HEAL Core Concepts

"White Supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege." - Elizabeth Betita Martinz

HEAL Identifies white supremacy, scientific racism, and extractivism as foundational core concepts for approaching anti-racism work in STEMM. To understand their embeddedness within current STEMM practices, a historical framework is required in order to understand and ultimately intervene at the individual, institutional, and systemic levels.

Historical Framework| History can provide a powerful lens for understanding disparities and inequities in the participation and experiences of Black, Indigenous and other groups and in the distribution of resources in higher education and STEMM disciplines. Black, Indigenous and Latinx groups continue to be underrepresented in STEMM fields relative to their numbers in the U.S. adult working age population. Recent critiques to the popular "leaky pipeline" model have concluded that efforts to address the problem of decreasing representation in advanced stages in STEM careers need to focus not just on recruitment but on how the structure of the pipeline itself, as a metaphor for our structures, policies, culture and climate, is corroded XXX (to edit). (Cite papers)

White Supremacy| Racism is a root cause of underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx scholars across STEM also contributes to a lack of diversity in the sciences through the types of science stories that are told, and the communities science communicators seek to engage. Racism is embedded in STEM, because STEM institutions operate within a culture systematically privileging Whiteness, i.e., a White supremacy culture, that dictates the norms and practices that many in these fields accept and replicate. (Callwood, 2022)

Scientific Racism | The belief that empirical evidence exists to support and justify (1) racial differences as biological and (2) The classification of races into superior and inferior groups. Within the sciences, this took various manifestations (i.e. phrenology, social darwinism, eugenics, monogenism, polygenism).

Extractivism|The taking of natural resources (oil, gas, minerals) from the Earth to sell in the world market. Within the Sciences, this continues to occur through poor research practices informed by settler colonial and colonial logics.

Racial Capitalism|

Settler Colonialism|