I have been listening to The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee over the past several weeks. I picked it up after hearing McGhee give a keynote at a sustainability conference last year. Despite this, I was surprised at how prominent the connections to sustainability are in the book. The range of topics McGhee covers … Continue reading
I remember the multicultural day in school. For one day in the year, my classmates got to share parts of their culture and for the rest of the time we studied the Western science, grammar, music, art, and history. This day showed that we were better than many other countries because we embraced other cultures. … Continue reading
I’ve had pulmonary function tests, which test how well your lungs function. I don’t come out particularly well. But apparently, if I was Black my results wouldn’t look so bad. This is because there is a so-called race correction applied to results of these tests for Black patients. The thing is, this correction has no … Continue reading
It is well documented that Black and other marginalized communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. Rates of infection, hospitalization, and death are all higher for individuals who are Black compared to white. A new study led by Harvard Medical School examined how monetary reparations to the descendants of Africans enslaved in the US could … Continue reading
In lieu of writing my own post today, I wanted to share some resources on breaking down systemic barriers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). This is #BlackBotanistsWeek on twitter. This is a great opportunity to find out about cool people studying plants. I love how this resources page for #shutdownstem breaks it down … Continue reading
In the past several weeks I’ve been reflecting a lot on racism and systemic racism. I’ve read Superior: The return of race science by Angela Saini and White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism by Robin Diangelo. I’ve added other books to my summer reading list as well. This … Continue reading
This is an excerpt from a paper I wrote for a class during my PhD so it is a little more academic sounding than most of my posts, but I am constantly being reminded of this book and how it broadened my perspective and awareness of how society shapes science but then how the science … Continue reading
Nature should invite everyone, but it doesn’t. National parks have a long history of excluding Indigenous peoples. A group of teenagers walking through the woods is viewed with suspicion. Women fear being alone in nature because of who might come around the corner or out of the bushes. Dog walkers and cyclists have a long … Continue reading