Chemist Raychelle Burks Reflects on Being a Black Woman in STEM
zkAMkDhCBwg • 2021-04-14
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Language: en
deployed through college no there were
no
black women chemistry professors that i
had
i heard that they existed though but
but i never had any
i went to get a phd in chemistry so i
would have more employment options
there are lots of things i love about
sciences and i love about academia my
job
but then there's also some real
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in academia as women of color
we're gonna have different types of
abuse from different people
i remember when i was in my office once
sitting at my desk
at my computer like i've got you know
paper spread out and someone
comes into my office and for some reason
assumes i'm the janitor
i mean i've been in meetings where
you've made a suggestion
or said well what about this it was like
you never spoke at all
but if a white guy says it you're like
and now it'll magically be heard
everybody watch this
sometimes you get these critical emails
and criticism is something that as a
scientist you have to get used to
but i think it's is it appropriate
there's been some cases where i'm like
wow this
is wildly inappropriate you don't get to
just
say what you'd really want to say like
how dare you
i'm going to be seen as like the angry
black woman trope anyway but you have to
like
okay how do i minimize that so you spend
all this time trying to craft a response
or an approach of
how to like deal with it it may not seem
like a long time five minutes 10 minutes
15 minutes 20 minutes
i think about all that time added up
that's time i'm not spending
on grants on writing papers on
networking with my peers on just doing
research with my students
because i'm trying to navigate these
oppressive systems
that people who are not in the
marginalized communities
not only do they not have to do that
they don't even
it doesn't even register it's not
something that they even think about
let alone it being a time suck in their
schedule
i have to remember that because i'm like
how is this person like able to do
all this stuff and then you're like
that's because they're not having to do
any of that stuff you know and that's
that's the other thing you have to kind
of remember
you
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