ABSTRACT
We are over a decade into a millennium in which emerging technologies have
forced us to redefine “tweet, “troll,” and “friend,” and reposition “I” as a prefix
for “pod,” “pad,” and “phone.” In the United States, technical communicators
are engaged in important research, examining the theoretical and practical
implications of these technologies in weakened economies and identifying
medical and environmental exigencies in the age of AIDS crises and Superstorms.
Though we know this as an age of austerity, colleges and universities around
the country continue to seek new technical communication faculty, and our
students continue to obtain employment with job titles ranging from the
ubiquitous “technical writer” to “international regulatory affairs specialist.”
Still, and unfortunately, we lag behind our colleagues in other areas of English
studies (literature, rhetoric and composition, and creative writing) in finding
ways to wrestle with two core elements of American identity-race and ethnicity.
In some cases, emphasized in this book, these elements of our identity shape user
experiences as much as education, literacy, gender, nationality, or any of the
other criteria we use to analyze audiences. In other chapters, issues of race and
ethnicity shift from the audience to the technical communicator, whose identity
as a person of color or not informs their rhetorical moves and whether these
moves are effective.
