How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction
I just noticed a paper on arXiv by Melissa Dancy and Apriel Hodari, which will probably annoy many people who deserve to be annoyed. Here is the abstract:
Background: We present an analysis of interviews with 27 self-identified progressive white-male physics faculty and graduate students discussing race and gender in physics. White men dominate most STEM fields and are particularly overrepresented in positions of status and influence (i.e. full professors, chairs, deans, etc.), positioning them as a potentially powerful demographic for enacting systemic reform. Despite their proclaimed outrage at and interest in addressing inequity, they frequently engage in patterns of belief, speech and (in)action that ultimately support the status quo of white male privilege in opposition to their intentions.
Results: The white male physicists we interviewed used numerous discourses which support racist and sexist norms and position them as powerless to disrupt their own privilege. We present and discuss three overarching themes, seen in our data, demonstrating how highly intelligent, well-intentioned people of privilege maintain their power and privilege despite their own intentions: 1) Denying inequity is physically near them, 2) Locating causes of inequity in large societal systems over which they have little influence and 3) Justifying inaction.
Conclusions: Despite being progressively minded, well-meaning, and highly intelligent, these men are frequently complicit in racism and sexism in physics. We end with recommendations for helping these men to engage the power they hold to better work with women and people of color in disrupting inequity in physics.
(I added the spacing and underlining.)
The paper does not mention the additional issue that not all white male professors are even well-intentioned…
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In the Dark 
October 10, 2022 at 2:59 pm
Re point (3), what action do you want? Deliberately appoint an applicant who is in your opinion the less good physicist to a research position because of other characteristics they may have? Decolonise thermodynamics?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11297237/Campus-wokery-march-Universities-decolonising-courses-mollify-activists.html
October 10, 2022 at 3:18 pm
Great idea! This seems like a very interesting approach (and not only because it annoys the Daily Mail):
https://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/events/2022/82203-decolonising-the-physics-curriculum-starting-with-thermodynamics-what-why-and-how
October 10, 2022 at 3:26 pm
But it wasn’t a lecture about thermodynamics. It was a lecture about the history of thermodynamics. Will a question on the same appear in a physics exam? Will you implement the same in astrophysics?
October 10, 2022 at 3:34 pm
The very idea of Wilson Poon talking about that was exactly what the Daily Mail got annoyed about and where the phrase “decolonise thermodynamics” came from. I don’t put historical questions in my examinations, however. I’m too busy doing sociological Marxism.
October 10, 2022 at 5:20 pm
This isn’t about the Daily Mail.
October 12, 2022 at 5:12 pm
Yes I think it is worth not employing people who harass others and forfeit the science they bring as a benefit. Do you think people harassing others is helpful for science? It causes much distress which takes away time from research they could do. It drives people out of science. It discourages others from entering it in the first place.
The number of people who could maintain these positions competently is far larger than the number of positions, so there really is no need to hold onto them so strongly. It’s delusions of grandeur to think otherwise.
October 11, 2022 at 10:06 am
Interesting paper, but I don’t think it says anything new. Also, unfortunately, in my opinion, it focuses too much on individuals, rather than systematic causes (as most academic papers on the issues).
Much more is needed, than to persuade white professors to not be racists/sexists!
October 12, 2022 at 5:08 pm
Systems are made up individuals. Individuals who aren’t willing to do anything about the issues.
October 12, 2022 at 8:52 pm
I don’t disagree, but I’m rather optimistic (in terms of the majority of individuals). In any case, this is indeed a complex issue, with many factors involved.
I’m mostly focusing on systemic causes, because I believe these are at the root of the problem.
Taking the situation in UK the last few years, that I know best, why do the big majority of university chancellors don’t do anything about the pay gaps for women and marginalised groups? Are they bad/ignorant people that need to be persuaded? Some of them maybe, but the main thing is that the whole education system is working largely as a business. You can’t simply “talk the problems away”.
October 26, 2022 at 1:20 pm
It was an interesting read on a multifaceted problem. I think the study, and the ones they reference, are all too narrow in scope. Not wrong, but not looking at the problem fully (they can’t see the forest for the trees). There are many layers (social, systemic, individual), but for brevity of comment, I’ll focus on one point.
In a competitive society, any advantage is seen as the difference between (the false dichotomy of) success and failure. Removing barriers is seen as great for society, but not for the advantaged individual. Having a greater pool of contenders (for sports, jobs, university admission), means a lower chance of success. Why compete against 1000, when the field is systemically pre-narrowed to 50? A level playing field means success requires upping one’s game: more energy and effort in order to differentiate one’s self, which goes against our evolutionary nature. (Listen to Stephen Fry’s The Great Leap Years.)
The motivation is not racism (or agism, sexism, etc.), it’s capitalism and laziness.
The topic might be focused on race, but the problem is much broader. In short, as Daniel Kahneman pointed out, they’re answering the wrong question.