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A white mathematician I respect wrote privately to me to object to my including in the @edraygoins story the suggestion I heard from several of his colleagues, that he is "sensitive.'' Since others may have a similar reaction, I wanted to publicly reply. nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/…
"I appreciate what you're trying to bring to light'' the person wrote, "but I don't know how the word "sensitivity" got past your internal screen in the context of what you're trying to do, or past your editors."
"I know you were trying to say something about how long something sticks with a person, not whether the slight was there in the first place, but just given what we all know about how the world works..."
"...you have to recognize that that word is an invitation for anybody reading the article in a defensive posture (which is going to be *a lot* of people) to invalidate the entire thing.''
I disagree. So what if Edray Goins, because of his particular life experience or temperament, is quicker to be hurt or take offense at racial slights than others? Does that mean those slights are OK?
I was, it's true, surprised at how many of the black mathematicians I spoke to took the view that racial slights/microaggressons/'racism 2.0' -- are part of the professional wallpaper. "I'm from Florida,'' Ryan Hynd of U-Penn told me, by way of saying he'd grown up w/much worse.
But that is in itself telling, a point I think was made by this passage in the story: "For Bobby Wilson, a mathematician at the University of Washington, offenses related to race 'just start to wash over you.' He added: 'That doesn’t mean it’s right or good.'"
I've seen some similar critiques of the story's reference to Dr. Goins' publication record as 'sparse.' This is something he told me himself the first time we met, and it was raised in the statement from Purdue, where they said basically, 'but we did everything right!'
Yet that detail, which might seem to undermine the story, also strengthens it, IMO. Purdue did give Dr. Goins tenure despite a sparse publication record, in recognition of his teaching (incl. an NSF grant nsf.gov/awardsearch/sh…) and service. Great, more of that please, academia.
But the point of the story is that there's more to incorporating members of under-represented racial groups into an organization than managing to find a way to hire 1-2 of them. So yeah. Making him a full professor wasn't enough.
FWIW, @amandaripley, whose education reporting I've really admired and who is herself a master of nuance, said this nice thing earlier this week, which I think makes reference to the inclusion of the same details others have criticized.
And the person who wrote to me is right to invoke my editor. Because it was @marclacey who insisted that we write it with all the nuance. It didn't have to be the Hollywood version of the story, he said, when I had my own doubts. He didn't want that story. He wanted the real one.
