Genetics, Race, and White Privilege

Stephanie Gogarten has a PhD in Astronomy but currently works as a staff scientist in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. She lives on an island near Seattle with her wife and three young children.

I recently read the book Seeing White, recommended by John Johnson. As an astronomer turned statistical geneticist (Career profile), I spend a fair amount of time at work thinking about genetic ancestry and how that relates to the social construct of race. As a person with some African-American heritage who looks white, I have also struggled with how to define my own race: other people see me as white, but how do I see myself?

In reading the book, I was especially struck by the stories of people whose identities cross the boundary between white and non-white. In particular, I was interested in the story of Gregory Williams, author of Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black. I still remember the dinner table conversation when I was a young child in which my parents explained to me that although my family appeared white, my father's identity was mixed race European American, African American, and Native American. Due to pale skin and a strong resemblance to my white mother, I am seen as white by everyone I meet. My sister has darker skin and more closely resembles my father, so she is more frequently seen as mixed race (at least, people are not shocked when they learn she is mixed race, as they are with me). In the shuffling of genetic traits from one generation to the next, I got more of the external features usually associated with whiteness -- a chance occurrence that has shaped both our identities. 

Astronomy in Color

A group of astronomers started a new blog last week: Astronomy in Color.  The blog consists of members of the astronomy community committed to increasing diversity by recognizing, confronting and removing the barriers to racial equity and inclusion. They are committed to an intersectional feminist approach combined with a framework of cultural materialism to understand the past and present repercussions of systemic oppression of marginalized groups on our ability to study the Universe.

Astronomy in Color kicked off the blog with two great posts.  One which is an introduction to the lingo of the social justice movement with definitions of commonly used social justice vocabulary words.  The second is a statement of support for Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas high schooler who was arrested for bringing a home-made clock to school.  

We at the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, and the Women in Astronomy Blog are very excited at the formation of Astronomy in Color, and look forward at ways to collaborate and support each other in increasing inclusion and equity in the Astronomy community.

Confronting My Own Racism

I am a white woman, and I have spent most of my life not thinking about race. Not in a "we live in a post-racial America" type of way, but just that on an everyday level it didn't really come up that much. Of course when something overtly racist happened, I would notice and be upset by it. I knew that people of color (POC) are underrepresented in STEM, I thought this was a bad thing, and I wanted to increase the number of underrepresented minorities (URM) in Astronomy and Physics. But overall, race and racism was an occasional thought that would briefly come to my mind, and then quickly leave.

Source: Washington Post 

Why I think diversity is good, but the wrong target

There have been many posts on this blog and elsewhere calling for increased diversity in astronomy. I've written about it. My student has written about it. Diversity has many benefits, and we're missing out on those benefits by not having a more diverse field of science. However, I'm becoming less and less enamored with diversity as a target or goal in and of itself.

This stock photo shows more diversity than exists in astronomy today, but illustrates
what counts as diversity in most campus discussions. The out-of-focus Black person
is particularly apropos to this discussion.

Short Version

If we only focus on diversity, we'll be like a CEO saying that her goal is to "make money." Ohhh-kay. But how, specifically? By what strategy and mechanisms will the CEO make money? 

It'd be like a coach of a sports team saying, "Our goal is to score more points than our opponents!" By what strategy? What offensive and defensive approach will you use? "Nope, we're just focused on scoring points!"

Diversity is something we should strive for. But how will we get there? I contend that we'll only get to diversity by attacking the power structures that hold us back and stand in the way of diversity. For gender diversity, the roadblock is sexism. For racial diversity, the roadblock is racism. 

So rather than focusing on diversity as a target, we should instead aim at equal opportunity. Sexism and racism aim to deny equal opportunities to those outside of the white-male power structure. White women have made gains by directly attacking sexist power structures. But this process has left women of color behind. Gains for women (and men) of color will only be made once organizations such as the CSWA start taking an intersectional approach that recognizes that women of color face not only sexism, but racism as well in their daily lives (note how this direct attack on power structures contrasts with "multiculturalism"). 

Long Version

Confronting Race and Racism to Move Away From One-Dimensional Diversity

When I joined the CSWA last year, I had dinner in Cambridge with a number of fellow CSWA members who were in the area at the time. At one point we went around the table giving our reasons for serving on the committee. I stated that my motivation was the help people of color, particularly women of color. I found the success of the CSWA and the advances of (white) women in astronomy extremely inspiring and I wanted to learn better how they had moved from being minorities to having a more equal representation in astronomy.

The CSWA Chair recently told me that if I wanted to take on the subject of race and the issues facing women of color, that rather than expecting the committee's full support for this "specialized" issue, I should go ahead and lead the way. With this post, and my previous post, I endeavor to bring the issues facing of women of color in our community into better focus, with the hope that the rest of the committee might see this as a problem worth addressing. After all, if white women made up < 5% of the astronomy community, I think there would be widespread calls for action. To focus on a specific population, Black women make up about 1% of the astro community, and 0% of faculty hires over the past 10 years. The situation for Latina and Native women isn't much better (See Donna Nelson's statistics for top-40 astro depts as of 2007). In fact, the situation is even dire for Asian American women, broadly speaking.

On my personal blog I have given understanding of racism in America, and how I teach the concept to my children. The reading list posted therein informs much of what follows, so if you’d like references please see the end of that article. See also my introduction on the subject of race in (US) astronomy. For people wishing to comment on this, please do me, yourself and the community a favor and first read this excellent reader’s guide on discussing racism. You’ll be surprised how often the first thing that comes to your mind has been previously voiced and repeated ad nauseam elsewhere in similar forums, if not on the floor of the US Senate back in 1964 during debates over the Civil Rights Act. When in doubt, please frame your comment as a question, and remember that as an educated individual you are not entitled to your opinion.

The 1927 AAS meeting. In one key respect it is the same now as it was then.

The first concept I'll address is that of race. This subject is covered extensively in the easy-to-read textbook Seeing White (see my Twitter challenges #BloggingWhite and #TweetingWhite), as well as in numerous other books, research papers, blog posts, etc. Thus, I cannot do proper justice in the space here, but I can highlight some important aspects of race that should pique your interest as a scientists and citizen:

1. Race has little to no biological basis. Many lines of genetic research have shown that when humans are divided into various "classical" racial categories (a process that is, itself, fraught with difficulty and ambiguity), that 85% of genetic variation occurs within racial groups, while < 7% of the variability is across racial divisions. At a genetic level, we are an order of magnitude more human than we are any specific race.
   
2. While race is not a biological reality, it is very much real because we humans believe in race and act according to racial divisions. This started with the US Census, which needed to identify Black slaves in the South so they could be counted as 3/5 of a human each for congressional representation. It continued as a justification for slavery (slaves are happier when taken care of by white owners!) with the oppressive Jim Crow laws, legal segregation, as well as federal appropriation of funds, employment and military service. It also formed the primary basis of the problematic eugenics movement, and eugenics researchers produced most of the junk "science" that informs even modern conceptions of race. Race divisions continue today in the wealth gap, imprisonment disparities, school segregation, etc.

The key takeaway is: race, while not a biological reality, is a social reality with numerous and far-reaching consequences for how we live and interact in American society. Race is real, but only because we have created it, defined it, nurtured it and most importantly: used it.

On the number of women hired

In my previous post I provided an update on the number and percentage of women hired in tenure-track professor positions over the past year. In 2014, women were hired into 40% of available positions, representing a remarkable 16 out of 40 hires. I would argue that this is the mark of progress and strong evidence that the previous dearth of women astronomy professors in past decades was not because women are somehow inherently inferior to men. The lack of women previously was due to a number of societal and institutional barriers that barred women from equal opportunities in astronomy. 

The women of the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA in 2013. Women have made major strides in astronomy!

However, there is another way to look at the underrepresentation of women in astronomy in the past: look at it instead as an overrepresentation of men. Take for example the number and breakdown of PhDs awarded by the Harvard Astronomy program in the 1980s. From 1980-1989, Harvard awarded 41 PhDs, but only 4 of these went to women (9.8%). Why did men have such a lopsided advantage in earning PhDs in astronomy from one of the top US astronomy institutions? 

One could come up with a list of reasons why women didn't apply for grad school, or why women dropped out, or why women simply weren't interested in careers in astronomy because, say, they prioritized family over career. But given the number of women competing at the top levels and pursuing fruitful careers in astronomy today, it's difficult to place the blame on women for why they were underrepresented in the 1980s.

I find the most compelling explanation for the disproportionate number of men in the 1980s is fairly simple. The answer is that men had a large number of advantages that affirmed their place in the astronomy community. During the 1980s men enjoyed an implicit affirmative action program geared toward the advancement of men at the expense of women. 

Fortunately, since the 1980s a number of the key provisions of the aforementioned male affirmative action program have been disabled, and new affirmative action programs have been put in place to incentivize equal consideration of women and men in hiring, and to affirm a place for women in our field of study. These programs work and the proof is in the numbers. In 2014 40% of the new hires last year were women! Also, over just the past two years, I know of three women who earned tenure at major astronomy institutions. 

While I'm excited about the 40% number, my excitement is greatly tempered for one key reason. Looking at my spreadsheet of recent hires and focusing on the women who were hired in 2014, something quite striking stands out to me. Of the 16 women hired in 2014, only 3 were non-white. To break things down further, only two (2) were Latina and zero (0) were Black. Indeed, over the past four years, only one Black woman has been hired into a tenure-line faculty position according to the Astronomy Rumor Mill, which makes for a total of six (6) five (5) Black women astronomy professors (or tenure-line researcher) in the US*.

For some reason, the rising tide does not lift all boats. 

The women of the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA in 2013. Look carefully and critically: 64 out of 72 are white women
and zero are Black. Why do white women have such an advantage over non-white women in astronomy?

A couple years ago, I would have looked at these numbers and asked, "Where are all the Black and Latina/o people in astronomy?" However, just as there was a different way of looking at the small number of women in astronomy in the 1980s, there's another perspective on this question: "Why is it that white women have such a distinct advantage in getting astronomy professorships?"

The answer to this question can be found in many different peer-reviewed journal sources, as well as a host of college text books and long-form articles. Among the ones I have read over the past year include When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and Seeing White: An Introduction to Privilege and Race by Jean Halley, Amy Eshleman and Ramya Mahadevan Vijaya, the Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Segregation Now... by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Seeing White, in particular, lays out a very clear case for the persistence of institutional racism in modern culture and its adverse affects on non-white people, and how racism provides powerful advantages for white people as a group. Since astronomy is a human institution that exists within larger culture, there is no reason at all to assume that these explanations do not extend to the culture of astronomy in the US.

When we say that women have made major gains over the past few decades, it is important to include one important modifier: White women have made major gains. Women of color remain underrepresented at levels below that of white women in the 1980s. Black women in particular are well below their percentage of the US population (<<1% in astronomy vs. 12.6% of US women).

To answer Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's question: Yes, you are a woman in astronomy. But sadly the tendency is to overlook you and other women of color when we tout the gains of women in astronomy. We cannot talk about the success of women in astronomy without noting the deficit of non-white women in astronomy. Further, the CSWA can only fully meet its charge by recognizing the groups of women who are being left behind as the tide rises, and taking action to correct this major inequity among women in astronomy.

* I used Astronomers of the African Diaspora as a reference for the number of Black women professors. The site is out of date (it doesn't list me), and I didn't count Beth Brown who sadly passed away, and Jarita Holbrook who is no longer employed in the US (bad move, Arizona). If I missed one or two, then the number of Black women astronomers is still epsilon compared to the number of white women professors. 

Gender & Race Differences in NonAcademic Careers for STEM Ph.D.s

Nonacademic career trajectories are an important and often overlooked piece of the conversation about recruitment and retention of women and minorities in STEM. 

A new analysis by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) shows 61% of STEM Ph.D.s have careers outside of academia. This should come as no real surprise. What is of interest here is that there are statistically significant differences by race and gender. For example, Black, Hispanic, and White women with STEM Ph.D.s who went on to nonacademic careers are more likely to leave STEM compared with other groups in nonacademic careers. About 28% of these women work in non-STEM fields, compared with Asian men (16%), Asian women (18%), Hispanic men (18%), black men (21%) and white men (21%).

Furthermore, more than 57% of all male STEM Ph.D.s work in research and development, compared with 43% of all white female STEM Ph.D.s and 37% of black female STEM Ph.D.s. 

Ain't I a woman? At the intersection of gender, race and sexuality

Today's guest post is by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a Martin Luther King, Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Department of Physics. She specializes in theoretical cosmology and has an interest in formal issues in field theory and relativity. She also serves as an informal academic advisor for most of the very few underrepresented minority women physics majors at M.I.T.

In 1851, former slave Sojourner Truth asked white feminists, "Ain't I a woman?" when they refused to let her speak at a women's conference because she was Black. One might hope that in 158 years, that speech wouldn't seem so essential and relevant. But at the 2009 Women in Astronomy conference, my first foray into non-race oriented equal opportunity efforts, we were told the news was good: women had made significant gains and equality was on its way. There was no substantive mention of race beyond Peggy McIntosh's talk. But I knew the truth. I have been looking at the NSF and AIP statistics myself for years, and I knew that the news was not good for Black, Latina, and Native American women. Those numbers hadn't changed too significantly in three decades. How could they possibly be telling us that the news was good?

As a queer Black (cis)woman, I live at the intersection of multiple minority statuses. More of my time than I would like has been sucked up in trying to fend off the marginalization that society's structures foist upon anyone who has even one of these identities. More of my time than I would like has been spent thinking about a way out of those structures and trying to convince others to help.

And here's one thing I want out of: the phrase "women and minorities," a phrase I used to use a lot myself. As part of the effort to push for equal opportunities in STEM, I  used it repeatedly for over a decade, thinking that I was advocating not just for strangers but also for myself. At some point however, hearing other people use it began to grate on me. A lot.