Science & Anti-Racism. Part 1.
This is written by Sophie, with support and critique from the Science London collective.
Before we think about how science, science communication and public engagement can be anti-racist, we need to think about how they are racist. That’s the focus of today’s blog post.
Over the past 6 weeks, it’s like a magnifying glass has been held up to inspect the racist roots of the UK. Those roots are not just a part of our past, but are actively feeding our racist present. A present that I, as a white person, benefit from both directly and indirectly. Supporting the Black Lives Matter movement through being actively anti-racist means unearthing these roots and beginning the long process of dis-entangling them from the language, norms and culture of Britain. Which will be a long process.
This week, as part of Science London’s overall aim to promote equitable practice in science and science communication, I (Sophie) will be pulling together resources and highlighting the work of People of Colour that can help to support scientists, public engagement and science communication professionals to stay engaged in the anti-racism movement, challenge yourselves and practise anti-racism in your writing, your meetings, your events, and the labs and elite institutions (because, let’s face it, they are elite) in which you work.
Why science and science communication?
I’ve been thinking recently that racism in Britain is kind of like a huge spiders’ web; it might initially be hard to see for some people (especially those of us who are white), but once you notice it it’s literally stretching everywhere, and maybe you’ve even walked through it and it’s stuck all over you and as you try and pull it off more gets stuck on you. How can you start to disentangle yourself? Maybe a good approach is to think critically about how structural and institutional racism intersect with your life.
That means that if you work in science or science communication, you should explore the role that racism plays there. This is *especially* important, since science education in the UK is extremely westernised and colonial, completely overlooks other forms of science, and instead focuses on the idea that ‘(western) science is objective’ which might influence us to think that something like racism surely can’t affect the research we produce or the way we talk about it. But it has done and continues to do so.
Scientific Reasoning has been used to explain / justify / encourage racism
Far from being objective, science and scientists have literally justified and encouraged racism through ‘scientific reasoning’. Two examples.
Charles White, an English surgeon in the 1700s who argued that humans with different skin colour were different species.
American physician Samuel Cartwright, who used his medical understanding to describe how to keep slaves in submission in the 1800s.
The list could go on much further, but I want you to get to the end of this blog post. Our ‘objective’ field of science has been used to enforce racism from as early as the 1600s, and white english scientists like Nicholas Wade and Richard Lynn are still using science in that way today.
2. The science we use everyday has racist roots
Much of the scientific progress that makes our life what it is today is the result of horrific acts of racial exploitation. Through science, we directly benefit from the pain and deaths of Black people and other Peoples of Colour. Let that sink in. Failing to address the racist roots of western science means the science we learn at school, university, and through media remains steeped in racism. Here are a few examples to demonstrate the point, from research funding to cures and treatments, it’s racist.
The Royal Society is financed by the slave trade; without payments that came from the sale of Black people,The Royal Society might not exist in today’s Britain.
Modern gynaecology and the use of the speculum is only possible because enslaved Black women were forced to be test subjects in agonising operations without anaesthetic.
Geology offers up lots of examples of structural racism. Diamond mining in South Africa in the 1800s saw white employees hired to manage Black employees that did the majority of the hard work - over 1000 Black people died and 5000 were hospitalised due to mining.
HeLa cells are a cell line which are used basically ubiquitously in medical / biological research and have played a huge part in countless discoveries, cures and treatments. These cells were taken from Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman with cervical cancer, without her knowledge or consent 6 months before her death in 1951. The propagation of the HeLa cell line is credited to George Otto Gray, a white man.
3. There is a vast underrepresentation and under recognition in science and research today
People of Colour, especially Black and Indiginous People of Colour are underrepresented in British science institutions today, whether they be students in lecture halls or PhD students, researchers, or even visitors in science museums. This is unsurprising since:
Black scientists are much less likely to be awarded research funding than white counterparts.
The Astronomy department at Yale has hired one Black employee. This was 25 years ago, and is still being used as an argument to prove that they aren’t racist?!
A study also shows that scientists with non-Western sounding surnames are less likely to be credited for research in articles and news outlets.
So in short, if you’re Black, it’s harder to do the science you want to - and even if you do get to do it, it’s harder to get recognised for it. But it’s not even just the people doing the science or setting the research agenda that are unrepresentative, it trickles down to participants of research trials. So… if our trials aren’t tested on all people - just on a subset of humans who have white skin - then our science simply cannot be objective because it’s only exploring the symptoms / effects / experiences of a privileged subset of the population, who (if I didn’t already mention) have white skin.
In case you were wondering if this impacts the science and its findings. It does. Quick example: there are huge disparities between linked traits with asthma in white people and Black people. Overlooking this difference in research means that in the US African American children are 10 times more likely to die from asthma than white European American children.
4. Structural inequalities that mean science reinforces privilege
All of the points above help to build to one situation - a situation where western science is majoritively done by white people for white people. The experiences, arguments, and inquiries of anyone who isn’t white are sidelined. Of course, this reinforces the racism of science in one big ugly vicious circle:
Being Black or Minority Ethnic makes it harder to succeed in science, because of the implicit and explicit biases of the scientific community; so the vast majority of professors, researchers, science teachers are white; because of this People of Colour might feel less welcome in scientific environments; further reinforcing the dominance of white people in these spaces.
If scientific spaces are full of white people, then our beloved ‘objectivity’, whether that’s in physical sciences, natural sciences or medicine, comes only from a white perspective, where white funders fund white scientists with white lab groups. This means that the research we produced is biased, this has tangible effects - which range from diseases and conditions that affect People of Colour receiving far less attention to technology, such as facial recognition not working for Black or Minority Ethnic members of the population. This reinforces privilege throughout entire populations, showing that racism in science trickles into the lived experiences of People of Colour all over Britain and the World.
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So, if you needed any convincing, I think you should now be able to agree that science is racist. Which means that anti-racism is crucial for those who work in or communicate science. In another post tomorrow, I’ll be thinking more about why anti-racism is ABSOLUTELY relevant to your work in science communication, science engagement and/or research, and what this might look like.