Racist algorithms: the hyper-ritualization of black women’s solitude in digital image databases

Abstract

Recognizing the importance of the discussions on algorithms in search engines and their possible discriminatory and racist biases, this paper analyzes three digital image databases and their results for the keywords “family”, “black family” and “white family”. Based on Erving Goffman’s (1979) concept of “hyper-ritualization” of gender, this article studies whether the imagetic perspective of family (woman, man, son and daughter) applies to the black family context or, on the contrary, contributes to the “solitude of the black woman”. Analyzing comparatively more than 2500 images, it was noticed that black women are more represented alone with their children than white women; the keyword “family” results in an expressive majority of white families; and the search for “white family” reveals more “infiltrated” results of black families as evidence of racialization of the exploration of the search algorithm, which considers whiteness as normative and neutral.