I have spent quite a bit of time working with arrest and incarceration data that has names attached. Rates of arrest and incarceration are not precisely correlated to demographics, in the sense that certain "races" (as defined by the government) are over- and under-represented in the criminal justice system, for a variety of reasons. Some of this divergence may be explained by systemic racism, some may be explained by confounding variables (poverty, education), etc.
All that said, my point is that if one bought ads with keywords for 100% of the unique first name-last name pairs found among prisoners/arrestees, "stereotypically black" names would be over-represented relative to the total population and relative to the internet-using population.
In other words, in my view, this is a symptom of the criminal justice system, not a racist policy choice by Google's algorithm. Google's algorithm sees only one color: green.
Comments
I have spent quite a bit of time working with arrest and incarceration data that has names attached. Rates of arrest and incarceration are not precisely correlated to demographics, in the sense that certain "races" (as defined by the government) are over- and under-represented in the criminal justice system, for a variety of reasons. Some of this divergence may be explained by systemic racism, some may be explained by confounding variables (poverty, education), etc.
All that said, my point is that if one bought ads with keywords for 100% of the unique first name-last name pairs found among prisoners/arrestees, "stereotypically black" names would be over-represented relative to the total population and relative to the internet-using population.
In other words, in my view, this is a symptom of the criminal justice system, not a racist policy choice by Google's algorithm. Google's algorithm sees only one color: green.