A story for our times: It took place, of course, on Twitter, though it was first written up in the trade publication Inside Higher Ed.
Safiya Umoja Noble is an assistant professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication, where she specializes in “marking the ways that digital media impacts and intersects with issues of race, gender, culture, and technology design.” Like all authors, she is eager to plug her new book, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, due later this month. So last week she took to Twitter: “Shameless plug: If everyone bought one right now for themselves, and one for a friend, this book could have a chance at improving the internet for women and people marginalized by tech.”
Beneath her tweet she attached a link to the book’s Amazon page, featuring this promotional blurb: “Run a Google search for ‘black girls’—what will you find? ‘Big Booty’ and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in ‘white girls,’ the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about ‘why black women are so sassy’ or ‘why black women are so angry’ presents [sic] a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society.”
Like an idiot, one fellow tweeter actually took Prof. Noble up on her offer. Alexander Magoun is a historian at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ History Center. Evidently he ignored the good little angel that must have been perched on his shoulder, whispering, “Stop! No good can come from this!” Instead, he listened to the little devil on the other shoulder, hissing, “Come on! Why not see if she’s right? Whatcha waitin’ for?” So he typed in his own searches.
At the top of the first Google page for “black girls,” Magoun got a link to “Black Girls Code,” a STEM school in San Francisco for “underrepresented” girls. Next was a link to a “Black Girls Dance Compilation” on YouTube, and another to a video called “2 black girls fight.” There was an article from the left-wing news website theroot.com: “Little Black Girls Are Killing Themselves. Does Anyone Care Enough . . .” The Guardian newspaper, another left-wing outlet, had an article about the “unfair perceptions that haunt young black girls.” Last was a website called “Black Girls Rock!” Not a big booty in sight.
Then Magoun tried “white girls.” All the hits on the first page were to websites about the 2016 movie White Girl, which is the story of a young woman who hooks up with a Puerto Rican drug dealer, inherits a kilo of coke after he’s arrested, tries to sell it, and then loses all the money. It’s depressing. I’ve seen it.
Again like an idiot, Magoun thought that the world was aching to know whether the claim in Noble’s blurb was quite as absolute and dispositive as it sounded. The world was not, but the little devil won again. Magoun took to Twitter, using the IEEE account:
“These Google searches for & don’t quite match thesis; Images for arguably far worse.” He linked to the two Google pages from his own searches.
Professor Noble responded to the tweet politely and professionally. She must be new to Twitter.
“The book was written over several years, and search results are dynamic,” she tweeted back. “However, the thesis of the book is not based on a comparison of only two results. Have you read the book?”
“It’s a response to the Amazon description,” Magoun responded, “& we look forward to reading the more careful, extended analysis, & broader supporting cases.” The little angel buried its head in its hands.
Word got around quickly, as word does on Twitter. An assistant professor of English at ASU (specialty: “feminist digital media”) tweeted that she was shocked: How could IEEE’s Twitter account be run by someone too ignorant to understand how changeable search algorithms are?
Perhaps the little devil piped up: “Hey! That sounds like an insult to me! You ain’t gonna take that lying down, are ya?” For whatever reason, Magoun chose to reply: “I’m aware of the influence of both a user’s searches and changes in search algorithms.”
It was here that Twitter did what it does best: sink itself into a cauldron of vituperation, inept sarcasm, unreason, non sequitur, reckless allegation, and unchecked hostility. Tweets poured in. “Way to immediately disregard years of scholarly work by demonstrating the white patriarchal frame of your professional org,” wrote @gabrarian, a Ph.D. student in education. The demands kept coming. Magoun should apologize, he should be fired, he was a mansplainer, a sexist, a racist . . .
He went to ground.
From what I can tell, no one came to his defense—by, say, pointing out that all Magoun had done was casually test a claim made by a new book. That no one did so is a sign of his instant and total radioactivity. It’s also a sign of Twitter segmentation. The corner of the twitterverse where tweeters chew the fat about “issues of race, gender, culture, and technology design” is probably not a Shangri-La of ideological diversity.
Magoun’s one undeniable transgression was to use a corporate account to advance what was properly a personal opinion, although a glance through IEEE’s Twitter feed suggests staff have often done the same. Under other circumstances, Magoun’s tweet would have been what nowadays we like to call a “fact check.” Noble herself retweeted the promotional material, which claimed to support the book’s arguable thesis with an equally arguable piece of evidence. Magoun tried to suggest the truth was more complicated. Probably the last time he does that.
He reappeared on Twitter the next day. Gone were the figurative angel and devil. Instead, hovering behind him were the specters of Magoun’s grim-faced bosses at the institute. You could almost hear them: “Professor Noble? We’ve had a little talk with Alexander and he has something he’d like to say to you.”
“Dear Professor Noble,” Magoun tweeted, in two installments, “On behalf of IEEE, its History Center, & myself, I apologize for my unprofessional & disrespectful remarks on your forthcoming book, Algorithms of Oppression, which I have not read. They insulted your scholarship, & embarrassed IEEE & my colleagues as well as me. Please forgive me. I will learn from this experience, & your book when it arrives. Sincerely, Alexander Magoun.”
Noble graciously and promptly tweeted back: “Apology accepted.” The mob receded. But some tweeters, admiring the new scalp dangling from the intersectional belt, couldn’t resist one more swat. An anonymous professor of black studies, @ wewatchwatchers, had a last word for Magoun. “I hope you learn how racist that was.”
No doubt he has.
