On Astronomers & Acceptable Anger: Hordes of Natives & Angry White Women

Which would you prefer: that a male scientist of color refer to astronomers as “boys with toys” or that a white woman scientist say and a white man scientist endorse referring to an entire people as a “horde of Native Hawaiians who are lying”?

Personally I would prefer that all three of these scientists, their defenders and contenders for next in the offensive line knock it off completely. This kind of language has no place in professional discourse within a community that depends on the tax dollars, labor, and land (!) of people of all genders, sexes, races and ethnicities, as I’ve written elsewhere. And while the “hordes of Natives” purveyors apologized, the apologies themselves were problematic, at points reproducing some of the discourse that made such a comment seem perfectly normative in the first place.

But, I’m also a woman of color. I can’t choose to only be concerned about sexism or only distressed about racism. I live a life at intersections, although it often feels like a double bind. The relative responses to and follow-up discourse about the sexism and racism of “boys with toys” and “hordes of lying Natives” tells a highly fascinating (highly irritating) story about call-out culture in STEM, tone policing, and what is required to make white women scientists feel that an issue is urgent.

Here is what is required to make a large number of white women scientists feel that an issue is urgent and requires their immediate, visible response: say something that is directly harmful or impactful to white women.

What happens next will not surprise you. Hashtag activism is deployed. Twitter trends take off. Articles are written about what went wrong. Articles are written about how off-base the comments are, as evidenced by Twitter trending. White people comfortably referred to the sexist offender using expletives, and magically there has been no tone policing from any white people in the spaces where I have seen it happen.

Is “hordes of natives” as urgent? Apparently not really because white women are not clearly in the line of fire. When it came out that such a comment had been made, the undergraduates of color who brought it up were told by their classmates that they had embarrassed astronomy by saying the phrase wasn’t okay. White scientist after white scientist after white scientist e-mailed, texted, Facebook messaged and Twitter messaged to ask me (and surely others) if it was really appropriate for any of us to be discussing publicly that this had happened at all. So, nu, it’s better that it was said behind the back of most of the horde and not to NPR? No major news outlets ever picked up the story.

There were concerns about reputation. The President of our professional society after significant prodding put out a personal (notably not organizational) statement about racism that originally suggested attacks on senior white astronomers were as damaging as racism against people of color.

Meanwhile, I haven’t heard anyone say a word about damage to Kulkarni’s reputation. Is anyone concerned? I’m not, but I also wasn’t concerned about damage to Faber and Filippenko. All three are award winning scientists who have tenure at top R1 institutions. In fact, one is so senior that she is already emeritus. They will be fine.

Why the concern for the white people and how any backlash to their racism will affect them but none for the Indian? I think in the eyes of white feminism white people insulting Native Hawaiians who do not agree that science takes precedence over their sovereignty is not nearly as bad as a fairly dark-skinned Indian who used an old phrase that has sexist origins in a way that excludes scientists. While one phrase framed an entire ethnic group as frightening and primitive, the other ignored multiple disempowered genders in the scientific community. (Although notably, I think I was the only person to mention that genderqueer and non-binary people were left out of the #girlswithtoys discourse.)

So by the way, this is what we call a “double standard” of the not at all subtle kind. And it’s one that those of us who don’t have access to representation within mainstream white feminist discourse are pretty familiar with. It’s Hillary vs. Barack all over again: white ladies first, people of color to the back of the bus. Black people can have the vote . . . as soon as white women get it, amiright? Seriously, this is a thread that is now over a century old. Can you guys get a new one? Doing so would require recognizing how entrenched these disparities in valuation are.

Here is how entrenched they are: a couple of weeks ago, there was a contentious conversation among astronomers and physicists after a white astronomer posted a patently racist diatribe against people (of color) which painted us as snakes creating a “hostile environment” for white people by using the word “racism” like it was a tool of oppression. (That’s essentially a very long way of saying “horde of Natives” for those who weren’t paying attention.) I was one of the targets. By the time I saw the exchange, several white scientists had weighed in to thank the astronomer for the original post. One of them is a visible leader on minority issues. I responded angrily asking why a known leader would endorse an attack on minorities. In the same conversation — which involved a lot of people — some of the comments reminded me of the kind of stuff that white supremacist groups put in their literature. So, I said so.

“That’s pretty aggressive” was the response from the leader, and for the most part it went unchallenged. Really, the problem was my “aggressive behavior”? Not at all that people were reminding me of white power hate groups?

I later asked for an apology because as a senior scientist, his words about me as a junior woman of color carried damaging weight. He has not apologized. And there is really no community incentive for him to. There may be professional repercussions for me because of how he characterized me or because I wrote about it, but there will be none for him.

So let’s be clear: in the astronomy community, it’s okay to use expletives and whatever other angry words you’d like to describe a man of color who says something sexist, but it’s not okay to use perfectly professional language to say as a person of color, “Some of this is starting to sound like white hate groups.”

Ladies, non-binary/genderqueer/+ folk, gentleman: y’all are fucking killing me with this fucking double standard.

That is to say: I think the tone policing is ridiculous, expletives are fine, and white feminists (of all genders) need to work on their racism. It should bother you just as much as sexism does.

Also, if a person of color says that your words are starting to sound like those of a white hate group, that’s a polite and empowered way of saying, “y’all are scaring the shit out of me, please stop.” It is not a statement of, “hey, I‘m feeling powerful!” And if you feel maybe you’ve contributed to that feeling arising, the words you are looking for are, “I am very sorry for scaring you,” not “You’re being aggressive.”

note: I’ve purposely kept a lot of the names and locations of various conversations in my blogs ambiguous because the point here isn’t to publicly pillory private individuals who haven’t made public statements. But, what happened to me is an excellent example of racist double standards in our community. Writing about it doesn’t make me difficult or aggressive, by the way. It makes me a Black American woman who knows that she’s five fifths of a person. People who get to know me by treating me as such will tell you that I am firm, but fair, loving, fiercely loyal and fairly quick to accept a real apology. Now, when was the last time a white man had to write an addendum like this? That’s a rhetorical question.