The "Racial" Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future

III. Who Gets to Do Science?

PART THREE Who Gets to Do Science? [T]he establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity , which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.... [T]he Negro in America ... is not a visitor to the West, but a citizen there, an American; as American as the Americans who despise him, the Americans who fear him, the Americans who love him-the Americans who became less than themselves, or rose to be greater than themselves by virtue of the fact that the challenge he represented was inescapable. James Baldwin, "Stranger in the Village," in Notes of a Native Son My way of discovering sciences goes far to level men's wits, and leaves but little to individual excellence; because it performs everything by surest rules and demonstrations. Sir Francis Bacon Whatever we do, we always look to the West and see what they are dOing. Suppose I want a new subject, I go on looking through new journals to find out what are the new lines coming up. I suddenly see surface physics coming up and start working on it. . . . We draw up projects by looking through papers in Physical Review, Journal of Physics etc. to find out what types of things are being done because if you don't do that, you don't get a job here. You have to publish in these journals, so you must do something which they are doing. From interviews with two physicists in V. Shiva and J. Bandyopadhyaya, Science in India Science is supposed to be the most universal of all human products. It is supposed to make no difference whether a scientist is Japanese or British, white or black, male or female, of working class or wealthy origins. Scientific method is supposed to be powerful enough to eliminate from the results of research any social biases that may have crept into scientific work because of the obvious social values and interests that we all have as members of historical communities . This is fundamentally Bacon's image of scientific method as a kind of mechanism that can function without intellectual brilliance and regardless of the social 198 / Who Gets to Do Science? peculiarities of the individual scientist. Consequently, one might think that science would be more welcoming to minorities (and women) than other professions that do not so emphasize the universality of their methods. Of course, in racially stratified societies such as the United States, most African Americans, Native Americans, and other peoples of color have not had access to the scarce resources-educational, economic, social-that would enable them even to imagine having a career in the sciences. When they have tried to enter science, white men have often responded with what appears to be paranoia, as in the example from Harvard Medical School in the nineteenth century reported by historian Ronald Takaki in the first essay in this section. Nevertheless, more African Americans than most European Americans imagine have gained access to at least some of those resources. Beginning in 1980, a few biographical accounts of African American scientists have revealed the triumphs and difficulties of racially marked individuals who enter Western sciences and medicine. Excerpts from several are included here. Unfortunately, accounts by racial minorities other than African Americans of their hoped-for or actual careers in U.S. science are hard to come by. Ernest Everett Just, the African American embryologist, gained a national and international reputation in the 1930s for his contributions to the study of marine organisms. However, he could never get the kind of appointment at a top research university that went to equally (and less) accomplished European Americans . As a result, he did not have access to well-equipped laboratories, the possibility of training and gaining assistance from graduate students, or the foundation support that was necessary for maintaining a research career. Nor could he then become a teacher and patron for another generation of scientists-either white or black-who would carryon his work. The story of the vicious circle of individual, university, and foundation racism and of his superhuman efforts to fulfill his powerful sense of obligation to his students, the Howard University administration, the white scientists and foundations that did support him, his family and "his people" is told in the selection from his biography by Kenneth R. Manning. Darlene Clark Hine debunks the...