The discourse related to racism in (North) America is showing no signs of slowing down. Rightly so. The injustice and anger has been building for hundreds of years and while protests are not new, a global pandemic that is disproportionately hitting African Americans and African Canadians, police violence, the connectivity of social media, and lack of leadership in the U.S. are some of the reasons why the Black Lives Matter movement is striking such a resounding chord at this time.
On June 10, academics and scientists voiced their support and solidarity with the hashtags #ShutDownSTEM, #ShutDownAcademia and #Strike4BlackLives. #BlackintheIvory has also been trending this week. Hearing the stories of subtle and overt racism and discrimination is upsetting and even heart-breaking. We know that black students are underrepresented in STEM – I blogged about this problematic issue last week – and clearly the situation doesn’t improve for many who graduate and stay in academia.
The point of the strike was for students, faculty and staff to take the day off from their research and typical work activities to discuss and develop solutions to eliminate (more realistically reduce) racism in their institutions at the lab, department, faculty and administrative levels. It was also to acknowledge how hard it is for Black people to keep working in this charged environment and to give them a day off, but not miss out. If you scroll through the hashtags, you will see what individuals, groups and institutions have pledged to do moving forward.
Science covered the academic protest here and explains how #ShutDownSTEM came about:
“Brittany Kamai, a physicist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz, who started #ShutDownSTEM, says the idea originated, in part, from thinking about how scientists who are stuck at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic could make an attention-getting statement like those made by protesters who block a busy road. “This was my way of answering the question: ‘How do we shut down our digital streets of academia?’” says Kamai, who is Native Hawaiian.”
Science also made a list of relevant articles accessible without registration or subscription. Nature wrote several articles about #ShutDownSTEM, including this one that explained the magazine was taking a publishing pause on June 10 and was committing to the following:
- “We will almost exclusively work on and publish content about supporting Black people in academia and STEM. The sole exception is content related to the global pandemic of COVID-19.
- We will meet to discuss and begin planning how we can help eradicate racism from Nature, from academia and from STEM, and help support Black people in academia and STEM.
- We will spend time listening, reading, reflecting and educating ourselves on racism in STEM and how to address it.”
The organizers built a website to offer helpful resources. On one of the pages, you can self-identify to reach appropriate educational materials or other information. For example, I might select “I am…looking for organizations to join and/or support.” Someone else might choose: “I am…looking for resources about anti-Black racism specifically in academia.”
Particles for Justice was an organizer of the one-day strike. The field of particle physics has a “dismal percentage” (Gizmodo) of black students receiving bachelor’s degrees. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, one of the organizers, said this to Gizmodo writer Ryan F. Mandelbaum: “We don’t want more diversity, inclusion, and equity seminars. We want people to take action, including participating in protests, for justice, now. We need people to be active in reforming the institutions they work within, rather than waiting for a top-down solution.”
Many of the Canadian graduate students and academics I follow on Twitter alerted me to the June 10 event. Whether they were sharing institutional measures or their own experiences, the common thread is that the problems are just as real in Canada.
This video is from 2017. Raising awareness is no longer enough; it’s time to act. (Yes, it was time to act a long time ago.)
Stacey Johnson
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