First, let me get this out of the way:
My Personal Privilege Checklist
- I am white.
- I graduated with honors from the number one public university in America.
- I have a wonderful place to live.
- I am a woman. I am fortunate to live in a world where this does not preclude me from having an amazing career, doing, saying, wearing and being whomever I want to be.
- I do not have any physical or mental disabilities.
- Although I am openly bisexual, I am in a committed, heterosexual relationship with a man I love. His name is PartnerPenguin.
- I am literate.
- I have a job that pays my bills comfortably and I plan to be student debt free by the end of the year.
- I am the fifth author of a scientific publication. Coming out of undergrad.
- I have really good friends who will correct me if I say something inappropriate and make sure I know why it was wrong. But they won’t necessarily stop being my friend because I inadvertently said something wrong.
The things in my life that make me confused
- 2/3 of the adults who raised me were born in Africa. I never asked, but I think at least one of these adults did not consider herself white. I am always concerned if I obtain objects regarding this heritage and put them in my home, I will feel like an imposter and a cultural appropriator.
- My middle name is Spanish. I speak enough Spanish that little children and very kind adults understand me. I have a Latina booty. I feel comfortable around Latino people, especially because it’s not weird to them that I was raised in a multi-generational household.
I am one privileged woman. But I also know I am. I am
terribly conscious of it and I have been living in a community where the
consequences of privilege are part of a normal dinner conversation. I was the
president of an organization that addressed some of the issues facing women in
STEM.
In fact, I have been so thoroughly engrossed in this bubble
that a conversation I had this week was literally shocking. But it wasn’t that
un-normal of a conversation. We'll get to that later.
This story starts on my first day of hire. I was already
grappling with what seemed like gross inefficiency for hiring people in
positions like mine. From conversations with scientists outside of my direct
supervisors, it seemed like these positions were filled mainly through nepotism
and personal connections from 1-3 universities nationwide, per scientist. I think personal networking is fine and even
hiring your children makes some logistical sense. But. If you are a white dude,
and you went to school will all white dudes, and they got professorship
positions at private ivy-league-type schoolsà
how are you possibly going to get a diverse hiring base from that? The women
running the hiring orientation took my outrage quite seriously and they
suggested I speak with a Diversity Director.
Fast forward to this week. I had told my supervisors about
my meeting and actually started some really good conversation about diversity
going in our workplace. They shared with me and critically examined post-bac
students they’d had in the past. They helped compare and contrast those
students to post-doc students. I really admire and respect my team for taking me so
seriously.
The meeting with the diversity director himself was
excellent. He was totally on the same wavelength as me. In fact, some of the
things I was going to suggest, he and his team had already put in place. I
connected him with the directors of the program at Big American University who
had kept me afloat and successful there. The only topic where he really
appreciated my perspective was my commentary on students in post-bac positions.
My stance is thus: If you make an effort to ACTUALLY get
diversity at the post baccalaureate level, you will change the face of higher
education in this country. Seriously. TLOTH is a national, federal institution. If you hire students, not provide them with an
internship (those can be meaningless in some cases), you are doing several
things to ensure lasting change. You are providing them with a good job so they
can start their careers with less debt. You provide a retirement plan, which is
best to start young. Most importantly, you provide research opportunities for
students who may not have had an opportunity at their undergrad school. Why is
this important? If you want to go to graduate school, you are expected to do
research. Moreover, you are expected to come in with enough experience doing
research that you can jump right in. If you’ve never done research, how the hell are you supposed to be competitive
enough to go to grad school? The director took this perspective and said he’d
seriously consider it. They might pivot their focus, which would be great.
I had so much positivity, so much good feedback and so much
encouragement regarding this meeting. Then I went back to work and had the
following conversation.
::I explain where I’d gone, how great the outcome was::
White male post-doc: “I don’t get why you’re so concerned
with this topic. The scientists here do their best when they hire. You’re
saying nepotism with such a negative connotation; there is no problem with
making sure your kids have a good career. And besides, it’s not anyone here’s
fault that positions like this are location dependent. Not everyone is going to
be able to know about this lab.”
Ironically, I think he captured in 5 minutes EVERYTHING
that’s wrong with diversity here. I think the deepest issue is that no one
thinks there is anything wrong. They think this is normal. And it is. For now.
But as long as this continues to be status quo, there will never be an
opportunity for any other kind of normal. Women make up a good 50% of the
population, sometimes more. In physical sciences, in many institutions of
higher education and R&D, women can make up as little as 5% of the
workforce. I am privileged to be on a team where that is not the case, but I am
determined to change the situation for others.
A crow, for some levity. I'll try to get another picture which shows scale better, some other time.
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