Technology and the African-American Experience: Needs and Opportunities for Study

By Bruce Sinclair

Book Overview

Race and technology are two of the most powerful motifs in American history, but until recently they have not often been considered in relation to each other. This collection of essays examines the intersection of the two in a variety of social and technological contexts, pointing out, as the subtitle (borrowed from Brooke Hindle's classic 1966 work Early American Technology) puts it, the needs and opportunities for study. The essays challenge what editor Bruce Sinclair calls the myth of black disingenuity--the historical perception that black people were technically incompetent. Enslaved Africans actually brought with them the techniques of rice cultivation that proved so profitable to their white owners, and antebellum iron working in the South depended heavily on blacks' craft skills. The essays document the realities of black technical creativity--in catalogs of patented inventiveness, in the use of invisible technologies such as sea chanteys, and in the mastery of complex new technologies. But the book also explores the economic and social functions of the disingenuity myth, and therefore its persistence. African-Americans often saw in new technologies a means to escape racial prejudice, but white Americans used them just as often to re-frame the boundaries of social behavior. The essays show that technologies and racialized thought are much more tightly connected than we have imagined.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262693445
• ISBN13: 9780262693448
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.6" x 8.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Unraveling the nonsense of undermining the Africans intelligence taught in mainstream school systems

I love how the author presented clear details through primary research about the creativity, honest inventions and use of technology performed by African Americans. He talks about what skills and techniques were carried over from Africa, the use and skills of agriculture, planting and cultivating the soil. This book provides the details of the brilliance of a group of people who were otherwise presented in history under false narratives or not mentioned at all in the history books ❤️.