Intro to "Race, Rhetoric, and Technology"
Banks' introduction presents compelling arguments for and presentations of the African American rhetoric, specifically as it's been realized in the digital sphere. We've been talking a lot in this class about avoiding the fallacious binaries of thinking about technology: It's all or nothing with technology in the classroom. The more we integrate technology, the worse writers our students become. We have to lower standards to integrate technology. It's either the alphabetic mode or the digital. I could go on. But the point is, too often, we oversimplify the "question" of multimodality, and I'm struck by Banks' point that the African American community is particularly well-poised to help the predominately-still white digital culture adopt a more complex perspective on the issue because of the former's long-standing "pursuit of a transformative access" (2). Marginalized throughout history, the African American can speak to and model how to engage "in a space beyond the narrow polemics of whether Technology is ultimately evil or wonderful, but rather develop and articulate models of the specific kinds of practices that can provide excluded members of society access to systems of power and grounds on which those systems can be challenged and ultimately changed in meaningful ways" (2). In other words, this community, perhaps more so than any other, has learned how to utilize current cultural currency to converse, question, and ultimately spark change. Similarly, we need not be either for or against technology; we too can learn how to meaningfully engage with technology by using it-- and not just to do so mindlessly, rather for real social and cultural improvement.
I'm reminded of the U.S. Treasury's recent decision to replace the face of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with that of Harriet Tubman.
Admittedly, this was a victory fought for by a Women's Rights group, not specifically the African American community, but nevertheless, I find it interesting to think about the representation of an African American on our currency-- our material medium for our value system (to harken back to McCluhan), especially on the perhaps-most-frequented of our currencies, the $20 bill. It strikes me as perhaps somewhat parallel to this idea of "transformative access" Banks attributes to the African American community. What the African American has learned how to do-- through generations of discrimination and exclusion, mind us all-- is use "the system" to change or question or make a difference in the system. I think of Twain's controversial Jim of Huckleberry Finn, a character [frustratingly, to many] complex because of his multilayered masking. I think of Countee Cullen, the Harlem Renaissance NYU & Harvard grad who wrote classical sonnets and metered poetry ala white canonical men before him, in order that he too may have a voice of protest in the predominantly white-male arena of intellectuals, artists, and academia.
(This poem's nature and structure exemplifies him well.) Admittedly, others have taken different approaches in the Civil Rights Movement, though Banks aptly likens both Malcolm X and MLK, Jr. as men who used the medium around them to effectively communicate their message and affect change.
Such trains of thought and lines of discussion as this one really should have no end, for we are far from resolved on this issue, as Banks rightfully points out. Consequently, I, undeniably a person of white privilege in this country, feel more than a little insensitive "wrapping up" this painfully-brief blog entry as I do now, for my discussion here is far from substantial or sufficiently representative of the tensions and inequalities still whirling about us-- especially in technology. If there's anything I want to pull from this in summary, though, it's humility. One key to effective influence--racially, culturally, and digitally-- is and always has been humility-- a deep-seeded acknowledgement that I have much I can learn from another.