Thread by @iamstarnord

I've been in science for many years.

For many years, I've pleaded and pushed for change.

I've taught myself how to organize communities in science healthily, because science sure as hell didn't teach me that.

I've learned how to respect my colleagues and create spaces where people can be who they are, where their humanity is prioritized over their productivity.

I've done concrete things and pushed the envelope.

I've served on some committees for hiring at different levels.

I've made suggestions about how to advertise and recruit, what to do to make the environment welcoming and inclusive.

Always told, change takes time.

In most organizations and institutions, I have seen negligible to ZERO systemic change.

Make some guesses about how many Black tenured faculty there are in physics and astronomy and how fast that is changing.

While I try to do the work to make science and academic culture tolerable if not welcoming, I am used by white academia. I am used by this system to allow folks to pat themselves on the back.

"It's okay, we got one."

"Change takes time."

I am used, and I am abused by white scientists.

I have been racially harassed by ombudspersons.
I have been bullied by white men.
I have been profiled.
I have been sold false promises.
I have been ghosted by those who said they'd help.

I have been told that I should do the work if I want to see the change.
I did the work.
I then told you how to do the work.
and then I am told again that change takes time.

YOU'VE HAD TIME.

We are out of time.

Tell me, how long would you wait for justice, how long would you risk your life and your dignity for an ideal.

"Now, this is the evidence.
You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my life, my woman, my sister, my children on some idealism which you assure me exists in America which I have never seen."

youtube.com/watch?v=_fZQQ7…

You might think, as the white professor in this video thinks, that I have more in common with a physicist who is white than a Black non-physicist.
You are wrong.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why.

We all know that access to science (all education) & being leaders in science is a point of access to power & agency in this country, in this world.

It is continuously delayed for Black people.
I am a second-class citizen, no matter what you want to believe.

I am not equal.

People ask me to help with things, serve on committees, give feedback on processes, sit on panels to help educate white people about Black experiences in academia.

And then ... nothing.

Folks will literally go to the ends of the Earth to get photons from the early Universe, but they won't go to an annual meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists in Rhode Island.

Folks will build the most complex machines in human history, and build them over and over again, but they refuse to even open a book about how to build an inclusive and justice-oriented research community.

Folks act like the smartest people on Earth, interjecting themselves into every other scientific discipline, and then throw their hands up in ignorance when asked to figure out a minor contribution to justice and equality.

Folks spend half a century building one of the most precise devices in history to measure one of the faintest signals in the universe to confirm Einstein's ideas.
But they won't put spend weeks a year to turn our moral telescope toward the dreams of Martin, Malcolm, or James.

How long should I wait.

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