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, pointing out, as the subtitle (borrowed
from Brooke Hindle's classic 1966 work Early American Technology)
puts it, the "needs and opportunities for study."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. African-Americans
often saw in new technologies a means to escape racial prejudice,
but white Americans used them just as often to re-frame the
boundaries of social behavior. The essays show that technologies
and racialized thought are much more tightly connected than we have
imagined.
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