The Sciences Aren’t Diverse Enough, Claim Diversity Professionals
“lack of diversity and inclusion is the single largest cultural problem facing the geosciences today”
This is a perfect example of people trying to justify the existence of their positions.
The College Fix reports:
Diversity-minded academics: The sciences have a problem with ‘whiteness’
Here we go again: The mainstream media treats us to another fatuous piece about how an “incorrect” percentage of women and minorities working in the sciences is a “problem.”
Of course, most people, for some silly reason, couldn’t care less about the color or gender of those working in the hard sciences. But leave it to the New York Times to highlight several individuals who do care — who, coincidentally, have a background or employment in an academic “diversity” field.
For example, Assistant Director of Academic Affairs and Diversity Kuheli Dutt of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory claims the “lack of diversity and inclusion is the single largest cultural problem facing the geosciences today.”
Unsurprisingly, Dutt’s research focuses on “gender issues, implicit bias, and diversity in the sciences.”
Dutt wrote a piece recently for the journal Nature titled “Race and racism in the geosciences” which hits many academic race fads, especially the belief that colorblindness is “racist,” and that racism itself is all about who holds “power.”
The diversity director says one thing white geoscientists should do to help increase a “sense of belonging” among marginalized groups is “separate their privilege as a White person from their identity as a good person.”
“Conflating the two,” she adds, “leads to feelings of anger, denial and defensiveness, because racism tends to be viewed as a character defect rather than the system of advantage and social conditioning that it really is.”
This “sense of belonging” was lacking for Columbia PhD student Arianna Varuolo-Clarke who, upon receiving an internship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “quickly realized […] her path as a woman of color would not be easy.”
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Comments
Well, clearly the academics in the sciences are conspiring to keep out women and people of color. I mean that’s the presumption whenever racial disparities are noted anywhere else, right?
Have you read or heard a “science” report lately? You can’t pronounce most of the names. (No, I’m NOT xenophobic, I’m just pointing out a FACT. Deal with it.) Unless all those unpronounceable names are Central (I’ve been admonished about this.) or Eastern European, they likely belong to a DIVERSE group of people of colour.
Women are not as interested in the hard sciences in general. You can create all the “diversity hire” positions you want, but if you have no one qualified to fill them, what are you supposed to do?
Who says a diversity-hire has to be qualified?
Aye, there’s the rub.
Exactly. Everywhere diversity has been demanded because minorities cannot meet the standards, standards have simply been lowered or eliminated entirely. And now the world is better for it. LOL.
It’s always been the cases in STEM fields that women and men have different ranges of interests. If you go to a nerd conference on computer games, for example, the audience is overwhelmingly boys, with just a few girls. No one is trying to keep the girls from becoming computer nerds, they just aren’t as interested as boys.
James Damore’s memo about sex differences in computing provides a good summary of these differences, and some of the reasons for them:
https://www.dhillonlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Damore-Google-Manifesto.pdf
Women’s numbers have long been strong in biology, astronomy, and chemistry. They have been less so in physics, engineering, and computer science. These differences in average interest rates say nothing about any particular person, however. Some women will excel in all of these fields, but trying to force equal numbers in every field will never work because of differences in interest levels. Imagine trying to force equal numbers of men and women in nursing or K-12 teaching. That would never work, either.
The result of these “diversity” imperatives can be seen in Google’s echo chamber, where they made it clear that diversity of thought is taboo, and will be severely punished:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Chamber
I’m afraid that colleges and universities are on track to banning diversity of thought, just like Google has done. The truth will be overwhelmed by ideology, and anyone who opposes the ideology will be ostracized or fired.
Subatomic physics is transphobic. Quarks have color as in Quantum Chromodynamics, but they don’t have genders for particles!
One of the things that decades ago attracted me to STEM was the lack of anything which became identity/intersectionality. 2+2=4, not what someone wants it to. There are only two sexes. Atoms bond in constrained ways, mostly known.
Now thought experiments like Schrodinger’s cat aren’t discussed with anything related to physics or even philosophy, but the ASPCA, PETA, “how do you know it isn’t really or maybe identifies as a dog?”…
I need to create a quad flashlight, and invoking the ST:TNG “Chain of Command” turn it on and say “I see 5 lights”, and call people who don’t agree numerophotophobic bigots.
No one has yet been able to explain to me a rational reason why it is such an imperative to get more women and minorities into STEM fields of study/jobs. Is this effort really something that offers a significant improvement or is it simply a case of envy for being under represented in these fields? I suspect the real reason is the latter and that equal representation offers zero real benefit.
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In fact, this push to get women and minorities is likely to have a detrimental effect. Having been a chemist/professor for 35+ years, I routinely ask women and minority students as to why they do not like science. The by far and away most common answer I get is that it’s just too difficult. It seems that many do not want to take courses that demand a single numerical answer, that is either correct or wrong, to questions on tests meant to determine one’s knowledge of the subject matter.
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What makes this worse is how many universities are “relaxing” (read dumbing down) STEM courses in order to make them easier to pass because of the horribly misguided idea that making these courses easier will attract more students. Personally, I would hate to drive over a bridge or have surgery performed on me by a person who was attracted into and graduated from a program largely based on a simplified curriculum aimed at graduating minority students and not rigor. Science and engineering are very unforgiving subjects and should anyone make a mistake in applying their principles then the laws of nature will take over with terrible results. Mother nature will not allow any “do overs” or relaxation of her laws/principles because you are a minority.
Of course it produces damage, not improvement. Clever non-diverse kids with vast upside are shunted aside for diversity quota “enrichment” of the team.
They’ll perform competently, especially as evaluators are required to justify any differences in evaluations; sometimes the difference is that person A did all the stuff they were supposed to but person B is a genius. Now you can’t have the genius and advise the other into something more production-orienged.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I’m guessing this is the same group of “diversity” “professionals” that are 60% White.
“The Sciences Aren’t Diverse Enough, Claim Diversity Professionals”
What in blazes is a “Diversity Professional”? Someone who gets paid to be a diversity?
Why does anyone give a rat turd for what these lunatics say? Just nod your head politely and go back to your otherwise productive business. There are already several YouTube sketches that mock the diversity movement in STEM but the granddaddy of these cautions is this Dunesbury comic strip from 1997:
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1997/04/02
Spoiler: The student wins his lawsuit. I fear we are on the verge of actualizing this idiocracy.
Science has a problem with diversity, yes– namely the diversity ‘experts’ trying to screw up science by changing its focus.
Science doesn’t care about your skin color, it cares about your theories for explaining reality. Anyone of any color can help scientific progress, which is exactly what these diversity bozos are trying to prevent.