should people who want to make the system better be doing?

Charlton McIlwain: I think the first step is just truly understanding the nature of racism: what it is and how it gets perpetuated. I don’t think we’ve yet really settled on that. When we think about the executive order just signed by the president that says that we can’t teach young people that the U.S. was and still is a racist country, for example, we have to come to some terms with understanding what racism actually is. When we get to issues of race in technology, we have to start asking ourselves questions about how we imagine our technology, what new technology we should design and build, for what purpose, and whose interests they should serve. What technology can we build today that can help us solve the inequalities around race in hiring and employment?  How can we build a technology that gets us around discrimination in the housing and morgage lending area? These are the types of questions we have to ask ourselves, as opposed to simply asking what kind of technology we could profit the most from. 

Brian Lowery: The idea of tech fixing racism seems absurd to me. I have yet to see the development of broad technologies that have served to reduce inequalities. Help me think about this. What is the positive role that tech can play?

Charlton McIlwain: I agree with you. I think there is a vast difference in what we can do and what we will do. Those with power and capital often have no profit motive to design technology whose fundamental interest and value is in fixing racism. People profit tremendously from racism, so it’s hard to get them to see long-term economic returns from upturning it. We have the engineering power and ingenuity to do it, but what we lack is simply willpower. However, I am pessimistic that it could happen given our history and present circumstances. 

Brian Lowery: I want to turn briefly to technology and activism. On one hand, I see the power that technology has given for large groups of people to come together. On the other hand, by reducing the barrier to communicate, it also doesn’t require the same type of commitment. How do you think about the effect of tech on people’s commitment to making change?

Charlton McIlwain: I agree with you; it’s a mixed bag. Black Lives Matter, for example, has been impactful, but only in one particular dimension: driving attention to the problem. That impact is sure, strong, and necessary if we’re ever going to have any kind of change. However, I think that we have also seen a lag in people that are committed for the long term. That’s why, I think, we can’t be solely mobilized in that one-dimensional way. All of the true activists I know have completely dismissed the power of digital media to accomplish anything. The work of real activists is of organizing, capacity building, and working to fundamentally change and shape systems. Technology is a mere tool to drive attention, but the deep and hard work is that of organizing and changing policy. I don’t think that’s something that can be accomplished through simply retweeting an article or liking a post. Social media is by no means an end-all, be-all to this problem. 

Brian Lowery: Right now, there’s a lot of energy. What would you have people do if it was up to you, and you wanted to change the setting on the thermostat? 

Charlton McIlwain: Sometimes, you have to burn things all the way to the ground before you can build them up again. We need people to change laws, run for elected office, or produce knowledge and data that demonstrate that things are going in the wrong direction. I think people should be educating themselves on what the problems are and finding organizations that are deeply and truly committed to these issues to help them channel their action in a substantial way. Engagement has to be part of the solution. 

Brian Lowery: When you say that we have to “burn it down,” how would we even go about starting that? Are we living in a vicious cycle of change, reversal, change, etc., that’s impossible to get out of?

Charlton McIlwain: Racism is not new, and there has been significant change in our country. Those changes have all been incremental and have all come from taking advantage of major moments and people being focused on a singular problem that we face. Although it is easy to be pessimistic about this situation, optimism comes from people that are energized and active and committed to making change in the small corner of the world that they are working in. That’s what we have to hold on to — that there are people that are working towards making sure that the next 50 years are different. I would have never thought that this year we would be talking about defunding the police. That really goes to show that things are possible, even if we can’t currently see how we would get there.

Brian Lowery: In my opinion, there is no such thing as a finish line; this is an ongoing battle and commitment that will take longer than our lifetimes. I’m afraid people are starting to get tired. What do you think about that?

Charlton McIlwain: I agree, I think it’s naive to think that these goals could be achieved in our lifetimes or even our children’s lifetimes. What persists is the struggle. If people stop struggling, that’s when I would begin to worry. But as long as we still are, I’m optimistic that that incremental change can happen. I think that we have had, and will continue to have, the ability to make progress.

Brian Lowery: Why don’t we spend more time talking directly to the people that currently benefit from lots of privilege? Should we be doing more to remind those people that they have incentives to want this to end well?

Charlton McIlwain: I mean at some point I think people will get sick and tired of being sick and tired. And then what do they do? They came after the people with resources and power because that’s what they’ve been bereft of for so long. I think there’s a way to remind folks that opening and expanding opportunity and allowing more people to have sustainable, happy lifestyles is positive. The election coming up is truly a fork in the road. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little bit afraid of what could be. But these things are up to us: We make the decisions, we decide which way we want to go. As much as what happened in the 1960s set us on a course to get to where we are now, I think this moment in history will determine the course of our future for a long time to come.