race matters

Oh, linky blogosphere, how I love thee! I was just starting to browse through Atoms Arranged Meaningwise by Rachel McKinney - which I found via Scientiae's blogroll - when her most recent post sent me shooting off to Threadbared. Rachel notes: And I know we're supposed to be good little serious philosophers and clothes aren't supposed to be the sort of thing worth thinking too hard about, but that's just the kind of fucked-up masculinist logic that got us into this mess in the first place, right? I suspect Isis would agree! Then the pitch for Threadbared: Threadbared is a blog by two…

Well, February has come and gone, Black History Month is over for another year, and we've had the first round of the Diversity in Science carnival. I am sure some of you who blog may have thought about contributing to this carnival but didn't for a variety of reasons. Maybe, like me, you had family issues and/or health issues going on; I almost didn't make it to contribute to the carnival myself. Maybe your job was making you crazy. Or maybe you thought to yourself, "I am not an expert on diversity. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't really know how to go about writing on this topic…

It's up and available for reading, people! Go over and enjoy at Urban Science Adventures! This carnival celebrates the people of science and engineering - those who innovate, invent, research, teach, and reach out. This Blog Carnival tells the stories of achievement and perseverance. Why is such a celebration needed? Many reasons, but as Molecular Philosophy put it best, it is to showcase the individuals of science as ROLE MODELS. I think we have a fine list of Role Models for the Black History Month edition of Diversity in Science Carnival. And when you look at just the first few entries…

I found out about both of these courtesy of the Chronicle Review Note Bene/New Books in Print feature. Both look extremely interesting. First, Revisiting Race in a Genomic World, from Rutgers University Press. With the completion of the sequencing of the human genome in 2001, the debate over the existence of a biological basis for race has been revived. In Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, interdisciplinary scholars join forces to examine the new social, political, and ethical concerns that are attached to how we think about emerging technologies and their impact on current conceptions…

DLee has started a new carnival to highlight the contributions of awesome scientists and engineers, with the first one being focused on the contributions of African-American scientists and engineers (it being Black History Month and all). (By the way, does anyone else think it is supercool to have a Black History Month when we finally have an African American president? I think so. Way cool. We're watching history being made!) So. I want to profile someone I just learned about this very week, and who I have already talked about with my first-year students. So. Have you ever heard of…

Acmegirl and DLee facilitated a ScienceOnline2009 session about race and science, stemming from what happened last year where the session on gender and race really focused on gender and not race. I've finally written up my notes, and what follows is a rough summary of the conversation. For those who attended, please feel free to annotate -- and note again the presence of the new "Diversity in Science" Carnival! More after the jump. DLee started with talking about the image of scientists, and in particular the question of why images persist that scientists are white men. One way is…

So, we may have mentioned we're going to ScienceOnline 2009, which starts on Friday; ScienceWoman and I have our respective sessions on Saturday with our respective co-facilitators. I've been snowed under with the start of classes, some papers due, some abstracts due, a meeting last week, and, of course, this upcoming event. But I'm getting a little caught up (even if this is a scrambled post), and saw discussion of being a blogging ally at a couple of places of note: In particular, Samia blogged about how others could be good allies within her post about race and science blogging (before…

Hear ye, hear ye! I am looking for an awesome up-and-coming scholar to work with on ADVANCE. See the job advertisement below! Email me with questions! Spread the word! Thanks! ADVANCE-Purdue and the Purdue Center for Faculty Success (PCFS) invite applications for a postdoctoral scholar. We are seeking a highly-motivated up-and-coming researcher to help develop and administer a series of research studies associated with increasing the number of women, particularly women of color, in faculty positions in the Colleges of Science, Technology, and Engineering at Purdue University. This…

I found out about these two books from the Chronicle Review; haven't read either one, but they looked interesting and some of you may want to check them out. Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing by Jane Margolis The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low, according to recent surveys. And relatively few African American and Latino/a high school students receive the kind of institutional encouragement, educational opportunities, and preparation needed for them to choose computer…

There was something that always bothered me about the Mac commercials purporting to show me how hip Mac computers are. It's that I never really felt included in the world of those ads. Mac computers are personified by a uber-cool geek-chic attractive young white man. PCs, of course take on the flesh of a somewhat portly, a bit older, less attractive white man whose geek is unredeemed by any hint of cool. Did I mention they are both white men? In ad after ad after ad, we see these two white men portray personal computers to the viewing audience. You can watch the collection of ads from…

Via the AWIS Washington Wire, this news of interest to young black academics: In The Black-American's Guide for Winning Tenure - Without Losing Your Soul, authors Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy provide dos, don'ts, advice and support. One of the tips in the Q&A with Rockquemore includes being proactive rather than reactive in creating a professional network of support. She emphasizes the importance of knowing the institution's exact promotion and tenure process, as well as unwritten rules from department-specific norms to whether race can be explicitly discussed. Once the…

The National Association of Scholars, in its tireless quest to have the little-noted perspective of the white man represented in our nation's colleges and universities, has succeeded in getting a pet project funded via the Higher Education Act reauthorization. As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education: The new grant program, which would provide aid to institutions to establish or strengthen programs to promote "traditional American history," "the history and nature of, and threats to, free institutions," and "the history and achievements of Western civilization" has had an even longer…

What makes you a member of family, or a citizen of a nation? Over at Sciencewoman, Alice reports on a session she attended at this year's NWSA conference: In a session on the technologies of citizenship, Banu Submramaniam of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst talked about the developing practice of doing DNA maps to understand your heritage, and then linked into a discussion about how caste is argued by some activists as analogous to race, and then DNA scientists go in to study caste with no sociological or historical theorization of what it means. It's all very interesting to me,…

Why would you celebrate Black Independence Day on July 3rd? It took the work of slaves to build America; the slaves came before the nation, so Black Independence Day would logically precede the traditional Independence Day, July 4th. On July 3rd, I joined about 200 others in downtown Philadelphia, at 6th and Market Streets, to celebrate Black Independence Day and to honor in particular the 9 slaves transported to Philadelphia by George Washington (of the 316 slaves at his Mt. Vernon Plantation), and in general, all slaves whose labor helped build this nation. (See here for background…

Kylie at Podblack asks, for the next Scientiae, "A voice in the crowd" - are you heard? How are you heard? Are you one of a team that works as a choir or does discordance rule the roost?...who really has control of the megaphone? Heh. How am I heard? Depends greatly upon the listener, and how far they've come in examining their own types of unearned privilege. Cranky, irritable misogynistic Rethuglicans hear me as a shrill, whiny, petulant, hairy-legged, man-hating, castrating feminazi. Yes, Gerard Harbison, you can think of that as an homage to you! You are a cranky irritable…

I will admit that rap music has more than once caused me to mutter "These kids today! Their music is just noise! When I was young, our music had a melody!" Or something like that. You know, the stuff mom said when I was young. I won't even mention how the generous dose of misogyny that seems de rigeur in rap songs makes me feel. And yet I confess to being delighted today when I was listening to NPR's Here and Now and heard this story about educational rap. (Scroll down for summary.) Rhythm Rhyme Results (their tag line is "the other three R's) brings together teachers, musicians,…

I'm at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN at a completely fascinating (so far!) conference on feminist science studies. Because of the free Internetz, I'll try liveblogging the sessions I'm in, but may get distracted as it is (as I have mentioned) completely fascinating. Here's some of what I'm hearing: Marlene Zuk, talking about the problems with using males as model organisms and how the use of model organisms seem to result in making those model organisms role models for humans, and the problems with the scala natura constructing the most complicated (and therefore good)…

I'm watching "The Night James Brown Saved Boston" on VH1. It is an excellent program. I was 5 years old on April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated. I don't have personal memories of what he did for America, but I grew up revering him. JFK, RFK, and MLK were equal in sainthood in my house growing up. I think I gained most of this sensibility from my mother. One of the commenters on this program - I think it was the Rev. Al Sharpton but I'm not sure - remarked that James Brown was not a crossover artist to white America, but the artist who brought white America over…

I'm sitting in panels and sessions at this great conference on Engineering, Social Justice and Peace which is the 7th annual conference of this kind. Here are only some of the snippets of what I've been seeing and hearing: I heard yesterday of exciting and courageous curricular attempts to integrate social justice into engineering education. I heard of a course called "Engineering and Social Justice" offered through engineering and sociology at Queen's University, a first-year course where projects were focused on social justice, year-long experiences for students in Engineers Without…

Alice recently told her ethnic story over at Sciencewomen, and asked others to join in the attempt to "displace white from the default position". Of course lots of comments ensued; her follow-up is here, and well worth reading. In the follow up you can find links to others who took up Alice's challenge. I've been lying around with headaches most of last week and this one, thinking about what kind of post I might write as part of Alice's challenge. I have to admit I find the task quite daunting, which gives me some new insight as to why some of my fellow Sciencebloggers were loathe to…