We March for an Inclusive America
The day after last year’s presidential election, a good friend of mine went for his usual morning run in the hills north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. A truck with a confederate flag on the license plate approached him and two men yelled racial slurs, telling him to “get out of this country.” They threw a glass bottle full of urine-like liquid, which slammed my friend in the chest and splashed on his face. My friend, Ulises Ricoy, was born in Austin, Texas, has a PhD in neuroscience, and is Dean of Arts and Sciences at Northern New Mexico College.
Unfortunately, the type of harassment Dr. Ricoy suffered is not an isolated event. The Southern Poverty Law Center has cataloged over 1,000 hate-fueled attacks since the election — data proving that an underlying animosity and dangerous sense of entitlement has surfaced from certain segments of our society. But now Dr. Ricoy is facing another challenge: the budget proposed by the Trump Administration threatens not just research, but also programs designed to increase the diversity of the scientific workforce.
For us at the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), this is extremely troubling.
As the oldest and largest association of Chicano, Hispanic, and Native American scientists, our mission has been to ensure the lab and the field look like America as a whole: diverse. And we do this not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because scientific inquiry benefits from different life experiences and worldviews and diverse teams have been demonstrated to perform superior to non-diverse teams.
Now apparently our members work in a world where scientists have become policy targets, and Latinos, and other immigrants, the targets of xenophobia.
The draconian cuts planned to DOE, NOAA, the EPA, and the National Institute of Health, and many others, is a decimation on scientific endeavors regarding the environment, health, and climate change. Simply put, this proposed budget is a full-on attack on science, particularly related to public health and the environment. With the painful overlap of the immigration issue and the anti-science philosophy permeating our government, underrepresented minority (URM) scientists are caught in the crossfire.
Scientific agencies, federal programs and nonprofit organizations like SACNAS, which support underrepresented minorities in science, also face disproportionate risk. Not only does SACNAS receive most our funding from federal agencies, but many of our members with academic positions have research funding and minority student training grants from government scientific agencies. Decreased government funding would effectively force many URM scientists to downsize or even shut down their research programs and reduce the number of students pursuing science from our communities. Therefore, we cannot — and will not — stand idle.
That is why on April 22, I will be speaking at the March for Science in San Francisco, as will SACNAS founder, Dr. Lydia Villa-Komaroff, one of the three national honorary co-chairs representing the March for Science, in Washington, DC. Dr. Villa-Komaroff and I will be in great company: 22 of my SACNAS friends will also be addressing the crowds in 14 cities across the country. We’ll be flanked by hundreds of “SACNISTAs” participating in marches throughout the nation.
Together, we will shine a spotlight on the contributions that science and diverse scientists makes to our daily lives. We are also marching for our future — for the potential contributions Native American and Hispanic students will make provided their acceptance in the scientific community and the necessary support in terms of mentoring and funding.
Minority scientists such as myself and Dr. Ricoy are also Americans who love our country and strive to improve our own lives and those of our communities. Many of us are first in our families to attend college, let alone obtain advanced degrees. We strive to improve the human condition through our scientific work. Yet, we also feel a large segment of this country has turned their backs on us.
On Saturday, we will march because as Americans we want the best for our country. We march because we recognize our country will require excellence in STEM and that we are part of the solution in achieving this goal. We march together in solidarity for a better future, and in our hearts, we will know that no bottle thrown will ever diminish our hope for an inclusive America.
About the Author: Dr. Lino Gonzalez
Lino Gonzalez is the president of SACNAS and has been a member of the society since 2004. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology and is a senior scientist in the biotechnology industry.
