Michigan State University has a very cool “center for digital humanities and social sciences” called Matrix. Matrix is quite interesting because it features significant archival projects on African and African American studies, namely the American Black Journal and the African Activists Archive. In this regard MSU’s Matrix relates to Earhart’s comments about the digital cannon: “In digital humanities, however, we have much theoretical work to do in the selection of materials and application of digital tools to them.” However, in looking at the racial demographics of the Matrix team, I ask the same question as McPherson: “Why are the Digital Humanities so White?” But I ask this question more directly than McPherson’s article articulates: Why are DH teams, conferences, meetings, etc. filled with all white people, even when the subject matter is “documenting history from African American perspectives.” Can it really be from an “African American perspective” when the digital storyteller/curator/narrator/coder/programmer/archivist (alluding to Hayles) is not African American? We have to acknowledge and critically consider our positionality, even for something as seemingly innocuous/objective as compiling image files and creating hyperlinks. The digital divide is most apparent in who has transformative access to digital tech, and it’s most apparent in these Matrix photos. I hope the people in these photos and the folks of DH more broadly are as disturbed by the racial homogeneity of this space as I am.
