Race in the Machine: A Novel Account

There are countless stories that seek to explain race and how it operates, including case studies, scientific theories, philosophies and poetic meditations. They all exist intangibly within and around us, dictating our interactions and informing our innermost beliefs. Race in the Machine is a singular, novelistic account of an intelligent machine, living in a socially connected world, haunted by persistent racial inequality. This nameless machine takes the reader through a social world eerily like our own, but in which all accepted understandings of race can be boiled down to one, mechanical reality. In creating this world, Quincy Thomas Stewart deftly oscillates between the allegorically simplified and the impossibly complex to weave an utterly unique and nuanced portrait of race in the modern world.

What is race? The protagonist ponders this question, seeking to understand the concept and, especially, how it shapes the well-being of others in the larger, connected social machine. The narrative follows alongside the principal who, by reviewing literature, surveying methods, and engaging a group of colleagues, is assembling a computer simulation of the system of racial inequality. In the account of this undertaking, she comes upon an array of important and fascinating questions: What is the key element in the experience of race--school segregation, employment discrimination, or the residual effects of racism from earlier eras? How many racists does it take to create systems of inequality? What role do non-racist actors play in upholding them? How is bias learned? And, foundational to the layered contributions of this book, how do individuals and systems interact with one another?

Punctuated by poetic interludes and syntheses of central theories, this original and provocative book will narratively inform those interested in social inequality, and will push theoretical and methodological boundaries for students and scholars of race.