Thread by @yfortiss

For Faculty/PIs in STEM,

Glad to see you on social media voicing your support for #BIPOC. Good start! Now, time to be held accountable for your contributions to the problem and understand where your VOICE & ACTIONS will have real impact. A thread👇

#AcademicChatter #WithaPhD

1- In department meetings, when you agree with colleagues about 'the best and the brightest' (referring ONLY to trainees from Ivy League Schools), and when you believe that Academia is a meritocracy system (spoiler alert: is not!).

2- In admissions committees, when you accept or make comments like:
"I’ve never heard of that school"
"He has done too much activism work"
"They won’t thrive in such a competitive environment"
"An A at Community College class is equivalent of a C in a top tier school"

3- When instead of doing the hard work of producing your own ideas for recruitment, retention and training of underrepresented minority groups, you use boiler templates for the #DEI and #BroaderImpact sessions of your grants.

4- When you consider yourself an ally by contributing $ to diversity initiatives, but you can’t attend training to learn about racism, stereotype thread and implicit bias or attend in-house diversity events.

5- When you are in charge of organizing sessions for conferences and can’t find BIPOC speakers because there are not enough ‘qualified speakers’ in these communities.

6- When you decline to attend minority focused conferences such as @sacnas and #ABRCMS (& many others), because you’d rather attend real science conferences.

7- In your lab. When you terrorize your trainees, expecting them to be in lab at ALL times & show zero interest in their story, struggles & journey= you’re failing them.

8- In your lab. If you are advising your Black, Indigenous and Latinxs trainees to apply ONLY to diversity fellowships, because that is easy $ for them= you’re tokenizing them.

9- In the many informal encounters, where you invalidate their experiences, and call them angry, sensitive, emotional or that they tend to overreact= you’re traumatizing them.

10- In the halls of Academia. When you tell BIPOC trainees implicitly and explicitly that they don’t belong, that they’re not good enough or committed enough, and that they should be proud because they are doing better than THEIR people usually do.

11- When BIPOC trainees speak up, & you try to silence their demands because they make YOU uncomfortable. Get over yourself,being uncomfortable is an important part of acknowledging your privilege, but + importantly, how are you using your privilege to change the current climate?

12- When you expect us to do all the emotional labor of explaining the history, barriers, & challenges that make our experience as BIPOC in Academia VERY different than yours, but then become defensive & insert your own struggles as a way of showing empathy.

13- When you think of us a monolith under the 'minority' or 'people of color' terminology and fail to:
- SEE us as individuals
- acknowledge our intersectionality

I welcome more examples to help all of the newly woke faculty (and those paying attention) identify where their voices/actions are needed to have an REAL impact.

#BlackandSTEM #withaphd #AcademicTwitter #ScienceTwitter @AcademicChatter @sacnas @LeadershipAllia #

–Fin–