Virginia Eubanks

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Author: Virginia Eubanks This episode explores Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks as a systems-level analysis of how automated welfare systems, predictive algorithms, and data infrastructure influence behavior, belief, and institutional outcomes. By focusing on incentive architecture rather than personalities or events, the episode shows why these systems persist — and how they connect to larger economic, political, and cultural structures. 📺 Watch on YouTube: 👉 https://youtu.be/Kw7Kaogcd2I ❤️ Support on Patreon: 👉 https://www.patreon.com/posts/automating-how-158447270?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link Author Support If these ideas resonate, consider reading the work yourself or borrowing it from your local library. Supporting authors and libraries helps keep critical inquiry accessible. Call to Action If you value systems-level analysis like this, please like, subscribe, and comment with books or topics you’d like us to explore next. AI Use Disclosure This content was created using AI-assisted tools for research synthesis, structuring, and narration support. All analysis, framing, and editorial decisions are guided by human judgment as part of the Crisis in Perception project.

This episode features a conversation between Lane Rasberry, Wikimedia-in-Residence at the University of Virginia School of Data Science, and Virginia Eubanks, author, journalist, and associate professor of political science at the University at Albany. The conversation was recorded in 2019 but the topics are still relevant today. Eubanks looks toward the future, warning of the unintended—or at times intended—consequences of emerging technologies. The discussion focuses on the effects of algorithmic automation, as well as the practice, policies, and implementation of these algorithms. Although she critiques the tech world, Eubanks also provides many reasons for optimism. Virginia Eubanks authored the 2018 book Automating Inequality , which is a detailed investigation into data-based discrimination. She is also the author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age and the co-editor, with Alethia Jones, of Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith . She also writes for various outlets, including the Guardian, American Scientist, and the New York Times . Recently, Virginia began the PTSD Bookclub , an ongoing project that explores books about trauma and its aftermath. You can find this project and Virginia Eubank’s other projects at virginia-eubanks.com .

Join us for an insightful interview with Virginia Eubanks, author of "Automating Inequality," as she discusses the impact of technology on social justice and the pitfalls of automated systems in the United States. Discover how these technologies affect marginalized communities and what can be done to address these issues.

On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus sits down with writer and political scientist Virginia Eubanks . They talk about Virginia’s New York Times magazine essay , “ His PTSD, and My Struggle to Live With It ,” and how the condition is more widespread than most people realize, even as terms like “trauma” and “triggered” are tossed around cavalierly. Later in the show, they talk about why you shouldn’t give unsolicited advice to people living with PTSD—and what kind of support caregivers of people with PTSD really need. In Slate Plus: Why Virginia wanted to write her New York Times essay, and whether the COVID-19 pandemic is, technically speaking, a traumatic event. Further Recommended Reading: What to Say When Someone Tells You They’re Chronically Ill by Rachel Meeks Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story by Gabriel Mac Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus sits down with writer and political scientist Virginia Eubanks . They talk about Virginia’s New York Times magazine essay , “ His PTSD, and My Struggle to Live With It ,” and how the condition is more widespread than most people realize, even as terms like “trauma” and “triggered” are tossed around cavalierly. Later in the show, they talk about why you shouldn’t give unsolicited advice to people living with PTSD—and what kind of support caregivers of people with PTSD really need. In Slate Plus: Why Virginia wanted to write her New York Times essay, and whether the COVID-19 pandemic is, technically speaking, a traumatic event. Further Recommended Reading: What to Say When Someone Tells You They’re Chronically Ill by Rachel Meeks Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story by Gabriel Mac Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus sits down with writer and political scientist Virginia Eubanks . They talk about Virginia’s New York Times magazine essay , “ His PTSD, and My Struggle to Live With It ,” and how the condition is more widespread than most people realize, even as terms like “trauma” and “triggered” are tossed around cavalierly. Later in the show, they talk about why you shouldn’t give unsolicited advice to people living with PTSD—and what kind of support caregivers of people with PTSD really need. In Slate Plus: Why Virginia wanted to write her New York Times essay, and whether the COVID-19 pandemic is, technically speaking, a traumatic event. Further Recommended Reading: What to Say When Someone Tells You They’re Chronically Ill by Rachel Meeks Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story by Gabriel Mac Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Systems used by the government to automate social services may create injustice. Virginia talked to Kunumi about the impact of these systems on people's lives. She also focuses her work on trauma: social, physical, and mental.

On this week's episode of the show, I chat with Virginia Eubanks about how high-tech tools and software profile and punish people of color and low-income people and families. The post Episode #181: Virginia Eubanks appeared first on PolicyViz .

Virginia Eubanks examines the relationship between technology and society in her book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor and joins us this week for a discussion about who matters in a democracy and the empathy gap between the people who develop the technology for social systems and the people who use those systems. Eubanks is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is also the author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age; and co-editor, with Alethia Jones, of Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith . Her writing about technology and social justice has appeared in Scientific American , The Nation , Harper’s, and Wired . She was a founding member of the Our Data Bodies Project and a 2016-2017 Fellow at New America. Additional Information Automating Inequality: How High-Tech tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor Eubanks will present a lecture on her work for Penn State's Rock Ethics Institute on October 1, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. The event is free and open to anyone. Register here . Related Episodes A roadmap to a more equitable democracy Will AI destroy democracy? Facebook is not a democracy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jepson student Ben Weinstein, ’20, interviews 2019-20 Jepson Leadership Forum speaker Virginia Eubanks prior to her presentation, "Algorithms, Austerity, and Inequality." February 13, 2020

The Jepson Leadership Forum presents Virginia Eubanks, Associate professor of political science at the University at Albany - State University of New York, for a presentation on "Algorithms, Austerity, and Inequality." Feb. 13, 2020

The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years―because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems―rather than humans―control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (St. Martin's, 2018) , Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values. This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely. John Danaher is a lecturer the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is also the host of the wonderful podcast Philosophical Disquisitions . You can find it here on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology