2.2.4. Other Frameworks

Other Frameworks to Consider When Thinking about Ethics

Colonialism

• One group or country subjugating another group, often imposing laws, religion, culture, and languages on that group, and taking resources from them.

• Justified by belief in the inferiority of the subjugated people (e.g., barbaric, savage, godless, backwards), and the superiority of the group doing the subjugation (e.g., civilized, advanced).

• Subtler forms of this reasoning are common in tech: We Americans are benefiting the world by flooding the world with our superior products (often made cheaply in other parts of the world)

• Key figures:

  • Hernán Cortés, 1500s, Spain → America

  • Francisco Pizarro, 1500s, Spain → South America

  • John Smith, 1600s, England → North America

  • King Leopold II of Belgium, 1800s, Belgium → Congo

Decolonization / Postcolonialism / Liberation / Landback

• The colonized/oppressed taking back power from the colonialists/oppressors, whether from:

  • Government occupation (e.g., England ruling India/Pakistan, USA removing Indigenous Americans from their land, USA ruling Cuba and the Philippines)

    • Key figures:

      • Mahatma Gandhi, 1800s-1900s, India

      • Toussaint Louverture, 1700s-1800s, Haiti

      • Patrice Lumumba, 1900s, Congo

  • Oppressed group in a country with restricted rights or ability to make their voices heard (e.g., women’s rights and civil rights movements in USA)

    • Key figures:

      • Susan B. Anthony, 1800s-1900s, USA

      • Martin Luther King Jr., 1900s, USA

      • Nelson Mandela, 1900s-2000s, South Africa

  • Cultural and economic dominance (e.g., the global power centers of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, etc.)

    • Key figures:

      • Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, present, India, USA

      • Edward Said, 1900s-2000s, Palestine, USA

Individual vs. Systemic Analysis

• Individual analysis focuses on the behavior or bias an individual has, while systemic analysis focuses on the how organizations and rules may have their own behaviors or biases that aren’t necessarily connected to what any individual inside intends.

  • For example, there were differences in US criminal sentencing guidelines between crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine in the 90s. When these guidelines were followed, they had have racially biased (that is, racist) outcomes regardless of intent or bias of the individual judges. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act)

Intersectionality

• People are treated differently based on their identities (e.g., race, gender, class, disability, weight, height, etc.), but combinations of those identities can compound unfair treatment in complicated ways.

• For example, you can test a resume filter and find that it isn’t biased against black people, and it isn’t biased against women. But it might turn out that it is still biased against black women.

  • This could happen because the filter “fixed” the gender and race bias by over-selecting white women and black men, while under-selecting black women.

• Key figures:

  • Kimberlé Crenshaw, present USA

  • bell hooks, present USA

Design Justice

• “Design justice is a framework for analysis of how design distributes benefits and burdens between various groups of people. Design justice focuses explicitly on the ways that design reproduces and/or challenges the matrix of domination (white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, settler colonialism, and other forms of structural inequality).”

• It’s also about which groups get to be part of the design process itself.

• Sasha Costanza-Chock, present USA