I hope you’re all thriving this week! Thank you for your patience, as I mentioned on Slack, last week the kids were out of daycare, I was sick, and it was just too much! I hope that if you too are experiencing a bottleneck of overwhelm that you’re able to take some time for yourself and relax.

I was planning on finishing up Science Under the Scope, but I think we can break it up between this week and next week just to really take our time and round it out. A lot of these considerations around the neutrality and impact of science are probably new to you… and there’s no rush! we have nowhere to get to! Urgency is a trait of ableist white supremacy culture, it perpetuates the myth that we need to be productive to be valuable, that we need to be doing labor to have value. Fuck that noise.

We will take our time, let’s let this all marinate.

Segments eight, nine and ten of Science Under The Scope dive deeper into the real world impacts of uneven resource distribution and how that siphoning of resources by the overly resourced (usually white people) will intentionally minoritize other people and keep hold of power. Wang shows us this through breaking down “who benefits” from science industry funding. This is not the science we think about when we’re dissecting frogs (do the youth even still do that? I’m old and I still remember those little frog organs omg).

The example Wang gives is the difference between scientific research funding for cystic fibrosis (which predominantly affects white people) and sickle cell anemia (predominantly affects Black people). 

How does this under representation happen? “The reason the answer to all of these questions is kind of the same – (middle class folks, white folks, folks with access to science ed, folks who see themselves represented in science, by science, as scientists) – is not by chance or some inherent factor of culture or biology. The reason is because our world’s histories of injustice, oppression, marginalization, and white supremacy have created this segmentation, this privilege.” 

And so when we start to think about the intentional and systemic oppression of non-white people by white people and people who uphold white supremacist ideals, it becomes clearer how scientific research and data skews to favor a specific group.

For this week, please read eight, nine, and ten, and share two or three areas of research or technological development that might have bias towards people in power. Extra points if you can find something like this in your field (we’ll be doing writing project later this semester, you might want to use the content you find now).

Thanks everyone! Next module we’ll finish up Science Under the Scope. Have a great week!