What I learned during the STEM Shutdown

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Sunday, June 14, 2020

By:

Madison Swirtz

The first resource I looked into was ParticlesForJustice.org. The call to action on the front page is worth reading in its entirety, and I took my call to action as the following quote:

“We are calling for every member of the community to commit to taking actions that will change the material circumstances of how Black lives are lived -- to work toward ending the white supremacy that not only snuffs out Black physicist dreams but destroys whole Black lives. In calling for a strike, we call on people who are not Black to spend a day undertaking discussion and action that furthers this work, while providing Black scientists with a day of rest.”

I decided to dedicate my day to reading, watching, learning, and discussing. My morning was largely spent reading through the resources section. Every article on there is wonderful and important. There were a few I found especially impactful and informative. The Rules of the Diversity and Inclusion Racket by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein pointed out the main pitfalls of diversity, inclusion, and access initiatives in physics; there are so many times that we as academics choose to ignore the writing and thoughts of underrepresented populations, and instead charge forward with misguided half-attempts at saving face to look like we care without making real, meaningful change that actually improves the day-to-day lives and experiences of the people we say we support. The ‘Benefits of Black Physics Students by Jedidah C. Isler discusses how insidious the argument that we need to justify what ‘benefit’ there is to having diversity in a field, which just reinforces the idea that black students don’t inherently deserve to be in the same spaces as white students. 

In the afternoon, I got on a Zoom call with my department: about 40 participants who came together to discuss resources, do some learning, and make plans on how to change the culture of our department and make it a place that is welcoming to black students. We talked about joining the APS Bridge Program and TEAM-up. Professors admitted their ignorance and were hoping to learn. In the evening I watched The 13th on Netflix: a history of the military industrial complex in the United States and the decades-long war on drugs that has been used to incarcerate black people at immense rates.

My learning did not begin on Wednesday, and it is not anywhere near over. I keep coming back to the Particles For Justice website and reading more of the articles, revisiting ones I already read, and trying to learn how to be a better ally to black people in physics. This work won’t be over for a long time, and it’s important that we as physicists commit ourselves to maintaining this enthusiasm for change into the fall semester, and into the years to come.

Madison Swirtz