Well, while we’re on the subject of under-represented groups in science (see here and here), let me raise a (perhaps) even more taboo subject by pointing out a very interesting programme on the BBC’s Radio 4 entitled “The Black Middle Class”. (Beware, the UK defintion and the USA definition of the term have some differences, but you’ll figure out pretty quickly the UK definition by listening.) A Journalist (who by the way, I gather from her comments is black, female, British, and trained as scientist) Connie St. Louis interviews several people (from schoolkids to Members of Parliament) on the issue.
Programme 1/2:
Is there such a thing as a Black Middle Class in Britain today? If so, who are its members? Connie St Louis goes in search of an elusive group of people.
Programme 2/2:
Connie St Louis goes in search of the Black middle class in Britain today. She considers what they can learn from their US counterparts.
Some random thoughts and impressions of my own (I’m in the middle of writing a lecture to be given in an hour, so forgive me if I don’t get everything in, and in the right proportion.):
In programme 1, she notices (as I, and hopefully you, have) the depressing fact that the few places that most people are aware of “successful” black people existing are in sports, media and entertainment. You might wonder, in the context of this blog and our recent discussions of women in Physics: Where are the scientists? Do they exist in reasonable numbers and are just not represented in the media much, or are they largely non-existent as a proportion of the population of people from other ethnic groups? Actually, I wonder that too. I don’t know the answer, but my own failure to encounter these people in significant numbers whereever I go around the planet suggests that the latter is closer to the truth.
But she’s not just talking about Scientists (actually, she doesn’t at all), but “middle class” jobs in general. I don’t care for these terms at all, to be frank, but we can use it as a placeholder for the thing I really care about, which is simply being able to use your talents to be as successful as you can (as measured in standard terms that society at large cares about…. power and influence within society, salary level, etc…. leaving intangibles like “happiness” aside for now.) The UK is arguably significantly behind the US on this issue, and it is interesting to hear (if you don’t know about it or have never thought about it) what the shape of the situation is in the UK, as it does reflect on the issue of representation within the sciences as well.
She tries to identify the particular forces that stop black people from getting very far in the UK, and of course rapidly arrives at a discussion of the problems of the education system, and a discussion of the breakdown of certain family structures that may (or may not?) be responsible. Another key factor is the conflict of values which place a lot of pressure on black kids (particularly male ones) in the playground: being black and being interested in education are just in conflict. It’s just not “cool” to be interested in history, science, literature, art, etc…. (That’s definitely a big problem in the USA too.)
Interestingly, there is a remarkable fact (I did not know about) that came up: The black middle class in the UK, such as it is, is a female-dominated phenomenon. The numbers of women (especially of Caribbean descent) in various management positions in various fields completely outstrips that of black men. It’s also true in other “middle class” jobs as well, such as aspects of the legal profession. This is interesting indeed. I wonder if this will show up in science in the UK too? Is there a pool of black female scientists about to spring forth in the UK? This would be great to see.
I certainly have never ever met another black professor in the UK (in any field, let alone science), but in all the hundreds of students I enountered as a professor at one of the premier mathematics departments in the UK (Durham), not one was black (that I recall…… there were one or two of Indian descent, but that’s not a group we’re talking about here), which I found depressing. I do not know how how this translates to other departments, and to other universities, but it would be interesting to know.
This is a vital issue, to my mind. Recall my earlier (and numerous) remarks about the role of science and public undertanding of science in shaping a true democracy. We cannnot as a society leave key decisions about out futures (the air we breathe, energy we consume, medical treatments we receive, etc) entirely to government, business, and a few other controlling people with “inside knowledge”. If a particular enthic group is not able to sit at the table when these decisions are being made, who’s going to look out for them? Etc, etc. And of course there is the key issue of society limiting its potential by not tapping into a large portion of its talent pool….. so its all joined up.
I have not listened to programme 2 yet, where she examines the case of the USA and what it might have to teach the UK (and I hope, the other way around), but it is bound to be interesting.
Notice that there’s not much said in the above (or in the programme) about racism. This is not just a rant about how black people are “kept down”, by racism, or just by low expectations, etc. But be sure that these are major factors too. I can tell so many stories of my own, and so many of us who have managed to get anywhere got there by having to fight through all that (and once there, still have to fight a lot against such things)…. So it is part of the equation, but not a cleanly separable part of it.
What do you think about the whole issue? Including the aspect concerning black scientists? Don’t feel you can’t comment if you don’t know anything about the UK’s systems: this is a universal problem.
-cvj
I’m at university in Scotland. There are very few black people in any of my classes; none in my informatics class. I don’t know of any black faculty members at my university (doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that I don’t haven’t been taught by anyone who is black). There is a Black Students’ Campaign (which includes people of African, Asian, and Caribbean descent)starting up though, that corresponds to the National Union of Students’ Black Students’ Liberation Campaign. The NUS is become quite active in these issues.
Relatively speaking, there’s quite a large Arabic community from India and Pakistan. Also a large Oriental community. But i’m the only Hispanic I know in my university.
It’s not the case that the city I live in just has no black people living in it, because if you walk past the state schools, you’ll see lots of black kids. So these kids just don’t go to university or don’t go to university here.
You’re absolutely right, Clifford. It’s a major problem.
“We cannnot as a society leave key decisions about out futures (the air we breathe, energy we consume, medical treatments we receive, etc) entirely to government, business, and a few other controlling people with “inside knowledgeâ€. If a particular enthic group is not able to sit at the table when these decisions are being made, who’s going to look out for them? Etc, etc. And of course there is the key issue of society limiting its potential by not tapping into a large portion of its talent pool….. so its all joined up.”
Yup.
I also think that having role models at the top of all races, sexualities, and genders is important for kids.
Q.
Here at Cambridge there are a reasonably large number of non-white students, particularly east Asian and south Asian (I can’t lay my hands on appropriate data to back this up so everything I say from here on is largely based on personal experience). There also seems to be considerably more black students than your experience at Durham would suggest. There are, however, one or two interesting points to note. First, the proportion of non-white students seems significantly larger at postgraduate level, and a considerable proportion of the black students are not English. Perhaps Part III mathematics is an important factor in attracting a more diverse student body?
On a different note, I’m glad to report that almost forty percent of the postgraduate students here are female.
On a different note, I’m glad to report that almost forty percent of the postgraduate students here are female.
I should point out that by “here” I mean “within the mathematics faculty.”
Liberal social advocacy demands “instead of” rather than “in addition to.” They are no more approbative than “Whites Only” posted above drinking fountains. There are no Jewish scientists or Black physicists or female chemists or Chicana mathematicians. Theres are scientists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians who are known by their anonymously peer-reviewed acomplishments. Anything else is vile racism - qualification by race.
30 April 1996, Senator Edward Kennedy: “”Dr. Bernard Chavis is a perfect example,” he said. “He is the supposedly less qualified African-American student who allegedly ‘displaced’ Allen Bakke at the University of California-Davis and triggered the landmark case. Today, Dr. Chavis is a successful ob-gyn in central Los Angeles, serving a disadvantaged community and making a difference in the lives of scores of poor families.” (In fact, Chavis’s first name is Patrick, and he lived not in central LA, but in the suburb of Compton.)
June 1997, in re Dr. Chavis: “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician,” the Medical Board of California suspended his license. An administrative law judge, Samuel Reyes, found Chavis guilty of gross negligence and incompetence in the treatment of three patients, one of whom died at his hands. Letting him “continue to engage in the practice of medicine” the judge ruled, “will endanger the public health, safety, and welfare.”
Social advocacy since Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” has spent $trillions elevating the incompetent. The future of mandatory incompetence has arrived. Beware the compassionately compensated hand that wields a scalpel.
Uncle Al: that’s revolting.
Q.
Quibbler writes:
I’m not quite sure that people from the Indian subcontinent can be called “Arabic” - definitely not linquistically and recent data shows not genetically (see PNAS paper.)
Banerjee: I know that not everyone in India is Arabic, but in this case I am referring to an Arab community from India and Pakistan
Q.
No matter how you look at Clifford, the ground swell of public opinion arises from societal values. Social change. While the voice might have been small in the beginning, it took on a greater resonance once everyone agreed to make the change. Would not tolerate it anymore.
In the North we saw how public opinion changed the way society was acting, although up here, I did not feel the same values before that social change took place.
Yet one would have to place themselves in disadvantage, discrimminated upon, one’s shoes for a time to think how one would feel, if the roles were reverse, and there was a predominantely black school.
I am not sure how I would feel.
My second point, is that I cannot tell the difference in the color of a man’s skin by the words he writes? What give these words accents and meaning, that such might be the case? Hurt, disadvantaged, insecurites, biased to those same words.
Empathy, for woman and comparative relation in experience, that one would understand?
A PC artist friend once stated “The reasons blacks dominate sprinting are purely cultural.” .
Anybody here agree with this?
Surely, we should all, as individuals, be considered equal in terms of inherent rights, but we know that we’re not equal in terms of abilities. The notion that every human being is a latent Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson, or Miles Davis is nonsense.
Differences in idividual abilities can translate into statistical differences in collective tendencies once we allow ourselves to be identified as members of groups.
This, even considered as merely a possibility, may be anathema to those who just want everthing to be nice, but phony solutions based on palatable delusions can only result in disaster.
So there might be, statistically speaking, racial differences in terms of specific abilities. But is a scientist ’superior’ to a musician? In both science and music is the possibility of the expression of genius.
Lincoln put it best in his 1857 Springfield address:
In some respects she [a black woman] certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others…
…I think the authors of that notable instrument [the Declaration] intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal—equal in ‘certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’
Quibbler,
It feels very weird for an Indian (speaking for myself) to hear there are Arabs from India.
There’s a large population of muslims in India, but if I am not mistaken, most muslims in India and Pakistan speak Urdu. While urdu has roots in arabic, I think they are different languages and have different (but similar looking) scripts.
For most people from the Indian subcontinent, the Arab identity is tied to geography and not language or religion.
oh, uncle al. so one anectode proves that there is an equal opportunity conspiracy to let incompetents in. tell yourself that if it makes you feel better. i once got ripped off by a black man, so i guess i get to hate black men forever just like you. it’s called logic, al. try learning some.
Wow. Virtual silence (compared to the other threads), as I feared. If there’s no willingness even to have a discussion (save for some totally bizarre or irrelevant* remarks), then we’re in even worse shape than for the women in physics topic, on which everybody seems to have an opinion. This comment thread speaks volumes, and is thoroughly depressing.
I’m going to go back to talking about flowers, fruit, food and bikes. Sigh.
-cvj
**As to the irrelevant: With respect:
damtp_dweller: non-white does not equate to black. (I can’t believe I have to make that distinction in the 21st century), and …[Update.... I missed some of the point of damtp_dweller's remark here..... see comment 21 below.]
banerjee and buck: all very interesting but that was not central to Quibbler’s point, and moreover…. relevance please!
I would say more, but on this matter, the situation is so bad in the USA that, unlike the problems women face in physics, I have no personal basis to say anything–the only black physics students I have known, grad or undergrad, are International students from Africa. With such a small sample size and difficulty in evaluating any of it, I was hoping to hear from others who had more direct experience.
Though, I would say that in the USA, much of the problem does trace back to the rediculous, painful way that schools are funded and administered.
Clifford, you say that the UK is significantly behind the US when it comes to cultivating a “black” middle class. Is this true (I’ve never been to the UK so I don’t know). I would imagine that in the US minorities make up a much larger fraction of the population. Hence, a much more visible middle class.
sisyphys says:
Says who, that’s not obvious to me at all. As a matter of fact, I’d say that a clear view of history and a little thought suggest the opposite….You where supposed to read 1984 in high school
Clifford,
It’s been known for some time that the median income of U.S. blacks of Caribbean origin is on par with that of native whites. Hence, the income gap between native blacks and native whites is likely due to subcultural differences.
What we need to keep in mind is that subcultures require generations to change substantially. Sadly, the rate at which this change occurs has been retarded by well meaning white liberalism (multiculturalism, affirmative action) allied with corporate avarice (gansta rap, BET).
Another retarding influence is the lack of black social capital. I once read, to my amazement, that a large fraction if not a majority of whites obtain professional positions through social connections. Blacks have yet to infiltrate this social network to any significant degree. This means that blacks do not compete for many openings in the various (middle class) professions, because they are simply unaware of them.
It might help to think of racial subcultures as fluids with a mixing time of about 80 years. We’re midway through the mixing interval. I don’t expect us to be discussing this subject in 2045 edition of Cosmic Variance.
I honestly can’t believe that I have to explain the post, but I’ll try. First, the relevance of “There also seems to be considerably more black students than your experience at Durham would suggest” is plainly obvious: apparently the distribution of ethnicities amongst universities in the UK is non-uniform. I find being criticised for saying this particularly galling since you did in fact ask for information about the situation at other universities here.
Second, “…the proportion of non-white students seems significantly larger at postgraduate level, and a considerable proportion of the black students are not English.” The conclusion from this is obvious (at least to me): the representation of black British society at postgraduate level in mathematics or physics in Cam seems to be terribly low. Given the fact that postgraduate study is regarded both here and in the US as an important means of entry to the middle classes, the paucity of native black postgrads seems to correlate well with the idea that the black middle class in Britain is relatively small in number. My apologies for mentioning “non-whites” in this context; I had no idea I was to restrict myself solely to a discussion of black Britain.
You know, I’ve been reading this blog since the very beginning, and was a keen fan of preposterous universe before that, so I have quite a degree of respect for all here. However, over the past couple of days I’ve been surprised by the level of arrogance and rudeness people here are capable of (and please believe me when I say that I use neither “arrogance” nor “rudeness” lightly). Sean’s deliberately mischevious post yesterday was particularly saddening; and now I see that Clifford is all too willing to dismiss things as irrelevant because he doesn’t recognise what is being said.
By the way, I doubt you’ll be interested now, but Channel 4 broadcast a series over the summer entitled Class in Britain. In spite of the description on the website, the first in the series was particularly relevant to the mobility of black Brits since it focussed on many of the issues confronting immigrants to the UK in the period just after the second world war, many of whom were black. The programme closely examined how new immigrants from the Caribbean inherited many of the social problems of the white working class and how these were further exacerbated by traits unique to Caribbean male culture. If you can find someone who has taped these I think you’ll enjoy them.
#13: Clifford, like damtp_dweller I was taken aback by Sean’s post and by the readyness of others to switch off critical thinking and join the angry mob. Much as I sympathize with you, my first thought on seeing your post on a related issue was therefore “I am so NOT stepping into this one too!”.
Analyzing problems rationally, distinguishing between what we believe or wish and what we know, respecting facts and acknowledging the limitations of our knowledge - that’s what could lead to progress. Alas, it’s not what I see going on here.
Clifford
Clearly this is a huge problem, much less easy to address than the factors excluding women from the mathematical sciences. I dont know the answer but this might be a place to try and discuss solutions.
I would be very interested in a post on some of your experiences, and it might educate people as well. I have had a few housemates and friends who are black and intellectual, and many of the stories they have told, e.g. of not too infrequent unpleasant encounters with police or with other academics who didn’t know their “class” are really horrible.
The situation in the K-12 schools here in liberal Seattle is awful. The public schools are integrated and minority white but effectively somewhat segregated by division into academic tracks. Very few black kids participate in the gifted program my kids are in and almost all those who do have white parents. And the parents of these gifted black kids report that their kids get given a very hard time by other black kids for being interested in academics, and would rather be at a mostly white and asian school than a school with substantial numbers of minorities because that way they dont have as much peer pressure. The rate of expulsion is over twice as high for black kids.
I think the reason the women in physics threads are so much hotter is that it is more socially acceptable to express theories about gender, while all but the real wackos are afraid to express an opinion on the factors that keep blacks out of the middle class.
On the subject of women, I have probably experienced more disapproval from other women for my interest in physics, and find sexist attitudes among women about the proper roles and abilities of women about as prevalent as among men.
Would it be presumptuous to call black peer pressure on black kids not to achieve black racism? Of course it is clear to me that white racism is a huge and inexcusable problem that must be addressed but maybe black racism contributes too?
“However, over the past couple of days I’ve been surprised by the level of arrogance and rudeness people here are capable of (and please believe me when I say that I use neither “arrogance†nor “rudeness†lightly). Sean’s deliberately mischevious post yesterday was particularly saddening;”
On the other hand we have to recognize that this blog belongs to these 4 people and if we don’t like what they write we can always go elsewhere. Having said that, I have to confess to a bit of a giggle when seeing Sean write that he is tired of seeing his opponents re feminism raise the same old arguments…tu quoque and all that…recognising that the gang of 4 have every right to post whatever they like, still I hope it isn’t rude to point out that there is a stupefying multitude of blogs out there which discuss these political issues, whereas there are very few indeed carrying expert commentary on cosmology, string theory, the daily lives of physics professors, scooters in Taiwan, etc etc etc. So perhaps it would be more worthwhile to focus on those things, and just give us pointers to the latest wonkettry *elsewhere* ? Just a suggestion…..
damtp_dweller:- Thanks for sharing your dismay, but given the title of the post “The Black Middle Class”, and the subject matter I talked about in the actual post, I was frustrated by all the discussion of other ethnic groups and little or no discussion of the topic in hand….. please forgive that I missed your (indeed relevant) sentence among the other stuff. My oversight. (Btw I was not complaining about the thing you mention in your first paragraph (of your more recent comment).) Anyway, my mistake. On the other hand, to immediately go off and characterize what I said as arrogant and rude seems a little bit of a strong reaction, but fair enough if you want to do that. I’m sorry to have mischaracterized your message as irrelevant, which it was not….. Also if you have an issue with what Sean wrote, then please take it up with Sean, and not me.
So sorry about that…..I will strike out my remark and acknowledge that I did not read your message as carefully as I should have. I do note however that your second message was much more clearly explained than the first, and the secdon helped me understand the full relevance of what you were trying to say.
Oh, and thanks for the channel four link.
Best,
-cvj
Clifford, reality catches up sometimes, so did not have time to read/comment much…But this is obviously an important issue, it is amazing how few black physicists I have met throughout the years. I am wondering if you have any insights as to why that is, and what could be done about it.
One thing that you mentioned resonates with me, I remember having a huge netweork of people encouraging my education, and even among the other children it was not unacceptable to be succesful in school. Maybe this goes back to image issues you mentioned before.
I tend to complain more about the underrepresentation of women in science than the underrepresentation of black people, for the paradoxical reason that the former problem should be much easier to solve. In the U.S. (which is the only country I know anything about, and even then not in much detail), it’s kind of obvious why there aren’t that many black people becoming scientists: because of the huge disparities in the economic and social situations of blacks and whites. Ultimately, we have to tackle the fundamental problems of racism and economic inequality, with an emphasis on equal access to good schools, health care, and jobs, before we could expect many black kids to aim for such a specialized high-status occupation.
Which is certainly not to say that the underrepresentation of black people in science isn’t worth worrying about in its own right. The more good role models there are, and the more obvious evidence there is of black people succeeding in high-profile intellectual positions, the easier it will be for kids to contemplate such a track for themselves.
So LambchopofGod, where are these examples of wonkettry everywhere talking about why there are so few black people in physics? I do not know where those discussions are. Please supply some helpful links.
Cheers!
-cvj
ksh95:- Actually, I said it was arguable. But depending upon how you define things, it is demonstrably true. But I think i we both listen to the second of the programmes described above (I have not yet…it was not up when I last looked) we might both learn a lot. Thanks for asking.
Belizean: - Your point about social networks is interesting, but I wonder how significant an effect it is compared to other things. I simply do not know. Interesting though…. I wish I was as optimistic as you that it is just a matter of waiting for “mixing” to happen. I think we need to stir!
-cvj
#15 ksh95: Of course you’re right. In truth, the study of history is the study of the history of phony solutions based on palatable delusions - and this must be a good thing given that history is not only still going, but experiencing double-digit growth!!
And as for 1984.. it may be a little behind schedule but a lot of right-thinking people are working on it. (Am I mixing ‘1984′ up with ‘Brave New World’? It’s been a while.)
In any case, no matter what we do it will all end in disaster. If it doesn’t, I’ve spent these past 30 years in this miserable bunker for nothing.
From my point of view, looking at different Indian (South Asian) communities, there are two paths out of genteel poverty that they commonly take. The first is to be in (small) business; the second is to get educated and to become middle class via a government or professional job (doctor, engineer). Actually during my period of growing up, among the second type, pure science was seen as a second-class choice, the overriding goal being to achieve financial security. Those who took science were either very in love with science or else temperamentally or ability-wise not inclined to the highly competitive doctor/engineer situation.
The choice of strategy pretty much depends on what the family tradition has been.
The question I’d first have, with regard to the black middle class is - what strategies do they follow? Depending on that, one might expect different outcomes in universities on whether they choose the business route or the education route.
The reason talking about women in science is so much easier is because the cross-section of cultures of women is the same as that of men.
Sometimes as I listen I am not sure what I am listening for, as I listen to the differences of the middle class and the historical differences of those in Europe.
Carribean taken to europe and used in ways no different then slavery was used , yet the advantages of the middle class here in america are descendants of slave and those who were put in favor, aquired possesion.
So a history here and the differences in europe and america, and the hopes in Europe? Having migrated here to the lands of the americas?
What would black people have felt about using the underground railroad and found freedom in the North?
What would their perspective be on the middle class and I still fail to see the differences on how, this perspective from the north would have been irrelevant.
Maybe it was a very secluded lifestyle, where rascism was frowned upon.
What shall I do with my two metis’ grandchildren? I really don’t care what color their skin is.
Social circumstances that their true blood of INdian descent are further reduced through French integration, and it was easy to see how I could relate on a different level.
Carribean people married to those of white ancestry will have dilute these differences in Europe so that we don’t see this distinction of white and black anymore?
Does rascism happen? For sure.
Historian Marcel Trudel has recorded 4092 slaves throughout Canadian history, of which 2692 were aboriginal people, owned mostly by the French, and 1400 blacks owned mostly by the British, together owned by approximately 1400 masters.
A little history with which I was amazed?:)
I wonder what such a concensus on “middle class” would look here? Does this question on scientist per population apply and “relevant” statistically to your opening post?
What were the differences in these societies?
Ann Nelson, Moshe:- Thanks for the thoughts. I’ll try to steer away from the standard horror stories of racism that I’ve encountered (or still encounter) in the context of trying to make progress in the societies in the UK or USA (I’ve lived in both for significant amounts of my life.) It might not be useful at this point to go though them in great detail….
But you did ask for my own experiences. There is a lot to say but I’ll be (relatively) brief.
I think I succeeded in getting through a lot of the obstacles because of four primary things:
(1) Very strong support from my family, particularly my mother. When I decided that I was going to do something (try to do this entrance exam or the other, try to have a go at some career choice), nobody in my family told me it was impossible. Even if they did not really know what it was….they just were encouraging of me to go ahead and do it if I wanted to. There was no shortage of reading, etc, in my family. And nobody told me that I was not supposed to to be able to teach myself electronics from the books that I found lying around (my father was a telephone engineer, and he must have had books from courses he had to take…he never knew that I read them, as far as I know…we never talked about stuff like that…). I think that they were just happy that I was not making a niuscance of myself and had found a way to keep myself occupied.
(2) West Indian (Caribbean) culture. Actually, that culture, when in the actual Caribbean itself, appreciates the value of education very highly. See above. It gets diluted and messed up when it gets to the UK…I don’t know why… the breakdown of the family might have something to do with it… see earlier remarks. Also, there was at the time I was there little of the kind of playground pressures I talked about that a kid faces in school in the USA and UK. (that may have changed now with the presence of so many TVs showing programs and videos from the USA….spreading the “youth culture”) Of course, there was a little of that, but it was manageable enough for me to rise above it. I was of course a phenomenally determined kid. So any taunting made me more bloody minded about continuing to do things my way. That attitude persists. See later. The fact that my parents moved us to the Caribbean for a while was a lucky accident. I was a kid largely alone (in some senses) on a tiny island, allowed to dream and not told that he could not. Nobody told me that I was not supposed to be able to be a scientist….. and I had little or no TV to constantly brainwash me that the only people who were scientists were only white males. By time I returned to the UK at age 14 my mind was set already……. which leads me to:
(3) I’m determined. Very determined. Someone (or a system) tells me that I can’t do something that I said I can do - I’m going do stare them in the face and do it right in front of them. This is one of the things that spurred me on in the face of so much doubt (on the part of others) and ignorance that I faced from the first day I arrived back in the uk to go to (what you might call) high school. A few examples: (a) The school I went to sign up for gave me a form to pick the subjects I wanted to do. I was so excited! All the stuff I’d been aching to study at the next level! I filled out the form. They put me in all the “B” groups of almost all those subjects. I never took a test for them to determine that. To their credit, they began to see pretty quickly that was a mistake, but it could not be changed in some cases due to timetabling issues….. but that was ok. (b) The first day (or maybe the second) in the maths class there was a test. I’d never seen 90% of the stuff in the test before and so I did miserably. No-one thought to ask what I’d seen before, but it was assumed that I was just not good at maths. Luckily, the teacher was reasonably open minded, and so the class was run in a way that let the students work through the text book at their own pace. It was supposed to go for the two years of preparation for the mathematics o’level. (O’level is sort of a critical high school exam certificate you get. A-stream students get entered for those…… B-stream students took a lower grade exam called CSE’s at the time, which is what I was to be entered for by default….no questions asked.) I was so determined to show them that I could do that stuff, and so enamoured with mathematics - I’d never done anything like that sort of thing before, I loved it! - I finished the entire book (working all the exercises, etc) in a few months, by late December. So, to their credit they put me forward to do the o’level a year early. (c) I was called into the office of one (well-known in the UK HEP circles) professor at Imperial College and told that they’d received my application for graduate school, but they would not be offering me one of the places that they offered to students graduating from IC since they were going to offer it to “someone smarter”. He actually said that! Wow! To say that to a kid (of any race) is a terrible thing. Well, that may have been one of the biggest boosts to my career ever. I went off, with a new determination to “show ‘em” in my mind…coupled with the already motivating fact that I loved the subject…. I had great success in graduate school elsewhere, won fellowships and prizes, went off to the IAS in Princeton….. I was delighted to receive a phone call from him several years later offering me a postdoc in his group (not at IC any more). I should have said that I was not coming since I was going “somewhere better”, but I could not bring myself to be as much of a jerk as he had been when I was a young bright-eyed student sitting in his office. But I thanked him politely and went off to Santa Barbara’s ITP….
I could go on…..there are many many examples of people making assumptions about what I could not do based upon their visual assessment of me, and I had enough confidence based on those formative years (on the Island) where I formed my character to just spit in their faces and keep walking forward. But the point is that I think I was lucky. I just don’t think I’m smarter or faster than several people I met on the bus everyday heading to or from “South Central” LA, or several roughly equivalent (re: this discussion) parts of London. I just think that circumstances meant that I had ten years being disconnected from a lot of distracting and discoouraging stuff, and that was just great for me. But I could be overstating things….. I do not know if during that ten years I’m talking about the kids the same age as me in the UK would have faced the same negative forces that kids face now…. so maybe the effect of “the Island” is not as significant as I state. But I suspect that it is quite significant.
Gosh…I’ve forgotten what the fourth thing was…I typed the other three for so long. It will come back to me in good time I suppose. I’ll post this and see…..
Oh, wait, maybe the fourth thing was
(4) Pure luck to meet the right people. Those teachers I mentioned above could well have been less open-minded than they turned out to be. Then I woudl have been in a pickle. They would have made up their minds about me -wrongly- as they did at the outset, and I would have been stuck. But where they could -and it was not always uniform- they did eventually recognize that I could do things at a high level and they put opportunities (the same ones that the standard middle class kids had) my way. In a more pressured school system and rigid national curriculum that came in later years, I might not have done so well. Luck. Luck. Luck.
Surely if we can create better systems in society (the images kids see in the media, the education they go through, etc) - one that does not need to rely heavily on my unusual trajectory, luck, and bloody-minded determination - more black people can contribute to science at the level that they definitely can. That’s all I want to say.
Cheers,
-cvj
I understand “your accent” now.
Plato:- I see. You’ve got to be the only one then, since most people are confused by it. It is from everywhere and nowhere….like me.
-cvj
My second point in #8
When you listen, one has to listen a little deeper as to what is being said. It’s not always clear, until you wrote that larger post above in #30.
You’ll understand what I meant now I’m sure. We all have our “accents”
Now back to flowers. LOL
Clifford,
Thanks for the clarification, I really appreciate it. For my part I will try to be clearer in what I say.
Anyhow, your comments about the supportive family environment you had when younger are interesting because they seem to tie in with what many social scientists here believe about the current generation of black youths in large cities. In fact, regardless of the racism which black children undoubtedly are faced with from without their communities, there is perhaps a more insidious problem at work: collapse of the family structure within inner-city black communities. This isn’t helped by the fact that minority and immigrant communities in London are so desperately overcrowded that a foreign aid agency has recently begun humanitarian work there.
I mention this because of an extremely interesting article I read several weeks ago in the Sunday Times which focusses on just these sorts of problems. There’s nothing related to science in it but it’s an interesting precis of contemporary thinking about the problems faced by blacks in Britain’s cities.
dampt_dweller: - interesting article. I will look at it. And the other link is remarkable too.
Cheers,
-cvj
The fact that in the U.K, Black Middle Classes have suffered more than any other section of society, is the result of the class structure that is still prevelant in U.K at present. I think that because of the U.K class structure’s stronghold over a vast era, it has been pretty hard for all classes to penetrate the “system”.
Just the word “class” has its roots historically within education ‘CLASS-room’. Education was a class elitist form of structure, and “CLASS” is based on Her-Majesty’s-Pleasure?..a nod or wink from the right source, elevates one into the hierarchy of “exclusivness”.
The U.K is changing, not fast enough, but change is at hand. It is fact that there are Black-Middle-Class sections of society, but I think that they are “non-conformists”, in that they may be succsessful, but I do not think that they are subscribing to a class-structure that has been crumbling and have its foundations unearthed?
It may be that there is an underlaying predjudice, based on “human-to-human” factors, and whats the first thing another Human see’s, when one enters an interiew room for instance?
CLick here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/extras/episodes/five.shtml
and click ‘watch the clip’ for the bases of U.K current way to understanding and tackling the problem.
Anyone in the U.S who gets the chance to see the original “OFFICE” and the recent “EXTRAS” should really have no problem in understanding the British Mentality of predjudice.
Although its comedy, it is potrayed in a most powerful format, that really makes you stand back and think, think deep that is.
Thanks Clifford, our paths could not have been more different, I was spoiled by a very supportive environment all around, it is really interesting to see your perspective.
There has been a lot of discussion here about underrepresented groups, but little about overrepresented ones. Blacks are an order of magnitude less likely to be physicists compared to their proportion of the population, and Jews (in particular of Ashkenazi descent–in fact I’ve met very few Sephardi scientists or mathematicians) an order of magnitude more likely (at least from my experiences in the US). Are these inverse situations?
[...] Science Sean writes about the prevalence of women in physics and the egotism and sexism entrenched in the sciences. In a related post at the same blog, Clifford writes about the presence of black scientists and a recent BBC program on the existence of a Black Middle Class. [...]
Clifford,
Sorry for the silence, but when I first checked in the comments seemed to going in a non-productive direction. I sincerely don’t understand why there is such an aversion to accounting for cultural effects in human behavior. This is not a liberal stance, merely a practical one. The data support this, and in addition to the references I sent in to an earlier post there are studies that document such biases based on racial identification.
I agree with Anne that it would be more useful to discuss the issues with the idea of developing solutions.
First would be to try to base the discussion on the premise that cultural effects can be very powerful and are not restricted to any one group. Research has shown (and Anne has pointed out that) expectations/beliefs about the abilities, interests, and “proper place” about groups are held not only by outside groups but also by members within the group. (C. Steele of Harvard has done some interesting work on this). Secondly, these sterotypes become deeply embedded in cultural behavior — discrimination and segregation emphasize and reinforce them; resulting behavior and observations are then used to justify further discrimination. Cultures and attitudes can and do change, but slowly. If the goal is to facilitate these changes, we need to identify and understand what the stereotypes are.
I don’t know anything about the UK middle class, so will confine my comments to physics in the US. The numbers are extremely low: (from APS COM 2002)
http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0502/050216.cfm
HBCU = Historically Black Colleges and Universities
The AIP’s statistics on students 2003:
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/ed/table11.htm
African American
Bachelor’s 4%
PhDs 2%
The AIP also breaks down the percent in various racial groups who take physics in high school
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/hs2001/figure4.htm
The numbers are increasing in each “racial group” but in 2001
the breakdown was
47% Asian
33%white
22%African American
21% Hispanic
The full report on HS physics is also worth reading:
http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/hsreport2003.pdf
and notes the correlation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement in general, and the correlations between the socioeconomic status of high schools with the percent of students who take physics and the percent of schools which offer AP physics. (The teacher preparation is a bit scary — only 22% of HS physics teachers majored in physics in college, with an additional 11% who majored in physics education; and almost 50% of HS teachers primarily teach another subject…) They don’t correlate teacher preparation with school socioeconomic status, but based on my work with HS teachers across the greater Chicago metropolitan area there are strong correlations here as well.
What I don’t know is the percent of African American students broken down by socioeconomic group, although I suspect that this will account for at least some of the disparity between the percent of Africna Americans in the general population and their numbers in ranks of professional physicists.
In the US, at least, physics is not seen as a way to break into the middle class.
Many physicists come from families with a strong academic tradition (a parent in academia or science related field) or higher socioeconomic group — most kids who grow up in a small town (one without a college/university in it, which is most) or inner city do not know any physicists, have never met one, and have no idea that this is a potential career.
As a practical solution it might be worth looking at Xie and Shauman’s work on pathways into science. The decision to major in a science or non-science field is often made in high school, but many of the women who earn a degree in science switch from a non-science major early in their college career — ie it is possible to recruit talented students who had not previously envisioned a career in science.
I won’t reiterate the usual suspects: the amazing prevalence of unconscious racism in people who should know better, a deeply unequal education system, the strength of underlying assumptions about the abilities of black people.
One thing I don’t hear much discussed though. Thinking of my students (mathematics), the ones with the ability to overcome these obstacles all feel an obligation and a need to do something which directly addresses those obstacles: to go into law, government, journalism, maybe medicine. They seem to feel that going into science is a retreat into the academy.
Clifford,
I have no idea how damaging to you greater exposure to British popular culture might have been. But I think that exposure to American popular culture after about 1970 would not have been beneficial. Using TV as a primary indicator of pop culture, you would have been exposed to black portrays that I summarize as follows:
1950s: The black presence on TV was slight and generally negative.
1960s: Blacks were portrayed on TV as members of the mainstream culture who spoke standard American English and were only incidentally black.
1970s: Incidentally black characters were viewed as inauthentic. Black characters were in general required to speak with ghetto accents. Buffoonery was common.
1980s: Incidentally black characters remained a minority, with the possible exception of single popular sitcom.
1990s: The ghettoization of syndicated programs featuring stereotypically black characters begins with the rise of TV networks specializing in such fare. The prevalence of incidentally black characters rises, but they are largely confined to minor supporting roles.
2000s: Mildly pornographic black videos glorifying antisocial themes become a TV fixture.
[The great exception to this trend was science fiction programming. There characters remained incidentally black from the 1960s onward.]
So if you were a child in the U.S. during 1970s or later you would have been exposed to a massive dose of race-conscious TV repeatedly driving home the message that blacks are a separate group with a ghetto subculture equally valid in all respects to the dominant one.
This idea of the equally validity of all aspects of black culture has gone so far that many teacher are now reluctant to correct the grammatical errors committed by their black students.
I think that you’re correct in suspecting that confinement to your island was ultimately beneficial.
I, too, am of the opinion that much larger quality-of-life issues need to be addressed within the black lower and middle classes before we can even begin to contemplate additional reasons for why there are few black physicists.
Clifford, maybe the reason why this thread has attracted relatively little discussion is because that which has historically limited socioeconomic success for black people in the United States and the United Kingdom has been so cut-and-dried. Originally it was slavery and its legacy. Now (US- or UK-native) black people must deal not only with the (sometimes still resounding!) echoes of disenfranchisement, illiteracy, poverty, etc. but with an internal culture that can romanticise the results of that past and that can deeply discourage any escape.
We musn’t forget that only a hundred years ago, women sometimes discouraged other women from higher education because it would “unfit them for woman’s true sphere, the home,” and felt that any higher education that a woman did receive would be best put to use in “domestic science.” How did this change? Who changed it?
Black children of African and Caribbean immigrants, at least in the US, are in some sense not socially considered “black,” just as east and south Asian-Americans born and raised in the US, and their children, are not socially considered wholly “American.” In part this is because many of the black immigrants come from families who left their native countries in order to seek a nebulous something better, but what is interesting is that after the second or third generation, and especially if these later-generation black immigrants live in native black neighborhoods, their grandchildren begin drifting in social habits and in education toward those of their native black peers.
Not having reached any critical mass, they must eventually assimilate toward some cultural norm, and in any case at very first glance most Americans will treat them as they treat native black people, with all the baggage that generally comes with that.
I attended average, Middle American public state schools with a mix of whites, blacks, Latinos, Jews, Arabs, etc. and a mix of income levels. Discouragingly, as in most public schools, you could usually tell the academic level of a given class by stepping in and counting the number of black children. But the fact is that there were sometimes advanced classes with a number of black students, and if you were to investigate, you would very often find that black immigrant children had grades as good or better than those of whites, Jews, etc. in the class, and that these children had generally positive attitudes toward education and its effect; but native black children’s grades were often near the bottom of the class, and their attitudes toward education and behavior in class were noticeably less positive.
I cannot say what caused this, but I will observe that it is true in so many other places, particularly in higher education, where immigrant black students and instructors are classed, somehow, apart from native black students and instructors, and often people expect, as if it were the natural course of things, that the immigrants should do relatively well while the natives should struggle and falter, or that the immigrants are able to get in and get by on their own merits while the natives are “affirmative action admits” whose qualifications and abilities are unfit. (What is actually true in many places is that the immigrants ARE sometimes the “affirmative action admits,” and the native black students expected to benefit from any affirmative action are being squeezed out by African immigrants who are considered more qualified.)
At the base of it these differences are cultural and educational, of course. How to break the vicious cycles happening in poor black America is the main issue — and much of that change must come not from white Lady Bountiful, but from within the black community — but I think it is not unwise to assume, as others have suggested, that an entire group emerging from dire straits will prefer those white-collar jobs with practical impacts on their lives and their hometowns.
My parents, themselves educated immigrants who had seen the results of abject poverty in their own countries and who had at times lived it, could not understand why I would want to do anything so impractical as physics. To them education was everything, but that education should have been used to pursue something resulting in a comfortable living for my family.
If we start working on building established classes of black, Latino, Amerindian, Inuit doctors, lawyers, teachers, writers and engineers (!), then we may eventually see more of those who are willing to devote their lives to something so impractical and distant as pure physics or math — all of a sudden it will have become less impractical, less distant, as once the idea of a black engineer or doctor began to seem less distant.
My experience of Hispanics (I’m going to assume for now that the issues are somewhat similar to the obstacles that face black people) is that education is very highly valued for socioeconomic reasons. Families that can afford it will try as hard as possible to send their kids to university and then to grad school — in the US if possible. In particular, science is often seen as a “way forward” economically — people with degrees in science can get jobs in the US or in Latin America, whereas other degrees may not be as “transferable”.
But in general, this encouragement of Hispanics into science happens only in the upper/middle classes. That, i suspect, is largely about the cost of sending a kid to university and grad school. And after qualifications are acquired, many people encourage their kids to get highly-paid jobs (ie, not academic!). So academia is important, but not as important as making money.
There’s also the social aspect with young kids that carries on through adolescence. When i was in grade school, white kids tended to hang out with other white kids. I don’t remember consciously or deliberatly explicite racism on the playground, but i’m sure some degree of prejudice is what made kids hang out with kids of the same racial group.
Are these factors at all parallel to what black people face?
Buck: i know people whose families are from India and who self-identify as Arabs. I haven’t questioned them about that self-identification. I suspect they also have family in Arab countries. I am fully aware of what the word “Arabic” means.
Q.
Math is considered boring, useless and hard.
It is a general problem which is slightly exacerbated within the Black subculture. Doing math makes you a dullard since it has not changed for centuries and you need no more than 1 way to say 1 + 1 = 2. I feel more embarrassed to tell people I do a math degree since it is considered a useless degree by many with little applications. I tire to explain the profound uses and to note that the internet - with which they use with such propensity - among many, has not an aspect from programming to engineering to security in which mathematic’s strong hand in it cannot be thanked most profusely. But most, regardless of race (although more so with black people), are certain that there are more important and less boring things to be done with one’s time. You dare to lock yourself in a library while our peope continue to starve, kill each other and be oppressed? That which could be done by emphasizing eduacation, the subtler benefits of studying the science remain hidden for most for the simple reason of a lack of understanding of what such entails.
Key, is that most, myself included have had a very bad experience learning math, it takes a strong will and knowledge of what you wish to press on nonetheless. Many in my age group (again even moreso with the minority kids) tend to not have the latter. Societies did not develop sciences, art etc. until there existed algiculture and cities where leisure time could begin to exist. One cannot expect those raised in impoverished conditions to give a whit on the finer aspects of the working of nature. Too long have their minds been wired into pondering the finer aspects of survival. With bitterness, it becomes hard to find appreciation of anything, to note the beauty of one’s soul as a reflection of that which exists in nature requires alot of free unpressured time. Improve conditions uniformly and the problems will be lifted.
Within my age group (20) I have never felt much cause for racisim nor descrimination for an interest in the sciences (within and without the black subculture, if there was teasing it was certainly light hearted in nature, recollections on which bring smiles to my face). It is only among the older generation that I feel uncomfortable and at times the perception of being judged. Indeed among them, the thought “what does this guy think he is playing at” is so palpable as to be felt, hanging in the air like a dark cloud of smoke, clearly spelling out the message. I will refrain to talk on stories where there might have existed a possibilty of my progress being purposely compromised - although my mother is certain of their being carried out with malintent- the events may well have been not but an unfortunate series of coincidences.
Oh yes I forgot to mention. I am in the UK and I am doing Math(s) in University. Everyone here is nice and there is no one racist in the faculty, although I am the only one AFAIK who is black out of some ~190 or so total students (all years). I only mention that I am black because it is relevant to the topic. Such distinctions and divisions are a double edged sword, they serve only to keep seperations but these divides are what allow for cultural diversity and different interesting people.
“I sincerely don’t understand why there is such an aversion to accounting for cultural effects in human behavior.”
It suggests that by conertated actions we might be able to change things. It also suggests we and our society are imperfect, and imperfect in very acute and glaring ways.
The former is strenuous the latter not flattering to our egos. Hence people dislike to think of this.
I’m not suggesting everybody who has argued this way has this (subconcious) psychological motivations but they are naturally there.
About the particular silence, Germany has a very small Black population, but I have studied in the UK for a while and indeed I found it to be very much a class society. And skin colour still correlates with class.
I cocur with Sean that that’s why many people don’t really argue that much about it, society’d have to solve the class problem which is not there for the women case. And then on top of that you’d also have the discrimination and other cultural factors.
fh wrote:
and others have written similar things to this.
cvj says: With respect to all of you, I hope you realise that this is simply a cop-out. You’re taking the easy way out. To claim that a problem as important as this (if you actually believe it is, as you say) is so difficult that you won’t even discuss it is to make the problem more difficult to solve. If people sat around and said that about women’s suffrage not so long ago, where wouold we be as a society right now? This is really really sad. I urge you to reconsider.
You will never make progress on a problem -no matter how difficult- if you don’t even want to talk about it. Once again….that approach is a cop-out.
Cheers,
-cvj
I don’t think these things are simply explained by class. Class is a factor, but WHY is it a factor?
“And then on top of that you’d also have the discrimination and other cultural factors.”
On top of that, or more fundamentally?
as an aside:
“which is not there for the women case. “
well, actually it is, at least in the UK. Women with more money have more options available to them because they have access to childcare and healthcare services that aren’t available to the less well-off (eg private healthcare, nannies).
Q.
Well the class problem has been argued about for 150 Years at least. Or you can go all the way back to Platon to find criticism of deep hierarchies in society.
I honestly wouldn’t have a clue what to say on this subject. Plus your timing was probably unfortunate after such an intense debate on women, I at least have debate fatigue. Sorry!
fh said
It is too convenient to call it a class problem. This is a nice way of not tackling it.
fh also said
But why? Don’t you see that as part of the problem too? Everybody is willing to pass on all sorts of wisdom when it comes to women in science. They pass on all kinds of data they’ve gathered either anecdotally, made up, or from learn-ed web links. On a subject that they are no less or more qualified to talk about -blacks in science- they declare it “too difficult” or suddenly display remarkable modesty in their ability to do similar conjecturing, speculating, exchanging ideas, data, etc.
Fascinating and depressing.
fh…. you already made some interesting comments. Thanks! Don’t cop-out…keep participating.
The first step in tacking a problem is to acknowledge it exists. How do you do that? You talk about it !
-cvj
It’s absolutely a cop-out to change the subject to class when we’re talking about race; the subjects are definitely intertwined but just as definitely different. But I don’t think it’s a cop-out to say that the best strategy to increase the representation of black people in science is to improve the conditions of black people more generally. I would love to see a huge improvement in public schools, for example. We should stop funding them via locally property taxes and switch to a national system so that poor neighborhoods have just as good schools as wealthy neighborhoods (if not better). Schools should be kept open late, and provide a local center for youth culture that is a safe haven for anyone who wants to go. There should be genuine opportunities for exposure to many different career options, and abundant help for anyone who wants to aim for a college education. And, needless to say, there should be well-prepared teachers who offer flexible and demanding curricula that allow students to show their real talents. None of this, of course, prevents us from meanwhile encouraging black students to go into science, and presenting to them attractive role models for a life they might not have naturally considered for themselves.
Schooling definitely plays a part in this.
On a non-government scale (not to say that the government doesn’t play a role, but i’m interested in the non-gov side too):
“None of this, of course, prevents us from meanwhile encouraging black students to go into science, and presenting to them attractive role models for a life they might not have naturally considered for themselves.”
At what age does racism “kick in”? That is, is it always around, even from a very early age, or does it start nearer adolescence (as sexism does)?
There are quite a lot of outreach programs for graduate level women in science. Are there comparable programs for minority groups?
Q.
Martha’s Vineyard and the appearance of what might never have happened in other settings considering what doesn’t take place in the UK?
Is this what created the disparity and the feelings of question to what the “middle class” meant?
So you look at this and listen from a perspective shared and you learn a lot about Clifford, but there is a bigger struggle that he wants to make known?
cvj: The first step in tacking a problem is to acknowledge it exists. How do you do that? You talk about it !
Okay perspective is now focused.
What do you see “as the problem” and how would you change things Clifford?
I like Lee Smolins idea about “educating the educators” in this regard? Would that help. Fh raised some statistical information that was not encouraging, yet the push should continue.
Maybe introduce “reverse” discrimmination. Not to throw a monkey wrench into the pot, but further enlighten what had become available seats to students of varying ethnicities. Who will sit as alloted, would be taken over those whose marks would have granted entry, but, where this problem had to be addressed?
IN no way should this be taken as a support of racism of any kind. If the student was woman how would this be treated, in the event of enthinicity, I would suspect that this would be overuled, regardless.
I would point this out, and ask, had we handled the problem in the right way in terms of how we find evidence of this statistical disparation.
Hope this addresses talking about it?
I would like to find out what people interested in this subject think about the effectiveness and desirability of various things that are being done by many physics departments, such as
Outreach: For instance sending representatives to gives talks at and recruit from historically black colleges or at meetings for Black adn Hispanic physicists
Affirmative action : In a mild form this consists of making a conscious effort to avoid inadvertant bias in hiring and selection, by taking time to carefully attempt to objectively evaluate all candidates, and not using subjective criteria easily affected by subconscious prejudice or the self-confidence of ther candidate like “he seems like he would fit in better/be more of a leader/make me more comfortable” etc.
In a strong form this consists of using different evaluation criteria for underrepresented groups, which are always lower in some aspect (e.g. GRE).
An intermediate and most common form is using diversity as a “tie breaker” between apparently roughly similarly qualified candidates.
Mentoring Programs: assigning mentors, usually minority, to minority students
Minority recruitment programs: Extra financial incentives for minority students to attend graduate school.
Set aside programs; Fellowships and other benefits specifically set aside for minorities. Sometimes in order to avoid anti-affirmative action state laws these are instead set aside for students or postdocs who have demonstrated interest in
outreach and mentoring.
Special conferences, meetings or other networking/support opportunities for minorities.
How important/desirable/useful are these?
“But why? Don’t you see that as part of the problem too?”
Speaking only about me personally, it hasn’t touched me directly yet. Where I grew up there is no black population to speak of at all. (in fact it’s almost completely homogenous).
The equivalent question in Germany would be why we have so few Turkish physicists, but there you are truely in a different field for you also have less turkish physicists in Turkey then German physicists in Germany, the entire society does not seem to value this as highly as we in Germany do.
Thinking about it, our awareness of the womens issue is definately sharpened by knowing women who are struggling/have struggled personally, especially if it has been in our field.
Not knowing anyone black I never thought about it as directly.
So the honest answer would be that yes, to me personally it has been a less important issue, even though I absolutely agree that on a social level it is as much or more of an issue.
In that sense, thanks for the wake up call!
Is there a way to rule out subjective biases and deal with concrete information in that selection process?
If one had seen this as a problem, in under representation, that you could encourage, why would you not send out information and encouragements for the possibilties “to exist” for any of them?
IN a tie breaking scenario, of course, send it to the minorities. Why not? You met the stastical valuation and had not catered to the subjective one.
Ann– Of course these programs should be evaluated by careful studies, not by gut feelings. But, given that this is a blog, I’ll give you my gut feeling: I suspect that outreach programs, mentoring, and special conferences are more important and effective than set-asides, affirmative action, and recruitment. In other words, I suspect that the problem is not discrimination at the point where we accept students or hire faculty, but just that the pool is much smaller than it would be if more minority students were encouraged in the first place. And I also think that the most important place to do that encouraging (for women as well as minorities) is in elementary and secondary schools; by the time we get to admitting grad students and hiring faculty, much of the damage has already been done.
Plato–in undergraduate and graduate admissions, where we do not do interviews, in principle we could say the admissions committee is only permitted to see a file with all information about ethnicity and gender redacted. Would this be a good thing? In the far past such information was generally used to reduce the number of asian, jewish, or female students. Now it is either not consciously used or, at many places, it is used to increase the numbers of american indian, black and hispanic students, and, in some subfields, female students. Most people agree the past usage was bad. The present usage of information about ethnicity for strong affirmative action is very controversial. Even in blue states such as California and Washington the voters have explicitly made race and gender conscious hiring and admissions at state universities illegal.
While I have no sympathy with the whiners complaining about reverse discrimination, It does seem to be that the backlash caused by strong affirmative action ultimately makes this an unproductive approach.
Ann Nelson: - Thanks. I also think (like Sean…thanks Sean….) that there has not been as much attention paid to building the pool as ought to be in order to tackle the problem. And there are soooo many things that can be done to build the pool…but yes it is hard…. and ideally a relationship has to be built with those students who are first contacted at school level, tracking with them for a good portion of their trajectories (i.e. not just giving them an inspiring talk and then bye bye…although that is better than nothing!)….this is particularly hard.
So yes….. working on the pool in various ways. Workshops/miniconference are really good. Laising with schools too…. and teachers (Plato’s “educate the educators”)…This all at least shows the people concerned that the local university actually cares about them, too.
Cheers,
-cvj
Boring linguistics clarifications of Paul (#36) and buck (#11).
Urdu and Hindi nearly identical languages. The primary differences are in the written forms (Arabic, Sanskrit), the ethnicities associated with each, and the language-specific vocabulary associated with those ethnicities and their primary religions (Islam/Hindi). In terms of relationship they’re probably somewhere on the scale between Norwegian/Swedish, and American/British.
Paul says “class” has its root in the word “classroom”. That would be a surprise to the Romans, who had a word ‘classis’, which is defined as “one of the classes into which Servius Tullius divided the Roman people”. The concept of social class does seem to have been around for a long freaking time.
My $0.02 to this intriguing discussion is pretty simple: American concepts of race bewilder me. Most countries around the world are pretty homogenous, and make a rather clear distinction between “us” (the primary, dominant homogenous group) and “other”. It’s pretty hard to become part of the “us” group unless you’re born into it, or kick the “us” group out and become the “us” yourself. That makes race relations mostly about increasing the status of the “other” group, which seems on at least some level to encourage the disparate members of the “other” group not to piss all over each other.
The United States rather clearly makes a similar distinction, between “White” and “Black”, but then confuses the issue by entrenching the racial differences into issues of class as well. Then, to compound the mess, the US allows ethnicities to move from the “other” (Black) group into the dominant (White) one. Given the experience of the Irish, Jewish, and Italians, the on-going assimilation of East Asians, and the likely assimilation of Latinos and South Asians, it’s pretty clear that everyone who isn’t already part of the dichotomy prefers to be grouped into the dominant “White” category, rather than the subordinate ‘default’ “Black” category, and is perfectly happy to piss on any other group necessary to make the transition as quickly as possible.
I’m not sure if Belizean’s (#16) optimism about cultural and subcultural mixing holds. The United States has had a long, long time to assimilate the “Black” category into the dominant group, and has not done so. The successes of the Caribbean Black population he describes might instead be a case of individual subgroups choosing to leverage their non-Black “Latino” identity to get out of the less desirable “Black” group and potentially into the “White” one.
And his/her notion of ’subcultures’ seems to give a bit too much credence to the innateness of cultures, and ignore the rather more general nature of human social networks, how they form (and are maintained and strengthened) in families and in communities and in peer groups.
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I tend to agree with Sean — outreach, mentoring, and support networks are the way to go: increase the size of the pool of qualified candidates. Combined with bettering the economic circumstances of underpriveleged folks — also an important step.
Affirmative action, set-asides, and recruitment are largely band-aids, not solutions. Too, they just feed simmering resentments of folks (pretty much by definition members of the dominant “White” group) who aren’t getting the benefit of such programs. That said, I don’t think they’re entirely useless — a large part of success in any field is professional networks, and if you’re outside the network you’ll be at a clear disadvantage even with all other qualifications being equal. Recruitment seems one possible method by which the ‘network’ advantage could be leveled for all applicants.
Furthermore (to my earlier comment): - My several pieces of writing about the media and the representation of science and scientists is also relevant here. In my opinion, this is the single most under-rated tool that we have….. It is potentially a powerful ally, but nobody really takes it as seriously as I think it ought to be taken.
The simple fact is that a lot of kids’ time is spent absorbing images from the media. A scary amount. A really scary amount in fact. We can’t stop people from watching tv, commercials, and videos and playing video games.
Why are we not using this most powerful of tools in this task before us? I won’t repeat everything I have said about science in the media here…you can look in the archives….. but imagine also helping create some positive images of who is “allowed to do science”. I suspect that if this were done in large enough volume, we’d have black people knocking on our doors asking us how they are to follow a career in science. We need to work with our friends in the Industry (entertainment, etc) right along side working with our friends in the schools. These are two big pieces of a kid’s education… we need to tackle the problem on both sides.
The simple most important fact -in my mind- is that most black kids do not know that doing science is a career option. We need to tell them this.
The earlier comment by I forget who about science not being a choice made by working class people because it does not make money is just misguided. Somehow, it is too esoteric? No, no, and no. I am not saying that we need black people to become string theorists or cosmologists! Being a staff scientist in a hospital is an example of a scientist. This person works in the community too. Just like a teacher or a bus driver. It pays a wage. These are good careers too.
If we don’t tell them this, how will they know?
-cvj
“And his/her notion of ’subcultures’ seems to give a bit too much credence to the innateness of cultures…”
How about inertia instead of innateness? Just because something is culturally formed doesn’t mean we can switch it off with a concious decision, nor does it mean that it must neccessarily dissolve in context. It can function as a ’system’ in the environment of the host culture almost indefinately.
See the Jewish, twothousand years of diaspora in all kind’s of host cultures yet the cultural identity stayed stable. And a culture that has in a long tradition of valuing learning and thinking created an environment that seems to vastly benefit your chances of developing your scientific abilities.
Plato asked
I’m not sure I understand the question. Do you mean beyond what I said in the post whose thread this is? I thought I made it pretty clear what the problem is there. Do come back if you’re asking for something different than that.
Cheers,
-cvj
X^2 (comments 45 and 46): Thanks! I recognize a lot of what you describe. You indeed have to rise above it, and try not to become too involved in looking for the conspiracy behind everything. Sure, it is sometimes there, and at other times, it is just coincidence. One cannot always tell the difference and one has to draw the line somewhere between spending a lot of time looking for it and just moving on and trying again, or whatever….. It is hard, especially because it wastes a lot of time, energy, and emotional energy. Imagine what things we could create if we were not also wasting time on stuff like that!?
But yes, it is hard to ignore…even for me today: Trivial example: Most people in my neighbourhood walk right by me (within 1 or 2 meters or so) when I am outside my house fixing my fence or tending the garden. They say nothing, because they are accustomed to treating people like colour as though they do not exist. They assume (because most people hire “help” in to do all the hard work in their households…..and that “help” is always people of colour) that I must be “the help”. It never occurs to me that I might also be a professional who owns the house I’m standing in front of, just like they do. Therefore they say nothing to me, their neighbour.
So…. What do I do with that? It is upsetting, as they say hello to other (white) neighbours who might be work