Response # 10: Introduction to Adam Banks "Race, Rhetoric and Technology"

In the introduction to the book Race, Rhetoric and Technology, author Adam Banks shows the potential technology offers in the study of African American history, while at the same time pointing to the need for us to resist exploitative impulses such systems always seems to present. " We need, as a culture to pay attention to the theory and literature of those among us who have been long wrestling with multiplicity. There are many things about e-space which are not new. Yes, the internet gives us more people writing but I'm afraid that at the moment it gives us more of the same people writing" (1). Banks' point here, which he makes throughout his introduction, asks educators to think critically about how we teach our students content in the digital age. While the internet offers us with greater content, as we teach our students to be digitally literate, we also must ask them to be socially conscious in their digital citizenship. We need our students to have the tools to recognize " African American rhetorical history shows powerful unities of identity and purpose across centuries, class, gender and ideologies, once we realize the unities are not absolute" ( 5).

This article spoke to me as I thought of various digital curriculums I have come across that perpetuate the African American voice through stereotyped "oneness." One of these is known as Flocabulary, which provides a vocabulary curriculum for middle schoolers using raps, rhythms and rhymes to help students learn and memorize common core vocabulary words. The beat and lyrics provide a catchy tune, which I initially found intriguing. In fact, I was prepared to go into my sixth grade class and use this for a vocabulary lesson, until I began to wonder who created this curriculum. After doing some research, I discovered the creators Black Harrison and Alex Rapport, were both white, and while many of their lyrics provide progressive content and commentary on our history, I was concerned with whether or not they had agency to perpetuate this voice and portrayal of African Americans. This of course sent me on a digital rampage of my own, as

I began to wonder if other teachers were calling out the way these videos and curriculum preserved a racist and universal narrative of African Americans in our culture. While opinions raged, I thought that rather than avoiding what was out there, I would bring the video to class and have my students research the origin of the video and contemplate the question of agency and authorship themselves. In other words, I chucked out the vocabulary lesson and decided this curriculum offered a better lesson on the discourse of race in our modern world.

Other such curriculums such as 'thug note,' which portrays an African American retelling of Shakespeare's plays, speaks similarly to way our 'catchy' content is embedded with coded racism. While these curriculums and videos may be growing popular within our nation, I hope our teachers are using them as opportunities to teach the ways "Racisms is enforced and maintained throughout technologies and the assumptions we design and program into them -- and into our uses of them" ( 10).