Obviously.
Via Campus Reform:
The internet demonstrates a physical manifestation of structural racism, according to a New York University professor.
In an opinion piece on The Conversation and re-published in the Billings Gazette, Professor Charlton Mcllwain writes about the inherent racism of the Internet, created by in part by search engines and links between sites.
Professor Mcllwain first argues that “the internet does appear in fact segregated along racial lines,” saying his research “demonstrates that websites focusing on racial issues are visited less often, and are less visible in search result rankings than sites with different, or broader, focuses.”
“This phenomenon is not based on anything that individual website producers do. Rather, it appears to be a product of how users themselves find and share information online, a process mediated mostly by search engines and, increasingly, social media platforms,” he writes.
His work searches for “online analogues” of systemic racism—that is, racism that applies to “cultures and societies at large”—in which “subtle biases permeate culture and society in ways that yield overwhelming advantages for whites, at the expense of nonwhites.”