Embedding Anti-Racism in STEMM

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When we allow for racist assumptions to go unquestioned and the structures that allow the perpetuation of racist inequalities to go uncontested, we allow them to persist. Only when we consider racism and racial inequality to be persistent and implicit in our norms of practice and the ordering of society and not the exception, can we effectively begin to confront this issue.

- Ayah Nuriddin, Graham Mooney and Alexandre White. 2020. The art of medicine. Reckoning with histories of medical racism and violence in the USA.

Acknowledging and mitigating harm caused by racism in our educational and research environments requires a critical shift in mindset. It requires us to interrogate our assumptions, practices, policies, and relationships and to challenge how "this is the way it's always been done" is used to dismiss calls for change. It requires us to continuously reflect on and act to transform how we do science and how we treat people, and recognize that these are connected.

Racism persists because it favors current power dynamics.

In their article An actionable anti-racism plan for geoscience organizations, Ali et al. (2021) propose that for organizations to implement anti-racist and equitable practices, the following questions need to be asked:

Who is in the organization?
Who benefits from the status quo?
Who holds power?
Who feels safe?

Who is left out?
Who is powerless?
Who feels unsafe?
Why do these differences exist?

A Humanities Education Framework for Anti-Racism Literacy for Integrating Equity into STEMM

The following framework provides useful questions for interrogating the practice, foundation, and application of science as a first step for identifying and then eliminating racial disparities.

1. Who is represented in the discipline today? (Who does the science?)

Who is included and excluded from the practice of science, including science training, community, research design, credit, and access to resources?
Who is recognized as a scientist? Who is not?
Whose work is recognized or not?
What are identified barriers to participation and retention?

2. What comprises scientific knowledge in the discipline? (What is the science?)

What inequities exist in the processes of knowledge production and legitimization in the history of the discipline and how do they manifest today?
What research questions, methods, materials, and institutions are privileged over others?
What are the criteria for merit at all stages, from student evaluation and acceptance into degree programs, to hiring and promotion?
What are the core tenets of the discipline and how were they established? Where do they come from?
What knowledge has been displaced or excluded? What gets ruled out as unscientific?

3. Who benefits from the production of knowledge and its applications? (Who does the science affect?)

How do inequities in the history and current practice of the discipline perpetuate inequities in society?
What biases exist in the interpretation and application of disciplinary knowledge and technological products?Who benefits and how, either from doing the research or from research outputs?
Who is harmed and how?
How is the science applied?

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In the following pages, we will refer back to this framework to explore anti-racist practices in our teaching and research spaces and in our relationships with others and with organizations. We hope that the resources in these pages will be useful for educators, students and instructors alike, who are trained as scientists and primarily teach science and conduct science and are interested in learning how to center equity and anti-racism in their work. The content on these pages was developed and curated by a team of faculty and PhD graduate students from different disciplines in STEM (geography, geoscience, physics, environmental engineering, atmospheric sciences) writing for other scientists.