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

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. 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. The essays show that technologies and radicalized thought are much more tightly connected than we have imagined.