GEMMA O'CONNOR
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Amplifying black excellence in geoscience

2/23/2021

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​Amplifying Black excellence is one of the many ways in which we can become anti-racist. In contrast to my previous post in which I shared the darker sides of legacies of the fathers of geoscience, here I am going to share uplifting stories of some of the earliest Black geoscientists. These stories mostly start much later in time, as Black people in America were oppressed by white supremacist systems such as slavery (until 1863) and Jim Crow laws (until the Civil Rights Act of 1964). I focus on the incredible stories of several Black geoscientists here, but we should amplify the stories of Indigenous, Latinx, and other marginalized groups too. 


Matthew Alexander Henson (1866 - 1955)

Some of the earliest BIPOC contributions to the geosciences came from work as field assistants to white geoscientists and explorers. A famous one is Matthew Alexander Henson, from Maryland. Henson acquired advanced ship navigating skills and survival skills working as a cabin boy, which led explorer Robert Peary to recruit him for expeditions to Nicaragua, Greenland, and the North Pole. Peary and Henson worked with other white explorers, Innuits, and sled dogs on their many expeditions, but with Henson as Peary’s assistant, Henson had just as much experience as Peary, and other team members applauded Henson’s value to the expeditions.

​It took Peary and Henson a few attempts to reach the North Pole, but in 1909, they were the first team to reach the North Pole (though this has been contested due to a lack of sufficient proof), and Henson was likely the first one to physically reach the pole.  Peary received national recognition and medals for this feat, while Henson went largely unrecognized until much later in his life.
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Henson wrote a memoir about his work, called “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole”. Henson’s legacy is an inspiration to geoscientists, as polar field work continues to be heavily dominated by white males. ​

Marguerite Williams (1895 - 1991)

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​The first Black person to obtain a Ph.D. in geology in America was, remarkably, a woman. Marguerite Williams, from Washington, D.C., received a bachelor's degree in geology from Howard University (a historically Black college or university (HBCU)) in 1923. She earned a master’s degree in geology from Columbia University in 1930, and a Ph.D. in geology from Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. in 1942. For her dissertation, she studied the erosion of the Anacostia River, where she found that human activity was partly responsible for the erosion that caused extensive floods in the early 20th century. She was one of the first geoscientists to recognize the effect of human activity on processes such as erosion and flooding.
Despite facing many barriers related to racial discrimination, she went on to be a professor at Miner’s Teacher’s College and at Howard University, teaching geology and social sciences. Williams was a pioneer for increasing BIPOC representation in the geosciences, thanks to her tenacious ambition in the face of overt racism and her many contributions as a professor of geology at HBCUs. There is limited literature on Williams, so it is unknown what inspired her to pursue this field or what gave her the drive to persevere. Williams’ work is largely unrecognized, though in 2020 the American Geophysical Union dedicated an annual award in her honor: the Marguerite T. Williams Award. Her legacy lives on through the countless Black teachers she trained and geology students she taught.

​Charles Anderson (1919-1994)

Anderson was the first Black person to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology. Originally from Missouri, Anderson received a degree in Chemistry from Lincoln University (an HBCU) in Pennsylvania. He was first exposed to the field of meteorology when he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and was placed in the meteorology division. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960, where he studied the growth of cumulus clouds. Starting in 1966, Anderson became a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, where he also served as chair and associate dean.

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In 1966, just after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Black students at the university went on strike, demanding more progress on racial equality on campus. In response to their demands, Anderson developed and chaired a new department of Afro-American studies, which taught courses including Black history and Black literature. He later became professor of atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University and is renowned for his research on severe storm forecasting. Anderson’s contributions to the field of atmospheric sciences are immense, and he accomplished them not only while transgressing the perceived stereotypes of Black people during his time, but by uplifting other Black students along the way.

​Mack Gipson, Jr. (1931-1995)

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Gipson was the first Black man to earn a Ph.D. in geology, receiving it from the University of Chicago in 1963, where he studied shale deposits and clay mineralogy. Gipson grew up in the South and received his bachelor’s degree from Paine College (an HBCU) in Georgia. He was drafted to the U.S. Army in 1954, where his work as a radio technician sparked his interest in working in the field, drawing him to the field of geology. After completing his masters and doctorate degrees, he spent several years working for oil corporations. He then went on to a faculty position at Virginia State University (an HBCU), where he started the department of geology, greatly increases opportunities for Black students to enter the field of geoscience. 
During Gipson’s journey in the field of geology, he was acutely aware of the need for minorities to connect, network with, and support each other. As a result, he founded the National Association of Black Geoscientists (NABG), with the help of many other Black colleagues. This organization has awarded financial aid to ~130 minority geoscience students and serves as a support network for minority students, making it instrumental in enhancing the diversity in geosciences. Gipson’s legacy lives on in the geology department at Virginia State, through the Black students he taught, at the NABG, and through several awards named in his honor.

​Randolph Bromery (1926-2013)

Bromery was the first black geophysicist, as well as a geologist and oceanographer, known for his award-winning geophysical research and for championing effective diversity initiatives in academia. He started as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, then used these skills to do airborne geophysical surveys for the U.S. Geological Survey. He moved on to study math and physics at Howard University, then received a master’s degree in geology from American University, where he conducted renowned research on how variations in Earth’s magnetic field could be used to find valuable mineral deposits. In 1968, he received his Ph.D. in geology and oceanography from Johns Hopkins University. Bromery won an award from the Department of the Interior for his thesis study on the interpretation of aeromagnetic and gravity surveys, which was used to determine optimal routes for transportation lines in the Northeast.
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In 1967, he became a professor of geology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass), where 0.7% of faculty were Black and 0.3% of students were Black. He later served as department chair and chancellor of the university - an extremely rare position for a Black person to hold at a major university. Bromery has published over 150 papers and reports and received many awards for his research. He also co-founded the Committee for the Collegiate Education of Black Students, which more effectively recruited and supported Black students at UMass. Through Bromery’s many leadership positions, his groundbreaking geophysical research, and his efforts to improve minority representation, he has greatly advanced the field of geoscience, and serves as a role model to university leadership on how to increase diversity.

​Warren Washington (1936 - )

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Washington is from Portland, OR, born just 10 years after Oregon repealed the black exclusion laws[1]. Washington received a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s in meteorology from Oregon State University, despite facing racist faculty who didn't see his potential. "My freshman advisor told me I shouldn’t stay in physics because it was probably too hard for me,” he said. In 1964, he got his Ph.D. in meteorology from Pennsylvania State, making him only the second Black person to earn a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences.

Washington is renowned for his revolutionary work on developing the first atmospheric computer models that used physics to predict future states of the atmosphere. These climate models were a critical step in allowing us to understand climate change. He also played an instrumental role in incorporating oceans and sea ice into climate models.
Washington has received national recognition for his work and has served as a science advisor to all U.S. presidents since Jimmy Carter, with the exception of Donald Trump. He has chaired the National Science Board and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2010 from Obama for “his development and use of global climate models to understand climate and explain the role of human activities and natural processes in the Earth's climate system, and for his work to support a diverse science and engineering workforce". Like the accomplished Black geoscientists before him, Washington made it a priority to work on diversity initiatives, in addition to making groundbreaking scientific discoveries.


[1] Black exclusion laws existed in Oregon from the early 1840 until 1926, criminalizing the presence of Black people in the state. Punishments included being publicly whipped and doing public labor. 

Steps forward

From the above stories of Black geoscientists, some patterns emerge that may be useful for informing our journey toward anti-racism. Perhaps the most obvious one is that all of the academic Black geoscientists mentioned here have devoted significant time toward increasing diversity. However, the academic institution of geoscience places little value on diversity work. Although efforts at the surface have been made to improve this, such as including diversity statements in faculty applications and tenure packages, faculty are still predominantly hired and rewarded for their research. Furthermore, the faculty that are in charge of assessing these statements are often not trained on how to best evaluate them. If geoscience is committed to increasing diversity, then it should place real value on diversity work. “Integration of outreach and engagement efforts should be tantamount to publication record on a CV. Too many non-Black scholars have ascended the academic ladder without substantive contributions to diversifying [science] and societal justice, and this is unacceptable”.

Another pattern that emerges is that most of the renowned Black geoscientists reviewed here went to HBCUs. A study done in 1991 showed that HBCUs enrolled 20% of Black undergraduates in America, but they awarded 40% of college degrees earned by Black college students. This shows that HBCUs not only enroll a lot of Black students, they retain a lot of Black students. The study also shows that 75% of Black people with a doctorate degree went to HBCUs and 50% of Black faculty at predominantly white institutions received their bachelor’s degrees from HBCUs. This shows that we need to increase recruitment from HBCUs, and that mentorship and peer-support from other BIPOC are instrumental for the perseverance of BIPOC students. We need to increase BIPOC representation in faculty and leadership positions, and strengthen campus resources available to support BIPOC.

The Black geoscientists described here have been incredibly successful at enhancing diversity, which suggests that BIPOC are the most effective at increasing representation from BIPOC. One of the reasons for this is that white cultures often have different community values than BIPOC cultures, so white geoscientists may be unaware of the most effective ways to attract BIPOC to the field. For example, studies have shown that geoscience is not a field with much value in the Black community. It’s not even a household word. "If you're not in a field where you are directly [perceived as] helping the Black community, you're ignored. It's like being a minority within a minority”. In the context of today’s greatest issues in society, we can harness the unfortunate fact that BIPOC are disproportionately impacted by the negative effects of climate change. This is a topic that BIPOC are significantly more concerned about than white people. In the words of Ayana Johnson, an influential Black marine biologist: “to white people who care about maintaining a habitable planet, I need you to become actively anti-racist. I need you to understand that our racial inequality crisis is intertwined with our climate crisis. If we don’t work on both, we will succeed at neither. I need you to step up. Please. Because I am exhausted”. We can bring anti-racism into our classrooms by teaching about the connection between topics such as climate change and the communities that are most impacted. We can reshape outreach and recruitment activities to emphasize the relevance of our field to racial justice, rather than the usual main attractions, such as field work-- which have greater appeal to white people. 

Lastly, while BIPOC are the most effective at increasing BIPOC representation, the burden cannot be placed on BIPOC. We can't make the one or two faculty of color in the department chair the diversity committee every year. There is so much literature already, and so many effective practices that have been led by BIPOC. We don't need BIPOC to keep doing all of the work. We need the loudest people, the people with the most power doing the heavy lifting. That's white people. 


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The white supremacist roots of geoscience

2/22/2021

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There is extensive literature on the benefits of becoming anti-racist and the ways in which we can become anti-racist. What remains largely missing in the literature that pertains to transforming geoscience toward an anti-racist paradigm is context for how we ended up in a passively racist paradigm. It is still exceptionally well hidden, but I have recently learned that overt racism is intimately connected with the foundation upon which geoscience is built. It has simply been erased from our textbooks. 

Here I will share some sobering stories about the fathers of geoscience, who undoubtedly made incredible scientific contributions to our field. However, the rippling effects of their white supremacist ideologies - which are hidden from their legacies -  are still embedded in our field today. How do I know this? Racism
 was not simply a political ideology that resonated with them. Many of them abused their scientific positions to provide "scientific" justification for racial discrimination. Many of them published their "findings" in their textbooks and included it as material in their lectures. It was a science to them, and they were publishing their scientific theories. 

However, we cannot simply erase the works of these men to remove racism from the roots of geoscience. We cannot free ourselves from racism until we stop idolizing white supremacists. And even then, there is still much work to do. But this is a start. 

​

Georges Cuvier (1769 - 1832)

Cuvier is known as the father of paleontology, established the concept of extinction, and had many influential theories about geology such as catastrophism. 

He is also a founding father of scientific racism, the idea that there is scientific evidence of the biological distinction between the races. He studied skulls and physiques to rank the intelligence and superiority of different races. In his most famous book, The Animal Kingdom, he wrote: "The white race, with oval face, straight hair and nose, to which the civilized people of Europe belong and which appear to us the most beautiful of all, is also superior to others by its genius, courage and activity." 
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Charles Lyell (1797 - 1875)

Lyell was a Scottish geologist known for developing the theory of uniformitarianism - the idea that Earth's crust changes in response to uniform, gradual processes, ​in contrast to Cuvier's catastrophism theory. A Source Book in Geology describes him as having “accomplished more in the advancement of geological knowledge than any other one man”.
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Lyell published similar findings on race to that of Cuvier, based on the physical characteristics of skulls of different races. In his book The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, he wrote that colored races had features that more closely resembled that of apes. 

In his book A second visit to the United States of North America, he wrote of his observations based on these interactions: “the intelligence of the colored race increased in the interior and upland country in proportion as they have more intercourse with the whites”, suggesting that people of color need white people for advancing their intelligence. 

Louis Agassiz (1807 - 1873)

Agassiz was a Swiss geologist and biologist known as the father of glaciology. He is renowned for his revolutionary theories on ice ages, glacier movement, and extinct fish.

Agassiz supported his mentor Cuvier's work on scientific racism, and the idea of polygenism - the belief that creationist stories for Black and white races are separate, and therefore are completely separate races. He promoted racism as science in his books and university lectures. In 1847, he lectured that “the brain of the Negro is that of the imperfect brain of a seventh month’s infant in the womb of a White”. 
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Joseph LeConte (1823 - 1901)

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LeConte was an American geologist, paleontologist, and conservationist from Georgia who studied under Agassiz at Harvard. He is known for his discoveries on fault activity, providing an explanation for the formations of great features found on Earth. He was a beloved lecturer of geology whose enthusiasm for learning and field work was infectious, and as such is known for greatly increasing American interest in geoscience. 

LeConte also studied scientific racism. He published books purely dedicated to the topic, such as The Race Problem in the South, where he wrote: "race-repulsion is itself not a wholly irrational feeling. It is an instinct necessary to preserve the blood purity of the higher race". Similar to Lyell, he also believed that colored races needed white people to advance their levels of intelligence. In that same book, he wrote: "the Negro race is still in childhood; it has not yet learned to walk alone in the paths of civilization".
When left the post-slavery South to join the University of California, he was horrified by the increasing efforts to hire and admit Black faculty and students. He wrote in his autobiography: “the sudden enfranchisement of the negro without qualification was the greatest political crime ever perpetrated by any people, as is now admitted by all thoughtful men”. His racist agenda is becoming increasingly publicized, resulting in the removal of his name from buildings (e.g. renaming of LeConte Hall at UC Berkeley in 2020). However, the rippling effect of his white supremacist views are profound. LeConte himself proudly claims in his autobiography that his racial theories he lectured about were “then unpopular, but are now acknowledged almost universally by thinking men”.

John Wesley Powell (1834 - 1902)

Powell was an American explorer and geologist, best known for his explorations and mapping of the Colorado River. The parts of his legacy that are often erased include his exploitation of Native American knowledge, which was imperative for the success of his expeditions and maps. He viewed his contributions as far superior to those of the Native Americans, and viewed his own knowledge about mapmaking as the more important aspect of the final work that made him famous. Powell believed that Native American languages weren’t even capable of communicating civilized concepts, so they must be taught the English language for them to surpass their state of “barbarism”. 

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Recent work has celebrated the accomplishments of the Native Americans who contributed to Powell's work, but the stories are shared in a collaborative light. The white supremacist ideologies of Powell continue to be forgotten. Amplifying the achievements of BIPOC is certainly a step in the right direction toward anti-racism. However, continuing to idolize white supremacists will always prevent us from being anti-racist. ​

William Morris Davis (1850 - 1934)

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Davis is known as the father of American geography and the father of geomorphology. He was a professor of geology at Harvard, known for developing the cycle of erosion and studying the connections with weather and river changes.

He also studied the connection between landforms and the human race. He published in his textbook “Elementary Physical Geography” that the topography of the land in which humans live influences the rate at which man progresses from its savage state to its civilized state. He used this work to claim that European landforms naturally lead to the most advanced state of man, and that North American landforms withheld the progress of non-white races. 

Summary

Despite increased efforts to promote diversity in geoscience, we continue to see abysmally low representation from BIPOC. This is because we have failed to diagnose where racial discrimination persists in geoscience, which is a key step toward effectively dismantling it. The stories reviewed here bring to light a new perspective for understanding the lack of improvement.

The fathers of geoscience are lauded for their great contributions to the field, while their unequivocally racist “scientific” works are forgotten, and therefore forgiven. By sharing the versions of these legacies with racism erased, geoscientists are blindly idolizing these men and reinforcing white supremacy. The recent renaming of places and objects dedicated to racist geoscientists serves as evidence that when the complete stories of these heroes come to light, the community recognizes that it is wrong to idolize them. We can no longer simply ignore racial injustice in the context of geoscience. As many studies have shown, racial justice does not happen by simply ignoring racism. We cannot ignore race and expect to see progress in diversity. We need to move the field from “passively non-racist” to “actively anti-racist”.


References
  1. Hoad, N. W. African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization. University of Minnesota Press (2007). 
  2. Mather, K. F., Mason, S. L. A Source Book in Geology, 1400-1900. Harvard University Press, York, PA (1939).
  3. Lyell, C. The geological evidences of the antiquity of man with an outline of glacial and post-tertiary geology and remarks on the origin of species. 4th edition, revised. John Murray, London (1873).
  4. Lyell, C. A second visit to the United States of North America. John Murray, London (1849).).
  5. Menand, L. Morton, Agassiz, and the origins of scientific racism in the United States. J. Blacks in Higher Edu. 34, 110-113 (2001).
  6. LeConte, J. The Race Problem in the South. The Brooklyn Ethical Association, New York (1892). 
  7. LeConte, J. The Autobiography of Joseph LeConte, Volume 3. D. Appleton and Co, New York (1903).
  8. Pico, T. “The Darker Side of John Wesley Powell”.  (2019).
  9. Davis, W. M. Elementary Physical Geography. Athenaeum Press, Boston (1902).
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