freagle, 1 year ago

You’re ignoring the history of academic science.

legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/report

slaveryandjustice.brown.edu

slavery.virginia.edu

…app.box.com/…/nzo1tx4elaerg13akjwxuve3pv9sb03a

news.emory.edu/features/2021/09/…/index.html

And on and on.

And that’s just the university system. Then you have actual laboratories. Los Alamos is notorious for being a massive “consumer” of indigenous women and girls of the slave trade. Current astronomy observatories on Mauna Kea are there against the will of the colonized Hawaiians and for years have destroyed their environment, their sovereignty, their health, and have contributed massively to the sex trade in Hawaii. The indigenous are a barrier to the planned 30m telescope there. Are you arguing that this barrier should be removed? Are you saying astronomy cannot possibly intersect with the structures of racism, settler colonialism, and genocide?

We do not need to be anti-intellectual to erect barriers to settler violence that impinge on science. Those barriers are important, and we need more of them. If we are to undo the harm of centuries of European imperialism, it will be a massive project that will hinder scientific inquiry in many ways. Establishing a “no barriers to science stance” creates an ideological commitment to the already existing conflict between justice and science that has been raging for centuries upon centuries.