The question was one of several statements made during the arguments that underscored a problematic mindset around higher education — who is entitled to it, who should be allowed to pursue it and at what institutions and who is qualified to study which disciplines.
Dr. M. Christopher Brown II, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs for the Southern University system, said, “a very narrow conceptualization of pure versus applied sciences, concrete versus interpretive disciplines, as well as mathematical versus phenomenological fields of inquiry are the general basis for the contention that race does not matter in the pure, concrete, or mathematical domains.”
“This is not true,” he continued. “In fact, many of the best scientific discoveries and inventions emerge from the lived experiences of [those who] are transgressive outliers from the general norm. The industrial revolution in the U.S. has as a catalyst the development of the cotton gin. The cotton gin was not conceived in the big house by the plantation owners, but rather by the unpaid workers who had a vested interest in minimizing their workload. The same can be said of research on sickle cell anemia, autism spectrum disorders, blood transfusions, and limb transplants.”
Dr. Lisa Aponte-Soto, national program deputy director of New Connections — a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that works to increase opportunities for early and midcareer scholars of color in STEM fields — agreed, saying the importance of having students of color in science classrooms is evident on the application side when it is time to take theory to implementation in minority communities.
“When you look at Native communities and Latino communities, you find that hard fact-based approach [to medicine] may not work,” she said, adding that having more minorities on the front end adds a sensitivity to the “impact of cultural values” on the application of science — particularly medicine.
“Having researchers of color who can say ‘I came from this community’ [or who can recognize that] a national sample [of subjects] may not be representative of the whole population” is critical to the effectiveness and accuracy of outcomes, she said.
