The Ethics of Inclusion, Exclusion, and Protection in The Green Book

ABSTRACT

This article explores the ethical complexity of inclusion, exclusion, and protection in TPC, drawing upon a historical technical document, The Green Book, which helped Black American travelers in the 1930-60s locate safe leisure spaces in a segregated society. We examine The Green Book through the antiracist thinker Kendi to understand some of the ethical limits of the binary of inclusion/exclusion and identify necessary forms of protection for historically- and multiply-marginalized groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Protection
• community
• space
• Black americans
• segregation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Throughout this article, we use interchangeably, The Green Book or TGB. The references will refer to the text by the full name, The Negro Motorist Greenbook.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Josephine Walwema

Josephine Walwema is with the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research has investigated the pedagogy and theories of technical communication and rhetoric. Her work investigates ethical notions of agency, as well as inclusion and exclusion as social justice concerns in the Americas and the Global South.

Jared S. Colton

Jared S. Colton is an associate professor at Utah State University. His research addresses the intersections of rhetorical theory, ethics, and politics within technical communication and related fields, from concerns of pedagogy to social justice. He has published multiple articles and a book Rhetoric, Technology, and the Virtues with Steve Holmes.

Steve Holmes

Steve Holmes is an Associate Professor of English (Technical Communication & Rhetoric) at Texas Tech University. He has published numerous articles and two books (Procedural Habits & Rhetoric, and Technology and the Virtues with Jared S. Colton) on various aspects of digital rhetoric, ethics, theory, social media, videogames, and technical communication.