# The Racist Tesla Bot  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Virginia Heffernan]] - Full Title:: The Racist Tesla Bot - Category: #articles - URL: https://virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/the-racist-tesla-bot?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email ## Highlights > Last spring Sam Harris, the distinguished atheist and popularizer of psychedelics, called deep identification with one's race “a form of mental illness.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtypw58hj693pj5dnzrzkeyw)) > Black androids”—an array of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century machines that take Black human forms, almost always as racist caricatures. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtypz061hmybrf8gsaqn2v6p)) > The first is that our social identities have not evaporated in digital space; they've been crystallized for us ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq2v5q2c74wsseq7efzd6k)) > The second is that there has always been a delta between, as Jones-Imhotep puts it in an email, “how Black people understood and defined themselves in relation to technology vs. how those same technologies were deployed to define Black people externally ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq3fy6q71f3m4ydnhxpqwb)) > Dederick's Steam Man of 1868. The head and torso of the android, which is powered by a steam engine, takes the form of a Black man pulling a cart, a replacement for a draft horse ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq4c22rgq6cazgtaghjb35)) > Black androids like Dederick's Steam Man “clustered along Broadway, where they formed part of the culture of minstrelsy, blackface, and racist spectacle.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq4y8yh92yerm3d5vhffap)) > In the 1930s, Westinghouse produced “the mechanical Negro,” which was also known by a racist slur. Powered by electricity, that android bowed to white users, who were then invited to shoot at him with a play bow and arrow. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq56jz5gbg9ffzys7vyqwb)) > In the 1930s, Westinghouse produced “the mechanical Negro,” which was also known by a racist slur. Powered by electricity, that android bowed to white users, who were then invited to shoot at him with a play bow and arrow. > “The androids' surface appearance portrayed Black people as naive and non-technological—part of the mythology that portrays technology as opposed to blackness, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq5qcd12rhr6gqax5wz5e5)) > The extreme subjugation of Dederick's Steam Man reflects in part an effort to repress an inconvenient fact: Real-life Black technologists were not victims of steam tech but masters of it, and even used steam as “a fugitive technology” to commandeer steamboats and escape. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq6tqh0htzv6tntpbftmw2)) > Like all androids, the Black ones don't impose humanity on anyone ... But they're not faceless machines either > The racist dressing on the androids functions like racist images on shooting targets: It amps up the user's contempt for them ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq92fxzxkhvfbph2kjdmdr)) > One of the things we forget about ‘innovations,’” Jones-Imhotep says, “is they're cast as material or technological advancements, but they're often social or cultural regressions.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyqfgqqbhdfzr21dtwbr1kf)) # The Racist Tesla Bot  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Virginia Heffernan]] - Full Title:: The Racist Tesla Bot - Category: #articles - URL: https://virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/the-racist-tesla-bot?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email ## Highlights > Last spring Sam Harris, the distinguished atheist and popularizer of psychedelics, called deep identification with one's race “a form of mental illness.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtypw58hj693pj5dnzrzkeyw)) > Black androids”—an array of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century machines that take Black human forms, almost always as racist caricatures. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtypz061hmybrf8gsaqn2v6p)) > The first is that our social identities have not evaporated in digital space; they've been crystallized for us ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq2v5q2c74wsseq7efzd6k)) > The second is that there has always been a delta between, as Jones-Imhotep puts it in an email, “how Black people understood and defined themselves in relation to technology vs. how those same technologies were deployed to define Black people externally ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq3fy6q71f3m4ydnhxpqwb)) > Dederick's Steam Man of 1868. The head and torso of the android, which is powered by a steam engine, takes the form of a Black man pulling a cart, a replacement for a draft horse ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq4c22rgq6cazgtaghjb35)) > Black androids like Dederick's Steam Man “clustered along Broadway, where they formed part of the culture of minstrelsy, blackface, and racist spectacle.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq4y8yh92yerm3d5vhffap)) > In the 1930s, Westinghouse produced “the mechanical Negro,” which was also known by a racist slur. Powered by electricity, that android bowed to white users, who were then invited to shoot at him with a play bow and arrow. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq56jz5gbg9ffzys7vyqwb)) > In the 1930s, Westinghouse produced “the mechanical Negro,” which was also known by a racist slur. Powered by electricity, that android bowed to white users, who were then invited to shoot at him with a play bow and arrow. > “The androids' surface appearance portrayed Black people as naive and non-technological—part of the mythology that portrays technology as opposed to blackness, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq5qcd12rhr6gqax5wz5e5)) > The extreme subjugation of Dederick's Steam Man reflects in part an effort to repress an inconvenient fact: Real-life Black technologists were not victims of steam tech but masters of it, and even used steam as “a fugitive technology” to commandeer steamboats and escape. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq6tqh0htzv6tntpbftmw2)) > Like all androids, the Black ones don't impose humanity on anyone ... But they're not faceless machines either > The racist dressing on the androids functions like racist images on shooting targets: It amps up the user's contempt for them ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyq92fxzxkhvfbph2kjdmdr)) > One of the things we forget about ‘innovations,’” Jones-Imhotep says, “is they're cast as material or technological advancements, but they're often social or cultural regressions.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gtyqfgqqbhdfzr21dtwbr1kf))