Abstract:
This study considers the broad implications of white technological modernity as a mode of symbolic and systemic exclusion. The visual absence of Black telephone users in mass-market advertising-and the struggle to make them visible-underscores the exclusionary power of technological whiteness and its lasting effects on conceptions of Black technology users, communities, and innovation. In the first half of the twentieth century, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) tirelessly promoted its national telephone network as a model of technological progress and universal service, but this vision did not include African Americans. This article examines the historical exclusion of African Americans in Bell System advertising and the emergence of Black telephone users in advertising imagery during the 1950s and 1960s, drawing attention to the civil rights work of Ramon S. Scruggs, the first African American to rise to Bell System upper management.
摘要:
这项研究认为,白人技术现代性的广泛含义是象征性和系统性排斥的一种模式。黑人电话用户在大众市场广告中的视觉缺失-以及使他们可见的斗争-突显了技术白度的排他性及其对黑人技术用户概念的持久影响,社区,和创新。在二十世纪上半叶,美国电话电报公司(AT&T)孜孜不倦地推广其全国电话网络,成为技术进步和普遍服务的典范,但这一愿景并不包括非洲裔美国人。本文研究了20世纪50年代和60年代,非洲裔美国人在贝尔系统广告中的历史排斥以及黑人电话用户在广告图像中的出现,提请注意RamonS.Scruggs的民权工作,第一个上升到贝尔系统高层管理的非洲裔美国人。