Repost: Racism, Sexism and the Science Pipeline

Sikivu_Hutchinson has a wonderful piece about diversity in Science. The whole thing is worth reading(http://freethoughtblogs.com/blackskeptics/2012/08/15/beyond-starship-enterprise-racism-sexism-the-science-pipeline/), but here is an excerpt I thought was particularly striking:

In 2008, African Americans who’d received Science and Engineering doctorates were only 4% of the faculty at U.S. colleges and universities.  At Cal Tech, one of the leading science and technology institutions in the country, African Americans are less than 1% of the faculty.  They are 4% of the faculty at MIT.  In her report “Barriers for Black Scientists” chemistry professor Donna Nelson found that, “Blacks represented 8.8 percent of chemistry B.S. recipients in 2004 and 1.3 percent of all chemistry professors at the FY2005 “top 50” chemistry departments. The ratio 8.8 percent to 1.3 percent—versus a corresponding ratio of 37.7 percent to 77.5 percent for white males—indicates that black chemistry majors do not enjoy the supply of same-race faculty role models and mentors that majority chemistry majors do.” 

Conservatives who disdain “liberal multiculturalism” in higher education dismiss such concerns about diversity in hiring as handwringing.  According to this view there is only one standard academia should use; objective and unbiased, untainted by affirmative action.  Yet white students are beneficiaries of cradle to grave affirmative action.  White students grow up seeing the dominant image of rational, trailblazing scientific discovery (from films like Dr. Strangelove to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Close Encounters to The Right Stuff, etc.) as spearheaded by courageous rugged individualist white males.  They are socialized to believe in a template of “purely” meritocratic success and individual achievement. Meritocracy becomes gospel and lucre.  They can take it to the bank and use it to repel the less qualified savages. Racial or gender others who make it into science’s inner sanctum are either interlopers scrounging for handouts or shining exceptions bootstrapping up from the inner city wilds.  At the insular level of college Physics and Engineering white male dominance is perpetuated by “boy’s club” peer groups, networks, faculty and administrative support systems that facilitate access for the racial majority.