hello everyone so tonight we’ll be
having an unspoken conversation about
the political and social ramifications
of the lack of diversity in stem so by
the end of tonight I would like to
explain some of the consequences of
these lack of diversity to highlight
some of the contributing factors and to
suggest possible solutions so let’s
begin by dissecting a court case that
sought justice for the complex form of
discrimination that african-american
women were facing so in the late 70s
Emin de Graaff and Reid understood that
as an african-american woman she was
facing discrimination on the basis of
gender and also race so in response she
and several others filed suit against
the last hired first fired
discriminatory employment practices at
GM upon review the judge dismissed her
case on the basis that GM in fact hired
african-americans and they hired women
insinuating her claims were baseless
in reality the african-americans that
were hired were largely men who worked
in the industrial sectors and the women
that were hired were largely white women
who worked in the office this brings us
to the incredible kimberlé crenshaw a
critical race and black feminist legal
theorist and a professor of law dividing
her time between UCLA and Columbia while
reading a judge review of Crenshaw’s
case of Emma’s case she felt that the
judge that the dismissal of her case was
an injustice squared noting that quote
without the frames that allow us to see
how social problems impact all members
of a targeted group many will fall
through the cracks of our movements left
to suffer in virtual isolation
highlighting that the judge’s refusal to
view the case through a proper frame one
that took into consideration the
multiple forms of discrimination that
african-american women were facing was
the defining factor in the visibility
and acknowledgement of said
discrimination
in response Crenshaw provides a metaphor
of an intersection to explain this
concept of intersectionality and how
women of color and in this particular
case african-american women
stand at the center of an intersection
and in one direction traffic flowing
represents discrimination based on race
and in the other direction traffic
flowing represents discrimination based
on gender and the law the ambulances
seem to only respond or acknowledge your
discrimination when you are hurt at a
single lane and not at that intersection
so when it comes to diversity of stem
what are the consequences of speaking
about only gender disparities and not
race this can result in a lack of power
and barriers of access into institutions
and with the lack of power and minimal
access to institutions minority
communities have little advocacy and
when we have no one advocating for
minority communities especially on an
institutional level we see exploitation
of these communities here we have a
headline from the Harvard School of
Public Health that reads zip code better
predictor of health and genetic code and
I think this highlights the solid
correlation of zip code and life
expectancy on the Left we have a map
from Baltimore City Health Department of
Lights expectancy in years from 2013
areas in red have a life expectancy of
66 to about 70 years while areas in
green have a life expectancy of 76 to 85
years the map on the right is from the
2010 census depicting the distribution
of african-american residents in
Baltimore City and the areas in beige
have a makeup of 21 to 40 percent of
african-american residents and the areas
in red have an eighty to a hundred
percent makeup of african-american
residents and quite strikingly we can
see an overlap of these
areas demonstrating that
african-americans have some of the
lowest life expectancies in Baltimore
City simply based on zip code
alternatively we see that the area’s
comprised of white neighborhoods
surrounding the financial business
districts or the National Harbor remain
largely unaffected and still have rather
long lifespans and again we have two
maps of Baltimore City this time on the
Left we have a map from the American
Community Survey of the percentage of
children living in poverty from 2008 to
2012 and on the right we have a map from
the Baltimore Health Department the
cases of elevated blood lead levels in
children aged 0 to 6 years old with the
red dots representing lead levels 10 or
higher and yellow dots representing
levels 5 to 9 and as we can see again
there’s these overlapping patterns on
the east and west sides of the city
while the national harbor and the
financial business districts remain
largely unaffected but I want to stress
that this isn’t just a Baltimore problem
here we have headlines from several
publications and news magazines that
says for instance from the American
Journal of industrial medicine post
pesticides present in migrant farm
worker housing in North Carolina
Fortune magazine posts if you’re a
minority and poor you’re more likely to
live near toxic waste site and I’m sure
everyone heard about the Standing Rock
Sioux protests the New York Times posts
battle over an oil pipeline teaching
about the Standing Rock Sioux protests
in a maybe lesser-known headline from a
2016 February article from BBC weeds
Peru’s oil spill pollutes Amazon
rainforests used by the indigenous
peoples and this is an article in
response to an oil spill in the Amazon
rainforest affecting at least eight
different communities and leaking over
three thousand barrels of crude oil by
the end of June 2016 about halfway
through the year
Pedro Peru the state-run oil company
will have already had three oil spills
into the Amazon River in a
according to the observatory of economic
complexity refined oil is the
third-largest export bringing in about
1.6 billion annually to their economy to
Purdue’s economy and notably so China
and the United States comprise the first
and second largest international
consumers respectively so I want you to
ask yourself how differently the Dakota
access pipeline or the pending court
cases from the global south against mega
US oil companies would have been handled
had there been PhD representation at the
academic and federal levels of these
minority communities and lastly I want
us to think about how differently green
technology would have come had the exact
communities suffering from environmental
exploitation been the ones producing the
innovation needed to restore their
surroundings so to summarize some of
these consequences I want us to ask how
is scientific representation affecting
minority power and what does this mean
politically how does this affect the way
women make autonomous decisions
especially when it surrounds health care
or the environment and reproductive
rights in what ways are minority women
to advocate for their minority women
able to advocate for their communities
and how would access to institutions
affect that power lastly I want us to
analyze how the lack of academic and
political representation are playing
into the power dynamics that exist in
the United States and how the
consequences of lack of power barriers
to access and minimal advocacy are
leading to the exploitation of minority
communities so now that we understand
some of the consequences of this lack of
diversity I want to talk about something
the contributing factors and I want to
mention that these are just some of the
contributing factors I mean this whole
presentation could expand into a
semesters worth of learning so
understand that we’re going to gloss
over quite a bit but the disparity
really starts with the way that we
socialize children and this can begin by
Aitch to school systems then add to this
disparity by promoting programs that are
not culturally competent and not placing
equal emphasis on the arts in history as
math and science as well as an
overemphasis on standardized testing and
as we saw before socioeconomic status
can largely affect resource availability
and communities and when we see the
communities with the least resources
also happen to be minorities communities
it’s quite simple to understand how this
lack of representation at the academic
level and institutional level occurs
another topic that’s glossed over is
microaggression and how social
interactions in the office can lead to
conversations rooted in bias and
Prejudice and how that affects minority
stem in it of itself so what are the
actual numbers here we have some figures
from NSF and that one on the top is
titled race ethnic and gender
demographics of the US and 2014 and
below is another NSF figure that
represents a demographic breakdown of
engineers and scientists in 2015 and as
you can see white men make up 31% of the
non-institutionalized residents age 16
age 18 to 64 however they account for
49% of all stem occupants in 2015 Asian
women in Asian men account for 2.7 and 3
percent of residents yet account for 14
and 7 percent of stem occupations
respectively and while white women are
underrepresented accounting for 31
percent of the residential population
and 18 only 18 percent of the stem
occupants we see that the white and
Asian ethnicities alone account for 88
percent of all the stem occupations and
only 68 percent of the residential
population black and Hispanic men and
women combined account for 28 percent of
the residential population while only
accounting for 11 percent
stem occupations and when we
specifically look at black and hispanic
women alone accounting for about four
percent of our stem occupations we see
that they make up sixteen percent of our
residential population so what role does
education play in this well we have k12
and university programs that reinforce
patriarchy and cultural dilution that
leave students out of touch with
socio-political movements and
influential history and to illustrate
this point I have two quotes you have
enemies
good that means you stood up for
something in your life and as some of
you may know this is from the British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill who is
continually referenced as a crucial
leader during World War two next we have
a lesser heard reference or even taught
quote that reads I hate Indians there
are beastly people with a beastly
religion the famine was of their own
fault for breeding like rats and this
too was Winston Churchill and I think
that this second quote sheds light on
the historical dilution or
misrepresentation really that we see of
prominent figures in academic settings
and because the history of the inception
of our universities who built our
universities whose land our universities
was built on or who the universities
were originally intended for because the
answers to these questions go largely
ignored it’s evident that we don’t care
what those answers actually are and what
about the way that we socialize children
and how does this shape the way that
they see themselves in the world here we
have a study from PubMed which reads
changes in elementary student
perceptions of science scientists and
science careers and in this experiment
scientists were examining the change of
perception of STEM careers after a
curricular module on health and
veterinary
and I’ve referenced the table from the
study that’s measuring student
perception in the form of the draw
scientist test and here we see pre and
post participation scores and when
surveyed during pre participation 65% of
students drew male scientists only and
around about 90 percent of them would
ruin drawing white scientists only and
we see that even after the curricular
module 85% of children were still
drawing white scientists only and this
is a largely study phenomenon that we
will continually see white children
white excuse me children drawing white
male scientists as the primary vision of
what they see a scientist as which means
that it’s very evident by elementary
school kids have this preconceived
notion of who a scientist can be
socially speaking and that the
preferences and social expectations that
we project on to children continue to
separate them into these binaries here
we have another study from the
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Science in conjunction with the Yale
University conducted in 2012 where
scientists were trying to observe the
reactions of men and women with
precisely equal qualifications and
subjects were rated on competence higher
ability and mentoring and their studies
concluded that female scientists were
less likely to be hired because they
were seen as less competent here we have
a 2012 report from the President’s
Council of Advisors on science and
technology titled double jeopardy gender
bias against women of color in science
and I’ve highlighted some of the key
points that speak to the microaggression
that we see in working environments 60%
of Latina surveyed received backlash for
expressing anger feeding the common
stereotype of angry latina we see that
48
of black women and 47% of Latinas
surveyed report having been mistaken for
administrative or custodial staff and
that 77% of black women report having to
repeatedly prove themselves in the work
environment and the report also notes
that quote women walk a tightrope
between being seen as too feminine and
so light but not respected or too
masculine and so respected but not light
and I think that this quote really
brings the conversation full circle to
our original point which is that the
lack of diversity in stem is an
intersectional issue and that as a woman
of color not only do you face
discrimination on this choice or
ultimatum really of feminine expression
or respect but you also face
discrimination on the basis of race so
what can we do well we can start by
asking how are you how am I even as a
non black minority participating in the
systems that create race and gender
biases how is our unwillingness to speak
about these issues equating to the
erasure of minority problems I want you
to ask yourself is my advocacy
performative Who am i performing it for
and why making sure that as scientists
were not only demonstrating when our
funding is in jeopardy and understanding
that many of these issues began before
the previous presidential election I
also want us to understand that science
always has been and always will be
political so if we continue as
scientists to play pretend like we are
exempt from these biases that we’re in
fact only reinforcing the exact biases
we played pretend not to exist in the
first place and I want to add that I’ve
just began to really scratch the surface
of this conversation and I
everyone here to expand this
conversation to members of the queer and
trans community or the community of
people with disabilities and try and
conceptualize how their struggles may
add to this disparity and furthermore
what we plan to do on it about it really
as a community I’m going to finish with
a quote from Senator Cisneros which
reads I try to be as honest about what I
see and to speak rather than be silent
especially if it means I can save lives
or serve humanity thank you
[Applause]
having an unspoken conversation about
the political and social ramifications
of the lack of diversity in stem so by
the end of tonight I would like to
explain some of the consequences of
these lack of diversity to highlight
some of the contributing factors and to
suggest possible solutions so let’s
begin by dissecting a court case that
sought justice for the complex form of
discrimination that african-american
women were facing so in the late 70s
Emin de Graaff and Reid understood that
as an african-american woman she was
facing discrimination on the basis of
gender and also race so in response she
and several others filed suit against
the last hired first fired
discriminatory employment practices at
GM upon review the judge dismissed her
case on the basis that GM in fact hired
african-americans and they hired women
insinuating her claims were baseless
in reality the african-americans that
were hired were largely men who worked
in the industrial sectors and the women
that were hired were largely white women
who worked in the office this brings us
to the incredible kimberlé crenshaw a
critical race and black feminist legal
theorist and a professor of law dividing
her time between UCLA and Columbia while
reading a judge review of Crenshaw’s
case of Emma’s case she felt that the
judge that the dismissal of her case was
an injustice squared noting that quote
without the frames that allow us to see
how social problems impact all members
of a targeted group many will fall
through the cracks of our movements left
to suffer in virtual isolation
highlighting that the judge’s refusal to
view the case through a proper frame one
that took into consideration the
multiple forms of discrimination that
african-american women were facing was
the defining factor in the visibility
and acknowledgement of said
discrimination
in response Crenshaw provides a metaphor
of an intersection to explain this
concept of intersectionality and how
women of color and in this particular
case african-american women
stand at the center of an intersection
and in one direction traffic flowing
represents discrimination based on race
and in the other direction traffic
flowing represents discrimination based
on gender and the law the ambulances
seem to only respond or acknowledge your
discrimination when you are hurt at a
single lane and not at that intersection
so when it comes to diversity of stem
what are the consequences of speaking
about only gender disparities and not
race this can result in a lack of power
and barriers of access into institutions
and with the lack of power and minimal
access to institutions minority
communities have little advocacy and
when we have no one advocating for
minority communities especially on an
institutional level we see exploitation
of these communities here we have a
headline from the Harvard School of
Public Health that reads zip code better
predictor of health and genetic code and
I think this highlights the solid
correlation of zip code and life
expectancy on the Left we have a map
from Baltimore City Health Department of
Lights expectancy in years from 2013
areas in red have a life expectancy of
66 to about 70 years while areas in
green have a life expectancy of 76 to 85
years the map on the right is from the
2010 census depicting the distribution
of african-american residents in
Baltimore City and the areas in beige
have a makeup of 21 to 40 percent of
african-american residents and the areas
in red have an eighty to a hundred
percent makeup of african-american
residents and quite strikingly we can
see an overlap of these
areas demonstrating that
african-americans have some of the
lowest life expectancies in Baltimore
City simply based on zip code
alternatively we see that the area’s
comprised of white neighborhoods
surrounding the financial business
districts or the National Harbor remain
largely unaffected and still have rather
long lifespans and again we have two
maps of Baltimore City this time on the
Left we have a map from the American
Community Survey of the percentage of
children living in poverty from 2008 to
2012 and on the right we have a map from
the Baltimore Health Department the
cases of elevated blood lead levels in
children aged 0 to 6 years old with the
red dots representing lead levels 10 or
higher and yellow dots representing
levels 5 to 9 and as we can see again
there’s these overlapping patterns on
the east and west sides of the city
while the national harbor and the
financial business districts remain
largely unaffected but I want to stress
that this isn’t just a Baltimore problem
here we have headlines from several
publications and news magazines that
says for instance from the American
Journal of industrial medicine post
pesticides present in migrant farm
worker housing in North Carolina
Fortune magazine posts if you’re a
minority and poor you’re more likely to
live near toxic waste site and I’m sure
everyone heard about the Standing Rock
Sioux protests the New York Times posts
battle over an oil pipeline teaching
about the Standing Rock Sioux protests
in a maybe lesser-known headline from a
2016 February article from BBC weeds
Peru’s oil spill pollutes Amazon
rainforests used by the indigenous
peoples and this is an article in
response to an oil spill in the Amazon
rainforest affecting at least eight
different communities and leaking over
three thousand barrels of crude oil by
the end of June 2016 about halfway
through the year
Pedro Peru the state-run oil company
will have already had three oil spills
into the Amazon River in a
according to the observatory of economic
complexity refined oil is the
third-largest export bringing in about
1.6 billion annually to their economy to
Purdue’s economy and notably so China
and the United States comprise the first
and second largest international
consumers respectively so I want you to
ask yourself how differently the Dakota
access pipeline or the pending court
cases from the global south against mega
US oil companies would have been handled
had there been PhD representation at the
academic and federal levels of these
minority communities and lastly I want
us to think about how differently green
technology would have come had the exact
communities suffering from environmental
exploitation been the ones producing the
innovation needed to restore their
surroundings so to summarize some of
these consequences I want us to ask how
is scientific representation affecting
minority power and what does this mean
politically how does this affect the way
women make autonomous decisions
especially when it surrounds health care
or the environment and reproductive
rights in what ways are minority women
to advocate for their minority women
able to advocate for their communities
and how would access to institutions
affect that power lastly I want us to
analyze how the lack of academic and
political representation are playing
into the power dynamics that exist in
the United States and how the
consequences of lack of power barriers
to access and minimal advocacy are
leading to the exploitation of minority
communities so now that we understand
some of the consequences of this lack of
diversity I want to talk about something
the contributing factors and I want to
mention that these are just some of the
contributing factors I mean this whole
presentation could expand into a
semesters worth of learning so
understand that we’re going to gloss
over quite a bit but the disparity
really starts with the way that we
socialize children and this can begin by
Aitch to school systems then add to this
disparity by promoting programs that are
not culturally competent and not placing
equal emphasis on the arts in history as
math and science as well as an
overemphasis on standardized testing and
as we saw before socioeconomic status
can largely affect resource availability
and communities and when we see the
communities with the least resources
also happen to be minorities communities
it’s quite simple to understand how this
lack of representation at the academic
level and institutional level occurs
another topic that’s glossed over is
microaggression and how social
interactions in the office can lead to
conversations rooted in bias and
Prejudice and how that affects minority
stem in it of itself so what are the
actual numbers here we have some figures
from NSF and that one on the top is
titled race ethnic and gender
demographics of the US and 2014 and
below is another NSF figure that
represents a demographic breakdown of
engineers and scientists in 2015 and as
you can see white men make up 31% of the
non-institutionalized residents age 16
age 18 to 64 however they account for
49% of all stem occupants in 2015 Asian
women in Asian men account for 2.7 and 3
percent of residents yet account for 14
and 7 percent of stem occupations
respectively and while white women are
underrepresented accounting for 31
percent of the residential population
and 18 only 18 percent of the stem
occupants we see that the white and
Asian ethnicities alone account for 88
percent of all the stem occupations and
only 68 percent of the residential
population black and Hispanic men and
women combined account for 28 percent of
the residential population while only
accounting for 11 percent
stem occupations and when we
specifically look at black and hispanic
women alone accounting for about four
percent of our stem occupations we see
that they make up sixteen percent of our
residential population so what role does
education play in this well we have k12
and university programs that reinforce
patriarchy and cultural dilution that
leave students out of touch with
socio-political movements and
influential history and to illustrate
this point I have two quotes you have
enemies
good that means you stood up for
something in your life and as some of
you may know this is from the British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill who is
continually referenced as a crucial
leader during World War two next we have
a lesser heard reference or even taught
quote that reads I hate Indians there
are beastly people with a beastly
religion the famine was of their own
fault for breeding like rats and this
too was Winston Churchill and I think
that this second quote sheds light on
the historical dilution or
misrepresentation really that we see of
prominent figures in academic settings
and because the history of the inception
of our universities who built our
universities whose land our universities
was built on or who the universities
were originally intended for because the
answers to these questions go largely
ignored it’s evident that we don’t care
what those answers actually are and what
about the way that we socialize children
and how does this shape the way that
they see themselves in the world here we
have a study from PubMed which reads
changes in elementary student
perceptions of science scientists and
science careers and in this experiment
scientists were examining the change of
perception of STEM careers after a
curricular module on health and
veterinary
and I’ve referenced the table from the
study that’s measuring student
perception in the form of the draw
scientist test and here we see pre and
post participation scores and when
surveyed during pre participation 65% of
students drew male scientists only and
around about 90 percent of them would
ruin drawing white scientists only and
we see that even after the curricular
module 85% of children were still
drawing white scientists only and this
is a largely study phenomenon that we
will continually see white children
white excuse me children drawing white
male scientists as the primary vision of
what they see a scientist as which means
that it’s very evident by elementary
school kids have this preconceived
notion of who a scientist can be
socially speaking and that the
preferences and social expectations that
we project on to children continue to
separate them into these binaries here
we have another study from the
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Science in conjunction with the Yale
University conducted in 2012 where
scientists were trying to observe the
reactions of men and women with
precisely equal qualifications and
subjects were rated on competence higher
ability and mentoring and their studies
concluded that female scientists were
less likely to be hired because they
were seen as less competent here we have
a 2012 report from the President’s
Council of Advisors on science and
technology titled double jeopardy gender
bias against women of color in science
and I’ve highlighted some of the key
points that speak to the microaggression
that we see in working environments 60%
of Latina surveyed received backlash for
expressing anger feeding the common
stereotype of angry latina we see that
48
of black women and 47% of Latinas
surveyed report having been mistaken for
administrative or custodial staff and
that 77% of black women report having to
repeatedly prove themselves in the work
environment and the report also notes
that quote women walk a tightrope
between being seen as too feminine and
so light but not respected or too
masculine and so respected but not light
and I think that this quote really
brings the conversation full circle to
our original point which is that the
lack of diversity in stem is an
intersectional issue and that as a woman
of color not only do you face
discrimination on this choice or
ultimatum really of feminine expression
or respect but you also face
discrimination on the basis of race so
what can we do well we can start by
asking how are you how am I even as a
non black minority participating in the
systems that create race and gender
biases how is our unwillingness to speak
about these issues equating to the
erasure of minority problems I want you
to ask yourself is my advocacy
performative Who am i performing it for
and why making sure that as scientists
were not only demonstrating when our
funding is in jeopardy and understanding
that many of these issues began before
the previous presidential election I
also want us to understand that science
always has been and always will be
political so if we continue as
scientists to play pretend like we are
exempt from these biases that we’re in
fact only reinforcing the exact biases
we played pretend not to exist in the
first place and I want to add that I’ve
just began to really scratch the surface
of this conversation and I
everyone here to expand this
conversation to members of the queer and
trans community or the community of
people with disabilities and try and
conceptualize how their struggles may
add to this disparity and furthermore
what we plan to do on it about it really
as a community I’m going to finish with
a quote from Senator Cisneros which
reads I try to be as honest about what I
see and to speak rather than be silent
especially if it means I can save lives
or serve humanity thank you
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: