Exploring Allegations of Racial Bias in Google Search: An African Perspective

Just a few weeks ago, a surge of discontent blew across the Internet, as users began questioning the inherent biases of Google’s search engine. Kabir Alli, an 18-year-old student from Clover Hill High School in Midlothian, Virginia, highlighted a rather disturbing discrepancy in Google’s image search results. He shared a video clip on Twitter that depicted an image search for “three black teenagers,” returning an assortment of police mugshots. However, a subsequent search for “three white teenagers” presented photos of smiling, wholesome-looking teens. Alli stated to USA Today, “I had actually heard about this search from one of my friends and just wanted to see everything for myself. I didn’t think it would actually be true. When I saw the results I was nothing short of shocked.”

This revelation sparked a wave of public outrage, prompting many to label Google as a racist platform rigging its search results. The incident went viral, prompting civil leaders to demand Google address and fix this seemingly biased algorithm.

Safiya Umoja Noble, a professor of information studies and African American studies at UCLA, argued that Google should not be let off the hook so easily.

“Google has had many, many incidents of racial bias appearing in its algorithm. It consistently issues a statement that it’s not responsible for the output of its algorithm. And yet we have to ask ourselves: If Google is not responsible for its algorithm, who is?” Noble, who is currently writing a book about the social implications of racially-biased online searches, remarked.

In light of these allegations, I decided to delve deeper into this issue, taking it home to the African continent to experience it firsthand. I modified my default search engine based on my current location, Nigeria, from google.com.ng to google.com— a universal version that would not significantly alter search results but may change content priority based on regional relevance.

My investigations primarily focused on Nigeria and South Africa, due to their status as the two biggest economies in Africa, also considering their shared history of amity and rivalry. Searches for “Nigerians” and “South Africans” generated results that exhibited some subtle yet peculiar differences in the way Google populated their listings.

Surprisingly, while the South African categories featured terms like famous and beautiful, the Nigerian search categorization included terms like poor, be like and Americans, along with images of known public figures with controversial views on Nigerians.

The search disparity became even more evident when I input the phrases “two Nigerians” and “two South Africans” into the search engine. Nigerian results predominantly showcased images of Nigerians implicated in legal situations, depicting a consistent narrative of Nigerians in conflict with the law.

I later used other search engines to see if this pattern was exclusive to Google. Similar trends appeared in Yahoo and Bing’s search results, although Yahoo diverged slightly by displaying “more friendly” images higher up in the search results than Google.

However, an essential factor to note is Google’s colossal influence compared to