Last wk, we discussed how Western science is founded on anti-Blackness. Today, we share how Black ppl across the globe have always been at the forefront of knowledge creation, within/outside of/in resistance to anti-Black dominant institutions of science. 
We intentionally couple these threads b/c while it’s important to name and work to dismantle the ways institutional science has exacted violence against Black communities, we need to also know about & celebrate how Black communities have BEEN doing science, BEEN making knowledge.
As a note, this thread is part of our #ScientistSolidarity Drive, calling non-Black scientists to support orgs/funds doing grassroots racial justice & abolition work. We're $800 away from hitting our $6110 match goal! #ScienceIsPolitical #BlackLivesMatter
In our previous thread, we cited Professor Carolyn Roberts’ work
Professor Roberts' scholarship exposes how Indigenous African and Afrodescendant folks’ ways of knowing and labor were stolen. Professor Roberts also traces the lineage of millennia-long medical & scientific knowledge generated by Black knowledge creators.
Another system of knowledge that we named in that thread is how colonizers stole the knowledge and labor of rice cultivation from West African communities
Black thinkers have continued to be at the forefront of agriculture and ecology. For example, George Washington Carver's pioneering work on nitrogen fixation is still one of the foundations of agricultural knowledge today.
Carver also worked alongside other Black agricultural scholars, thinkers, tinkerers, and farmers in relationship with the land and against the violence of Jim Crow and sharecropping policies.
Today we face multiple environmental crises (climate change, biodiversity loss, etc). Black people continue to lead the struggle to avert environmental catastrophe, through frameworks rooted in anti-oppression and decolonization.
These frameworks include Ecowomanism, pioneered by folks like Melanie Harris & Shamara Shantu Riley, which honors eco-spiritualities & cosmologies from African & Indigenous women & communities, and Black Radical Ecology. More on both in an upcoming thread! content.redvoice.news/burnin-down-ma…
Community organizations like Food Sovereignty Ghana & the West African Peasant Seed Fair have also long pointed out the history of scientific exploitation, and are continuing to lead the fight towards agricultural justice & food sovereignty.
Following the lead of @VanguardSTEM and their campaigns #AmplifyBlackSTEM and #CiteBlackSTEM in collaboration with #Strike4BlackLives #ShutDownSTEM #ShutDownAcademia, over the next few days we’ll be highlighting Black scientists and ways of knowing
As @jatella reminds us:
.@VanguardSTEM has been doing this work and regularly does #WCWinSTEM and #QCWinSTEM to honor women and nonbinary people of color in STEM, especially queer folks
We also want to name @BLACKandSTEM and @CiteBlackWomen who have been at the forefront of this work. Additionally we encourage you to follow @BlackAFinSTEM and the posts from their recent #BlackBirdersWeek!
In continuing solidarity with #ShutDownSTEM #ShutDownAcademia & #Strike4BlackLives please be mindful and considerate of the ways we interact on here with the Black folks tagged, whose needs, including rest, we want to honor and prioritize.
Additionally, as we celebrate the work of Black scholars & knowledge creators, non-Black folks should not reduce Black folks to only what they produce. @EzelleSanford3 urges "critically examining the details & complexities of the lives they lived — and the times they live[d] in"
As a collective, we hope to build a worldview/intellectual community that honors Black bodies of work/ways of knowing and their historical and personal contexts. As part of eliminating anti-Blackness, we commit to engaging with Black scholarship in our work and everyday lives.
First up in this series we'll be highlighting Black knowledge creators who have influenced our work and shaped our thinking on: Data & Technology.
Next up is a thread on Black knowledge creators who've taught us about: Ecology, Nature, & Climate.
