race matters
skookumchick | March 13, 2008On Monday, I posted two parts to my ethnic story as a white person in the US, and they prompted a variety of comments. Rather than respond in the comments, I thought I'd write another post.
First, I want to thank the people who took up the challenge to write their own stories. DH, grad student, Eric Lund added their stories to the comments, Academic wrote about hers on her blog, as did Ginger Peach, and Makita. Sciencebloggers took up talking about race/ethnicity/diversity and science too including ScienceWoman, razib, Janet, Greg, DrugMonkey, and Maria, and anyone else I missed. If you'…
skookumchick | March 10, 2008In an attempt to do my part to displace whiteness from "normal" in terms of thinking about diversity and science, I'm telling my ethnic story. This is part II; part I is here.
More below the fold...
The story of my mom's side of the family is quite different from my dad's. My mom's parents both grew up in the North of England, with my grandmother's family being coalminers. My grandmother went to school until the equivalent of 8th grade, and then she came home and helped look after her 9 siblings. I'm not sure where my grandparents met, or how they came to live in London. That's where…
skookumchick | March 10, 2008Some events combined last week to make me feel like ScienceBlogs needs to have a serious discussion about race and science. Here's a place to start - how do white people tell their own racial or ethnic stories?
More below the fold...
So last week, Monday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon, I was at my university's Multicultural Forum. While it is required for some of us to go, and while it looked like a lot of the material was going to be familiar to me already, I decided to use the 2.5 days as a time to gauge this new city I'm living in - as staff, faculty and alums attend this forum, I…
sciencewoman | March 10, 2008I always feel acutely ignorant when I begin to talk about racial prejudice, diversity or discrimination. I grew up in a blindingly white hometown. In elementary school, my best friend was Indian - but she was part of one of two Indian families in town - both there because a parent was on the university faculty. I'm pretty sure that the first time I ever saw a person of African descent, it was the child of another faculty member. I didn't hear much explicitly racist talk from friends or family, but minorities were so rare that maybe it just didn't come up as a topic of conversation.
My…
thusspakezuska | March 5, 2008Maria told me about WOC PhD. A link in this post led me to the Feminist Studies Collections: Women of Color & Women Worldwide pages, from which I hopped to the Women of Color page from the Wisconsin Women's Studies Librarian, which in turn took me to Joan Korenman's Women of Color websites list. Joan's excellent list includes Black Women in Mathematics, Digital Sisters, summaries of a few studies, and Sister Mentors, among others.
Abel pointed me to Urban Science Adventures! - which, by the way, has a nice post on women's history month up. Also, Diary of a PhD Student, Education and…
thusspakezuska | February 27, 2008Maybe you've been wondering just exactly how few women scientists and engineers there are in academia in the U.S. Or, to put it another way, maybe you've wondered just exactly how much men scientists and engineers are overrepresented in academia.
There's a new website that gathers and presents comprehensive data you can use to answer those questions. The National Women's Law Center presents The Women's Prerogative. You can find out how many women are teaching in science and engineering at your school - there are data for 150 research universities. There are fact sheets that delineate…
sciencewoman | February 22, 2008Mystery City is 42% non-Caucasian, with the largest minority being African-American. Mystery University is 25% non-Caucasian.* My introductory courses bear out that statistic; I have a substantial percentage of Hispanic, Asian, and African-American students. So I was somewhat started the other day when I looked around my upper-level class and realized that we were all pretty much non-Hispanic Caucasian.**
That first glance around the classroom was folled by a surreptious examination of the other upper-level courses in my department, our graduate student population, and our faculty. So far, my…
thusspakezuska | February 12, 2008I've written in the recent past about why Jim Watson is bad for science, especially the perception non-scientists get of science as a result of his pseudo-scientific racist natterings. I analyzed the reactions within the scientific community to the recent Watson imbroglio.
It's far past time for me to speak up about how Watson's mess hits closer to home. I am talking about his role on the board of directors of Seed Media Group as a scientific adviser. Seed Media Group, as you may know, is the organization that sponsors Scienceblogs. I have to tell you, it is extremely disgusting to be…
thusspakezuska | October 27, 2007Since Jim Watson's recent self-destruction, there's been a lot of talk about pseudo-scientific racism versus actual "scientific" studies of race. Earlier this summer, Lennard J. Davis had an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled A Grand Unified Theory of Interdisciplinarity in which he had this to say about race and ethnicity in the sciences/medicine versus the humanities/social science:
A truly interdisciplinary approach is potentially dangerous: Some kinds of knowledge might refute or negate other kinds of knowledge. For example, if we took the advances the humanities have made…
thusspakezuska | October 26, 2007By now everyone knows that Jim Watson has resigned his position at CSHL. But the damage he's done will live on long afterwards. Consider this comment from a reader (emphasis added):
As a non-scientist, I'd like to point out an unpredictable side-effect of Watson's remarks that might make scientists cringe. Yesterday a student in my women's studies class used Watson's comments on race and differential intelligence (along with an NPR interview with Phil Rushton on the same theme) to illustrate scientific findings on that subject. Her larger point was to suggest that the singular enterprise…
thusspakezuska | October 24, 2007PZ Myers is a really nice person and I love Pharyngula - I just spent a nice half hour reading it, and among other good stuff I encountered there was a link in this post to Robert Hooke's notebooks online. Very cool indeed, and totally geekalicious.
But I'm also aware of this recent distasteful post wherein PZ offers up an apologia for Jim Watson. You know, he just has these repellent personal opinions; he's an asshole; but we all have to learn to tolerate this because he's such a fucking hero.
A healthy dose of puke for your shoes, PZ. If Watson suddenly announces that design theory…
thusspakezuska | October 19, 2007The latest Watson news is that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has "suspended [his] administrative responsibilities...pending further deliberation by the board." Watson, meanwhile, has begun the "Did I say that? No! I didn't mean it!" apologia that usually follows when some noted figure catches hell for being more frank about his or her racist views than the public is used to.
He also said that "to all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly…
thusspakezuska | October 18, 2007From the BBC News:
The Science Museum has cancelled a talk by American DNA pioneer Dr James Watson after he claimed black people were less intelligent than white people...saying his views went "beyond the point of acceptable debate".
Skills Minister David Lammy said Dr Watson's views "were deeply offensive". He added: "They will succeed only in providing oxygen for the BNP.
"It is a shame that a man with a record of scientific distinction should see his work overshadowed by his own irrational prejudices."
...A spokesman for the Science Museum said: "We know that eminent scientists can…
thusspakezuska | October 17, 2007Spitting on Rosalind Franklin's grave is apparently not satisfying enough for Jim Watson. When you are a largemouth ass, you have to do much, much more. So now he's maligned all of Africa and everyone of African descent. Here's a quote:
he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
Also,
His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities…
thusspakezuska | September 10, 2007I saw this advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action, by Peter Schmidt. Schmidt is a deputy editor at the Chronicle. I don't have a copy of the book but the excerpt I read on amazon.com is very well-written and just astonishing. There's a website and blog to accompany the book, where you can find an excerpt and table of contents, a list of books cited or of interest, and links by chapter. These links put a world of information at your fingertips - reports, books, websites for information about…
thusspakezuska | August 29, 2007By way of the Chronicle news blog:
The National Institutes of Health has released new guidance about its policies on diversity and on child care.
One set of guidelines, or "frequently asked questions," released Friday, concerns the NIH's efforts to expand the pool of candidates eligible for its training grants that were historically reserved for minority students...Another set of "frequently asked questions" describes the circumstances under which universities may use the agency's grants to finance child care and parental leave for scientists who receive NIH grants.
Seems these guidelines…
thusspakezuska | August 13, 2007So, I can't sleep because I'm very worried about my mom right now. I won't bore you with details; she's okay for the moment but a lot is weighing on my heart.
The upshot is, you get a post about Barbie dolls.
Yes, Barbie dolls. Inspired by Keet & Nini, whose site I found by way of Astrodyke. Thank you, Astrodyke!
The stuff about Barbies is in this post at Keet & Nini's. Keet talks about her daughter loving Disney princesses and playing with Barbies, and reminisces about the other girls in her high school Science Club. She concludes:
I wonder what they are doing now, and…
thusspakezuska | June 21, 2007The Chronicle of Higher Education had a great piece this week about A. Van Jordan and his new book of poetry, Quantum Lyrics. Unfortunately, I think you need a subscription to read the article online. It's the June 22, 2007 issue, p. A48, if you have access to the print version.
"Physicists talk in metaphor all the time," says Mr. Jordan, 41, who weaves theories and theorems into his latest poetic examinations of history, race relations, memory, and grief. The centerpiece of Quantum Lyrics is a lengthy cycle of poems about Albert Einstein, but the book is alive with a wide array of…
thusspakezuska | May 14, 2007I have to admit, I am an avid reader of comic strips in the daily newspaper. There's a lot of social commentary in the daily comics. Over the past year or two, I've watched as a few of the more conservative strips have slyly (or not so slyly) introduced references to intelligent design into a panel here and there. Here's an example I commented on in September 2005.
You will also find reflected in many comic stips stereotypical attitudes about gender. You don't have to look very hard most of the time. So when you find something different, it's really a pleasure.
Today's Baldo strip…
thusspakezuska | May 4, 2007The Chronicle of Higher Education daily update reports on this year's inductees to the National Academy of Sciences. A total of 72 members and 18 foreign associates elected this year - and guess what, they managed to find 9 worthy women. Yes, NINE.
Is that not amazing?
But fear not, friends. We are told:
The number of women inducted is nearly half the record 19 elected in 2005 (The Chronicle, May 4, 2005). Nevertheless, the percentage of all members who are women has steadily grown to reach about 10 percent this year, an all-time high. The proportion should continue to grow as more…