Privilege

This article is a good beginner-level approach to diversity & inclusion. It could be useful for sharing with straight white cis male colleagues and friends who feel skeptical, defensive, or powerless to change.

Language is tricky. This helps us use words in a respectful way.

A very practical guide to specific steps white people can take to fight racism, for anyone who wants to be an actor, an ally, or an accomplice to people of color. This framework applies to any privileged person who wants to help people who are marginalized in a way that they are not (eg: men working for gender equality, straight people for queer rights, citizens helping immigrants, etc.).

The Learning Circle Toolkit is the result of a collaborative project undertaken by the African American Policy Forum, generously funded by the Public Welfare Foundation.  We gathered together a group of scholars, activists, community leaders, and students who were actively involved in combating systemic racial and gender injustice at both the community and national level, with special focus on the over incarceration of girls and women of color in the United States.  Our collaborators came from diverse backgrounds and brought a wealth of experiences with them to our Learning Circles.

Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class.

This is the fifth post in a series suggesting changes to the systems of scientific training that may reduce the frequency or severity of harassment and discrimination against scientific trainees. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. 

There are two different angles at play in the discussion about colonialism and science. First is what constitutes scientific epistemology and what its origins are. As a physicist, I was taught that physics began with the Greeks and later Europeans inherited their ideas and expanded on them.