A new viral video highlighting the differences between the Google image results for “three black teenagers” and “three white teenagers” has led to accusations of racism directed towards the search engine.
A video posted to Twitter shows a man typing the two descriptors into Google, with the results for “three black teenagers” showing a selection of mugshots of incarcerated black teens, while results for “three white teenagers” instead depict a selection of stock image photos of white teens smiling. Though Google’s top image search results are based upon algorithms that combine factors such as the relevancy of the searched keyword(s) in an article and its inclusion in the image’s file name, the context regarding why these images rank so highly when searching for “three black teenagers” is more alarming.
The top three images listed after searching “three black teenagers” link out to posts from Downtrend, Mr. Conservative and NotRacistJustMad, a Blogspot blog that doesn’t even have its own domain name. The first features the headline “BLACK TEENS KILL WHITE FATHER AND OBAMA DOESN’T SAY SHIT,” the second “3 Black Teens Savagely Beat Up White Student On Bus – Obama & Sharpton Silent,” and the third is from a blog solely dedicated to documenting “black crime.” Googling “two black teenagers” also leads to a reappearance from this blog as the second highest search result, while the top search result is from an article headlined “Delivery man slaughtered by teenagers in Philadelphia,” which includes the line: “Most likely the perps killed the man solely to gain street cred to join a gang.”
Searching “three white teenagers” initially led to a search page almost exclusively filled with stock images of young white people smiling, though this has now changed somewhat as a result of an influx of articles regarding the contrasting search terms, leading to the “three black teenagers” images now popping up as results, too.
You can see how it initially looked in the video below, which has garnered over 50,000 retweets on Twitter at the time of this writing:
YOOOOOO LOOK AT THIS pic.twitter.com/uY1JysFm8w
— July 3rd. (@iBeKabir) June 7, 2016
Judging by these search results, it can be argued that Google (or least its algorithms) is giving a disproportionate amount of priority to websites that are placing criminals’ skin colors before their crimes. Though the nature of Google’s algorithms means that search results are forever changing, to search for something as inoffensive as “three black teenagers” and then be inundated with rhetoric regarding their race is disconcerting. Considering the inflammatory, racially-charged nature of the articles attached to these images,it is therefore bitterly ironic that a photo of Trayvon Martin is the first image that shows up when searching “black teenager.”
