Black in Science: have recent years of activism made a difference?
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Loading... - Mason Miller
- 30 Jan 2023
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2020 was a transformative year for science — and not just because of the COVID pandemic.
In the context of the Black Lives Matter protests, it was also a year that brought a lot of attention to a neglected injustice in science: How the way science is practiced can be a minefield of micro-aggressions and mistreatment for racialized scientists, and in particular Black scientists.
This has created obstacles for talented researchers, preventing them from fully participating in the scientific process. And this not only causes suffering for the people living through it, it also means science suffers from their sometimes unfulfilled potential, and from diversity of thought and opinion they might have contributed as well.
In 2021 we broadcast a special program looking at what it was like to be black in science, and spoke with several academics to ask them how to start fixing the problem. Now, almost two years and a pandemic later, we felt it was time to check in and see what's changed — and where progress has stalled.
One of our contributors in 2021 was evolutionary ecologist, Dr. Maydianne Andrade. She's a professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and president of the Canadian Black Scientists Network. Read More…
