Reading Response to Noble Excerpt Algorithms of Oppression
The contemporary inclination of racist ideas is increasingly rising due to technological
advancements. A digital-oriented company like Google encourages racist practices through
extensive data assemblage, distribution, capitalization, and search feed algorithms. They are the
issues described in the book published by Safiya Umoja Noble titled Noble Excerpt Algorithms
of Oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. However, the response is based on the
introductory part of the book serving as an article herein. Safiya Noble Umoja is an associate
professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She heads the Center for Critical Internet
Inquiry at the institution hence has an impeccable knowledge of the discriminatory patterns used
by internet corporations. While racism remains a choking demeanor for coalesced socialization
among people of color, Hispanics and natives, and most whites, internet search engines are
increasingly subverting the initiatives put in place to deal with the social and economic biases on
these communities.

Findings, Interpretations, Assessments, and Applications of the Article
Armed to explore online sense-making practices implemented by the technology
companies at the expense of the African American communities, the article finds a closer link
between social inequalities created by racist data concentration on women and men. Firstly, by
delineating that the number of women working in technology companies like google is fewer
than the number of males, there is an asynchronously lowered number of women of color

Surname 2

working in the company (Umoja 1). Similarly, the number of women in the company earns low
incomes compared to what the men make while doing the same jobs and roles, especially in
software engineering. Such a finding presents readily racist algorithmic information that any
researcher efficiently finds when they visit google search feeds. Furthermore, the author of the
article asserts that because the algorithms are enmeshed in the intellectual skills of the human
brain, therefore, they are implemented by the same people who make part of the society (Umoja
3). These people are evidence of how racist the high-end tech corporations subvert the policies of
racial inclusivity.
The corresponding interpretation generated from the article is that corporate societies are
only in business to develop capitalization of resources that serve their agendas without
acknowledging the impacts their activities cause. Google as a global search company readily
avails the data that create global perceptions of African Americans as the violent/aggressive,
angry, the poorer, less-educated, and more criminalized. It could all be true or not, but the ethical
baseline of putting this information to predict what a researcher will find as they type into the
search engines is questionable (Juliano 2). It is a generalized polarization of one ethnic
community even when civil society movements aim to reduce the advent of racial inequalities
across the United States. The author asserts that when she first typed in google search the words
black girls, the revealed information contained pornographic content in 2011 (Umoja 2).
However, upon public outcry, the information changed upon the exact search in 2012 while still
codifying other Latino and Asian communities in the context of pornographic relations (Umoja
2). It is an indication that the physical practices of racist people in American society at the time
of the publication of this research discriminated minority groups. The social atrocities such as
low income, congested inner-city settlement in substandard neighborhoods form the

Surname 3

unconditional polarization that makes the technology companies align negative connotations
about the minority groups.
The assessment of the findings illustrated in the two aforementioned paragraphs proves
that while the world looks upon the high-ranking corporations to reinvent practices that
incorporate inclusive policies, such companies are at the forefront in antagonizing the required
anti-racial approaches. As previously discussed in the class coursework, bridging the gap created
by racism whenever not appropriated can lead to an increase on social media platforms (Juliano
3). The same trends of data capitalization spread to the users of social media pages where likes of
Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube provide a user with pre-informed outcomes of whatever they
type in the search feeds (Juliano 4). Without adequate methods of making search platforms have
l