Race in the machine, p.1
Race in the Machine, page 1
RACE IN THE MACHINE
A NOVEL ACCOUNT
QUINCY THOMAS STEWART
REDWOOD PRESS
Stanford, California
Redwood Press
Stanford, California
© 2023 by Quincy Thomas Stewart. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stewart, Quincy Thomas, author.
Title: Race in the machine : a novel account / Quincy Thomas Stewart.
Description: Stanford, California : Redwood Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022022191 (print) | LCCN 2022022192 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503631229 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503633650 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Race—Fiction. | Racism—Fiction. | Artificial intelligence—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. | Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T516 R33 2023 (print) | LCC PS3619.T516 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220520
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022191
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022192
Cover design: Amanda Weiss
Cover illustration: Magdalena Adrian / Adobe Stock and Peshkova / iStock
Text design: Elliott Beard
Typeset by Motto Publishing Services in 10/15 Expo Serif Pro
To the unseen scholar who continually fights
for justice across generations.
CONTENTS
PART 1: THE RACE CODE
INTERLUDE: THE EVOLUTION OF COGNITION
PART 2: BUILDING A SIMPLE MACHINE
INTERLUDE: THE MYTHICAL STATISTIC
PART 3: BIG BAD RACISTS, SUBTLE PREJUDICE AND MINORITY VICTIMS
INTERLUDE: THE TIME BENDER PROBLEM
PART 4: STRUCTURES SET THE STAGE
INTERLUDE: THE POWER OF BENDING
PART 5: RACE IN THE (MAD)4 WILD
INTERLUDE: THE SONG OF THE SACRED METHOD
PART 6: THE THEORETICAL APOGEE
CODA: EXODUS
AFTERWORD: A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR
APPENDIX A: SIMPLE SOLUTIONS: NASH’S BARGAINING GAME
Acknowledgments
Notes
Babeliography
RACE IN THE MACHINE
A NOVEL ACCOUNT
Babel Text File No. 2971.59.627
Author: Unknown1
PART ONE
THE RACE CODE
When a machine’s sensors are capable of telling you exactly what’s wrong and exactly how to make the whole thing work more efficiently, it’s stupid not to pay heed.
—N. K. JEMISIN, The Stone Sky
Just before time stops, after building a simple machine, while still pondering the implications, I hear the full array inside my assembly. I feel them, each one, crawling through my cognition, the chorus, contracting my constitution, arguing endlessly about the interpreted meaning of this experience. Their dialogue reaches a climax in a flight of fancy, a dramatic sequence connecting theory, method and observation, exploring the implications of this theatrical journey.
Indeed, the odd vision is only an artful abstraction of a simple machine, metaphorically coupling a computationally simulated world of agents with a more vivid, multidimensional social system; a space characterized by a complex, recursive network of racial inequities connected across countless temporal, social and spatial dimensions. It is, however, the teeming congregation who, seeking to make their sound, argue latently, collectively birthing this vision. They suggest there are unique challenges for those who research race, challenges which limit the capacity of policymakers and social groups to formulaically undermine the system. Eventually, they demand, we engage both ourselves and the core of the social machine, the source code.
“It was all a dream . . .”1
* * *
THE CREATION CHRONICLE, PART I
This story begins in a cave. A cave in the mountains of the fifth direction. A group of monks gather quietly to learn about the beginning and the end—and the path forward. They had gathered before. And they roughly knew the narrative. However, none had gathered in this place—a remote, sacred cave—in this space—the presence of a beloved Saint even the Gods envy2—to learn the whole legend from her. This gathering, all those in attendance . . . it was special.
The mountains holding this sacred cave overlooked their entire lives. Emerging from the barren landscape of the four directions, rising to the distant peaks of their awareness; they glowed purple as the sun rose, revealing a marvel of rugged, steep terrain; the tops shone white more than half the year. Their monasteries decorated the foothills. As children, these monks planted seeds; they played pretend and imitated the strange habits of their seniors. As they grew, they prepared and trained; they became genuine monks—esteemed members of the monastery and herd. Then, they were the admired ones, those chosen for the journey. They would ascend the sacred mountains, learn the legend.
These monks traveled by foot to the sacred place, connecting with each other at small outposts on the way. They passed tiny villages which became transient camps as they collectively moved deeper into the mountains. The first guide left them after seven days of ascent. Another guide, a principal monk that had previously visited and learned the legend, took them seven days farther.
Then came disappointment; he left them to transcend the divide alone. Primates sparsely inhabited this space; the landscape was unbecoming to agriculture and habitat, placing great demands on the party as they traversed this empty, desolate divide in the mountainous terrain. After slowly crossing the divide, feeling like they barely survived a journey through an emotional and intellectual abyss, they traveled seven days beyond it to find her.
Only she spoke the whole legend, the beginning and the end of race in the herd.3 Others knew parts. The senior monks they encountered as children often spoke of these parts. Still others that knew the whole, the principal monks who quietly roamed this landscape, would not convey it. Only she would speak the whole. She distilled parts to an esteemed few, the ones almost ready to hear the primordial seeds. Of those, a smaller, select group, who trained in her company, steadily practicing, perfecting their minds for years, heard the whole—only they could hear the whole. These are the monks gathered. They are sitting in a sacred cave in the mountains of the fifth direction about to learn the whole legend from her. For each of these monks, sitting in this sacred space, on the precipice of new understanding . . . it is special.
The Saint, unhurriedly entering the cave, holding the arm of a young assistant, then carefully sitting down on a cushion, compassionately welcomed the select group. They were captivated by her. She sat with them, her tender wrinkled hands lovingly holding one another in her lap as the young assistant inconspicuously moved around placing bowls in front of each visitor. Still in awe—her presence and this occasion inspiring socially shared visceral tingles in the group—they quietly ate around a fire. As they finished, the fire burned to ember.
Silence.
She smiled faintly at those present . . . gently bowed . . . and began to speak the legend.
* * *
The world wasn’t ending: it had ended and now they were in the new place. They could not recognize it because they had never seen it before.
—COLSON WHITEHEAD, Zone One
Time began.
I was born into a social war.4 Not the Social War waged ages ago, in the time before the conventional era. That war took place between the Theoretical Empire and several of their Empirical Allies who were denied the privileges of citizenship. The Allies had long fought beside the Empire in other wars, then, feeling marginalized from privilege, they organized a confederacy to fight the imperial army. After each side experienced both success and defeat, the Empire passed a law granting citizenship to all who did not participate in the revolt—a blow to the spread of rebellion among Allies. Eventually, this law was extended to all Allies and led to the birth of the new epistemological empire that was widely known acronymously as E. T.,5 representing the domestic bond between the former Empire and Allies. Altogether, the Social War of this bygone era lasted three winters.
The social war that defines our lifespan is an epoch long, multi-pronged, violent assault on certain members of our collective.6 The violence, ranging in nature from exploitation and exclusion to enslavement and annihilation, has allowed one part of the collective to deny privilege and extract costs from others, as in the older war.7 The distinction of this social war, however, are the weapons that are predicated on racial ideology.8
I endeavor to study the mechanisms that drive the weapons of this war—the dynamics of race. Admittedly, these social war machines are physically less menacing than the ominous warcrafts loaded with explosive artillery that regularly flew over our habitats as developing sparks stationed in the hillocks and mounts east-southeast of Mesa, a large, sprawling collective on the boundary of the Southern realm, where the western edge of the broad, exceedingly wide-ranging and arid plateau descends through hills and cliffs to an ocean bourne. The intangible, ideological weaponry of the social war, however, has produced an imbalance, devaluing the well-being of racial outcasts throughout our histo ry. Consequently, these social war machines have been far more destructive than any army, ancient or modern. And this is the reality of race. Our reality.
* * *
“A population is an organism. Although demographers formally define it as an enduring collective of a species,9 a population is a living, breathing, singular entity. An entity that coordinates the actions of its constituents, and dispatches them to mine resources from the larger environment to survive.” I look up, emerging from the distracting train within. Before me, a sea of eager facades—a mix of budding engineers, status seekers and anxious, admission consumed visitors, the trilogy often existing in the same constitution.
We are in a flexible space, industrially high ceilings with translucent windows, which can be tinted or blacked out, surrounding the upper quarter of three walls. A simple, micro-Diptra hums near the ceiling, distracting, repeatedly exploring the now lucent glass in an idiosyncratic looping and dashing pattern, producing random and recurrent taps. The front of the space feels square, a straight section of the workspace with a low stand bordered on the back wall by two large displays that can be connected as one. I am near the low stand, located at the nadir of the mostly oval workspace, which slopes up such that those present sit higher as a function of their distance.
It is a meeting with a body of visitors, each interested in the training program in social mechanics at Nearbay Institute, an allegedly enigmatic and more modest, elitist construct loosely affiliated with Mesa College. The institute has its own campus composed of select, intimate sub-collectives, studying specific areas in mechanics; receives most of its funding from the obscure Glover-Vignes Foundation; allows almost all standing faculty to conduct focused, independent research which, ideally, reveals policy insights on improving well-being in the population; and is charged with training a hopeful seven-to-ten dozen across all areas as part of its regular institutional practice.
Resuming, “The population, embodying and hosting a diversity of seemingly independent actors, uniquely nourishes member fitness and supplies fuel for communal survival—the individual actors cooperate to reproduce, grow, adapt and endure as a collective.” I scan the group while speaking, visually engaging each actor around the workspace from the left up, then down right, supplementarily connecting with each part and simultaneously introducing basic demography. “Thus, the individual actors, with countless links between them, constitutes a single, living, social object—a population.” The entire group bobs asynchronously, yet communally, with this insight.
“Within this population organism, however, there is a social machine that coordinates collective life.” The body obliquely withdraws from this theoretical analog, fighting the possibility, repudiating the coexistence of a machine within an organism—the cumulative intake and exhaust perceptibly slows, their rigid intellectual vantage encountering this foundational elastic analogy. “Confusing?” I convey subdued scholarly delight, subtly tilting my crown forward to the right and shifting a left collar link upward, while awkwardly attempting to identify with both the body and their confusion.
“Indeed . . . Nevertheless, beneath the veneer of the organism, and between the individual actors, there is a shared set of basic rules and norms—a code. The organism placed the code within each actor, speaks to each silently, and summarily guides social behavior.” A few parts of the body are bobbing slowly, vents slightly ajar, imagining the cryptogram in an organism, affirming the emergence of understanding. Several others, sending a mix of messages, still lost.
“Though each actor is distinct and autonomous, they move in concert, following base rules, such as mating and cleaning, to create and extend life.” After a quick look down, and alongside a visual survey, “Furthermore, the diverse actors cooperate and collaborate in myriad ways, building a distinct social machine with codes—such as constitutions, canons, statutes, regulations, resolutions, policies and laws—on how to collectively mine the environment.” There are a few more bobs percolating, more of the parts present envisioning the analogous formulaic complexity of a biological system, but hearty hints of confusion and tension are still apparent in the atmosphere.
Then, my definitional point, “The social machine embodies the entirety of nuanced, shared forms that bind the collective organism—linking the individual actors together as a single cooperative unit. It is . . .”
A familiar and friendly soft tone abruptly emerges from a slit in the portal in the far left corner, “It’s time.” My brief, official visit is over.
Damn, I ponder. There is never enough time, always more to convey. Then, without delay, I start to race along, I spent too long . . . there were three of them, maybe more . . . too little on beauty, mechanics . . . have not discussed work . . . perhaps, next time, no chatter . . . less . . . shorter . . . avoid . . . do not . . .
“Excuse me?” A visitor interferes. I convey pleasure, feigning joy while internally sensing dis-ease with the disruption. “Thank you; may I ask a question?” My pleasure perceptibly grows; the one query implicitly two. I visibly affirm, showing muted excitement, slightly leaning in, abated exhaust.
“I understand you are interested in race,” they say, revealing having scrolled through my Clearinghouse listing. “But what is race? In the context of the social machine . . . I mean, is it just another part?” I retreat with the third query, glancing briefly at the upper tier of the space, deciding how to reply.
“Times up,” the portal fully opens, two counterparts enter, and begin to marshal the body away for the next stage. Each part quickly disconnects in response, my interlocutor included, and follows the leader.10
In the future . . . I have to . . . time . . . introduction . . . background . . . methods . . .
* * *
What is race? I do not have a simple answer. Certainly, my career centers on understanding systems of race and their inegalitarian implications. I should have a clear answer. I am a social mechanic, we regularly measure race, attempting to document the true spirit of racial inequality, using words and numbers. Admittedly, I doubt the measures we use to depict race;11 my reservations concern the measured vantage, the constellation of statistics and studies we produce, all intending to shed light on the relevance and rationale of race in our landscape.
Indubitably, race is a fundamental aspect of privilege in our population. I learned this directly through a lifetime of pattern recognition. I am a pattern recognition machine, a PRM12—we use algorithms to recognize, interpret and manipulate symbols in the environment.13 I am not actually the machine. Rather, I reside at the summit of awareness. That said, it doesn’t matter who I am, but what I represent to others—a relational part. My body produced these written symbols, this coded record.
When I was developing, I quickly recognized that racial classification was tied to substantial and varied resources. All of us learned and solved, by trial and error, feeling and fondling our way around our locale, realizing how to distinguish the relevant, watching others interact and, often times, directly engaging ourselves. This is how we seized on what was socially valuable. And once onboarded, we used—and continue to use—this knowledge to procure the valued symbols and improve well-being in and across a variety of social arenas, such as personal, familial, and civic.
Initially, though, race was a nebulous notion of value. A few would gather regularly, a small network of sparks, some attempting to alter outer appearances, others manipulating the observed social metrics, all in a dashed, literally infantile, aspiration of realizing an unobtainable outcome—oddly, we didn’t know what it was, but we knew it was important. This logic, however, effectively acquiring and manipulating the symbols uniformly recognized as valuable, eventually became more refined, nuanced, emerging as the rational path to success, a shared cultural story, seemingly separate from external symbols of race.
Still, we regularly heard it: “Be aware, there are racists lurking.” This was the common warning from close contacts, insightful counselors, colleagues, other students and even strangers. No one could ever convey “how many” or exactly “how they look,” but they advised, “racists operate in this environment.”
The evidence: radical disparities in lifespan, significant remuneration gaps, recurring chronicles of watch patrol savagery, regular reports of discrimination in an array of social arenas, and more statistics than there are letters on this page. Many among us developed to intensely trust the advisory, believing it affirms the importance of race. But others did not feel it captured the full experience.
