The Haunting of White Privilege
Banu Subramaniam takes creative liberties to address the essence of past scientific ideals as ghost. A word that becomes more appropriate the way she describes these ideals as “haunting”, being unsubstantial but constantly having an impact in the way scientific reasoning is surmised. One of the more dominant ghost would be the idea that race has an influence in scientific results outside of its socio-cultural construction.
Today I bring a small incident but no less unsettling of high school science project researching the correlation between race and IQ scores. The question alone raises alarm bells but the article is titled “Science project on race and IQ tests boundaries of free speech in high schools”. I want to emphasis this because it does not shine a light on the concern of racism and racial biases but on a white male’s right to free speech in a predominately white high school.
The high school science project was meant to explain why “others” were of smaller groups in their elite school program. It had been allowed on display for two days before the high school decided to impede on the boy’s 1st amendment. A singular boy’s right to be a racist aside, even in a perfectly wrapped black box, is the kind of thinking Subramaniam and other boundary breaking scientist are trying to expel from the practice. Let’s leave science to answer real questions and not answer why you have to sit next to a chocolate brother in your AP calculus class.
Sources:
Subramaniam, Banu : Ghost Stories of Darwin
