Adam J. Banks’ Race,
Rhetoric and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground begins with Banks
discussing how African-Americans have always sought a third way to fight
binaries, which actually made me think a lot of queer culture. He writes “African Americans have always sought
‘third way’ answers to systematically racist exclusions, demanding full access
to and partcicipation in American society and its technologies on their own
terms, and working to transform both
the society and its technologies, to ensure that not only Black people but all
Americans can participate as full partners” (2). He explains that their
pursuit of transformative access can contribute a lot to rhet/tech theory.
Banks believes that African American rhetorical history shows very powerful
unities of identity. In his book, he focuses on a variety of contributions that
African Americans have made which have affected the transformation of America
and its technologies. In the introduction chapter he outlines each of the other
chapters. One of Banks main points that comes out in the first chapter is that
the digital divide is just as much about access and a “technological” problem
as it is a rhetorical one because of how it continues to exclude African
Americans from how we define and conceptualize it.
In the second chapter, Banks informs the readers that in the
late 1990s the digital divide was introduced as a concept that acknowledged the
differences in technology access for African Americans and other racial
minorities; however, within academia we have failed to recognize this part of
the “digital divide” concept and continue to ignore racial issues. Thus, the
digital divide is a rhetorical problem. Banks discusses how we talk about race
so seldom when it comes to technology within composition and rhetoric,
especially at conferences. Much of the chapter examines silence. He does seem
particularly pleased with the work of Cynthia Selfe. The Richardson article he
mentions was interesting because it is about how “women of olor, because of the
positions they often occupy as untenured or contingent faculty, do not have the
luxury of adopting critical positions on technological issues” (21). Banks
explains that eBlack consists of 5 parts: professional connection and
discourse, curriculum development through distance education, community
service, continuing struggle—the African American Radical Congress, and
Research Website on Malcolm X. “African
American rhetoric has always been multimedia, has always been about body and
voice and image, even when they only set the stage for language” (25). He
further explains that it is actually quite easy to see African Americans’
commitment to literacy as a technological one. He also thinks that we should
pay attention to rhetoric that is not necessarily oratory, though what is
oratory is very important. Banks continues to show how the digital divide is
quite connected to race. He gives statistics on access to computers. He writes
that “The history of African American rhetoric is, in many ways, one of
individuals and collectives of writers, speakers, visual artists, and designers
mastering , manipulating, and working around available technologies, even when
access to them had been denied the masses of Black people. Even though Banks
does not fully focus on the oratory and makes strong connections between the
railroad as a sort of technology, I think he could have made more connections
during slavery. For example, many African-American communities on plantations
would create songs together as a means of communicating what was happening in
the moment. I would regard that as a technology. Banks discusses access and how
the Clinton administration believed that by getting all schools connected and
with technology that it would be an equalizer in education. But Banks explains
that there is different kinds of access:
Material Access: begins with equality in the material
conditions that drive technology use or nonuse.
Functional Access: the skills and knowledge necessary to use
the tools effectively
Experimental Access: an access that makes the tools relevant
to peoples’ lives
Critical Access: must know whether technologies work for
budgets, curricula, and plans.
The biggest work is making access meaningful for African
Americans and other groups.
I saw more connections to queer rhetoric when Banks began
his chapter on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. When he writes that both saw
the rhetorical achievements that could be had by utilizing television, I
thought of ACT up and how they used counter media, really, their own media, infusing
the visual and the verbal in order to reach a wider audience and in a powerful
way. This chapter focuses on X and King’s manipulation of technologies for
rhetorical gains. Using visual rhetoric, King could show people across the
nation footage that would help convince them of the wrongdoings of our
government. Malcolm X would turn conversations while being interviewed on TV.
Malcolm X’s rhetorical genius often lay in his ability to force his opponents
onto the defensive, to justify their ideological assumptions before they could
attack his position” (53). Banks explains that X was always aware of how he
could manipulate technology, whereas King questioned the roles of technologies
in human lives (61). Banks explains that it is failure if we do not use print,
visual, and electronic effectively together.
In chapter 4, Banks focuses on use and how African Americans
engage African American discourse and language in the online space. These
online spaces Banks discusses mean three things: a repudiation of cyberspaces
theory that race is irrelevant online, that the importance of oral traditions
for the written is confirmed, and that black people take ownership of digital
spaces and that they should be considered in user studies. We need to pay
attention to black use online. Black Planet is discussed a lot in this chapter
and actually, Liz and I went on there when we were reading together and I
wasn’t super impressed. It was described as a one-click system in Banks’ book.
While I could see a lot of what was going on, I could understand much of it. I
was tempted to create an account to understand it, but then I wondered if the
site was exclusively for blacks, and whether I would be “touring.” So we didn’t
enter all of the way. From what Banks described, it sounded cool when you
actually enter the site. I like that other users can compliment your design,
font, text, posts, etc. Banks really does drive the point home that we focus so
much on ebonics and whether it should be allowed in composition that we really
miss the point on other discursive and fascinating practices.
In “Rewriting Racist Code: The Black Jeremiad as
Countertechnology in Critical Race Theory” I didn’t connect much to. The
chapter examines how racism is encoded into our legal system and much of our
bureaucratic systems. It’s funny that I didn’t connect to the chapter, per se…I
guess it was a bit dry to me. But Victor and I talked about it. I did, however
like what banks said about countertechnology: “Bell’s chose to use the jeremiad in this way, to challenge legal
discourse as both insider and outsider positions the jeremiad as a
countertechnology” (88). Banks widens our understanding of technologies,
how technologies are processes as well as artifacts.
Chapter 6 focuses on design and how African American
rhetorical study needs to address it. He drives the point that design
traditions have been hard to see, that design is a part of the African American
struggle now, and that the rhetoric of design is bi-directional. Throughout
much of the chapter, Banks discusses William Mitchell’s work. Banks points out
many of the problems with his utopic vision. I liked “Baraka reminds us why all of this is so important to African American
rhetoric, as well as to rhetoric, composition, technical communication, and
Black studies: critique alone will not interrupt these practices. Those of us
who care about ending systematic oppressions must design new spaces, even as we
point out problems in our current ones” (118). It made me think about designing new queer spaces, not necessarily
online, but those in and outside of our classrooms in higher education. For
example, today in PDC we discussed CLASP and ensuring that part of that is
fostering the notion that “marginalized groups were represented.” And while I
think it is doing good work and that it being designed effectively to support
first-gen and racial minorities, I raised my hand and asked that if the purpose
is to support marginality, then shouldn’t they consider outreach to queer
groups on campus. I hope that in some way, and I will continue to make contact,
I made an impact on the design of this new commons. I know what it is like to
go through higher ed…three degrees…and not feel like I have a space to speak
from my positioning.
Chapter 7, I think can be summed up from a quote in the
middle” Soul is…teaching students to master Standardized English and rhetorical
forms like no one else can and keeping
the languages, the Ebonics, the Spanglish, the indigenous languages of home
alive. Soul is the ability to recognize complexity and still pursue unity. Soul
is understanding that that one goal is something far far more than Diversity or
Multiculturalism, but racial justice…” (134).
I think that Banks made a lot of good points. Primarily, I like the idea of not just
critiqueing the system but changing the design of it.