Clifton, thanks so much for you comprehensive reply! Hard to argue those points.
But some quibbles, perhaps, (better expressed over a beer I might add!).
STEM badly needs good people. No question. But STEM, as it should be, is and must remain a self-selecting set of highly demanding careers. A lot of hurdles need to be successfully cleared before one arrives as a top-notch STEM graduate (a fully-fledged scientist), not least of which is a demonstrated & consistently achieved aptitude for Quant. I'm sure we both know many who have washed out either because of a breaking point (as in 'I don't want to do this anymore') or a simple failure point (Advanced Stat or 2nd year Organic is several steps beyond most people's comfort level).
Demographic imbalance at these higher levels tends to be misleading. The numbers are too small and the hurdles too steep to read race or sex-based discrimination into the final tallies. Unfortunately those truths tend not to persuade those who insist on equating disparate outcomes with discriminatory treatment. I'd recommend Heather MacDonald's excellent summary of this situation here: https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine .
As for the question of 'targeted encouragement' (as in special STEM-boosting sessions for Women or BIPOC's )....yes, I would argue that such focus does indeed tend to discourage those not equally targeted. Again, I'd say 'Encourage everyone!'
Personally I don't care if my surgeon is Black, White, Green, Female, Male, Short, Tall, whatever...I just want them to be OUTSTANDING. To invite a 'preferred' crowd to the party is to not invite and not include the Other, whoever that Other might be. Hard to avoid the feeling of being under-valued and ignored if all the fawning and coaching and mentoring and scholarships are nominally restricted to people who don't look like 'me'!
Would you see a downside to a National Society of White Engineers targeting & encouraging White students because, after all, 'we need all the STEM workers we can get'? I suspect you would (I suspect all of us would...because, in fact, it's racially discriminatory).
But your points about 'feeling welcome' are fascinating. We'd have to ask how much of that 'feeling' is a function of an actual, real, tangible 'unwelcoming' and how much is simply the very common feeling that every 'rookie' has when entering the 'old-timer's' clubhouse. I've had that feeling; I'm sure you've had it also. That's not racism or sexism, that's just the normal sense that -- as a rookie -- your perspectives and non-experience are not particularly valued.
I had a conversation years ago with an individual who had just begun teaching at the HS level. She told me that she faced a ton of resistance & hostility from the students....because, or so she thought, she was female. I explained, as you might imagine, that everyone faces exactly the same thing when they begin. It's not a function of gender or color; it's a function of being a newbie and the inevitable of being 'tested' in any new environment. The worst crash & burn I ever witnessed was a skinny White guy with a high voice who left the school halfway through the semester. He, too, would have said he was not 'welcomed'. But his failure had nothing to do with bias and everything to do with the fact that he couldn't handle the normal rough & tumble of teaching.
Sometimes an 'unwelcoming' is truly a function of bias & discrimination....but sometimes (I'd say most of the time) it's more a function of a hard life in a big, cold, and most typically uncaring world.
The truth is, when all you have is a hammer, all you tend to see are nails. And if 63% of all Black adults believe 'racism' is "an extremely big problem" despite an utter lack of evidence of any racist policy , procedure, law, or institutional system....then it's going to be easy to see so-called 'unwelcoming' as yet another racist nail. I've had cardiologists tell me that hiring and retaining newly minted med school grads is increasingly impossible because they all want the corner office, and no weekend on-call duty (otherwise they feel 'unwelcomed!).
Clifton, thanks so much for you comprehensive reply! Hard to argue those points.
But some quibbles, perhaps, (better expressed over a beer I might add!).
STEM badly needs good people. No question. But STEM, as it should be, is and must remain a self-selecting set of highly demanding careers. A lot of hurdles need to be successfully cleared before one arrives as a top-notch STEM graduate (a fully-fledged scientist), not least of which is a demonstrated & consistently achieved aptitude for Quant. I'm sure we both know many who have washed out either because of a breaking point (as in 'I don't want to do this anymore') or a simple failure point (Advanced Stat or 2nd year Organic is several steps beyond most people's comfort level).
Demographic imbalance at these higher levels tends to be misleading. The numbers are too small and the hurdles too steep to read race or sex-based discrimination into the final tallies. Unfortunately those truths tend not to persuade those who insist on equating disparate outcomes with discriminatory treatment. I'd recommend Heather MacDonald's excellent summary of this situation here: https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine .
As for the question of 'targeted encouragement' (as in special STEM-boosting sessions for Women or BIPOC's )....yes, I would argue that such focus does indeed tend to discourage those not equally targeted. Again, I'd say 'Encourage everyone!'
Personally I don't care if my surgeon is Black, White, Green, Female, Male, Short, Tall, whatever...I just want them to be OUTSTANDING. To invite a 'preferred' crowd to the party is to not invite and not include the Other, whoever that Other might be. Hard to avoid the feeling of being under-valued and ignored if all the fawning and coaching and mentoring and scholarships are nominally restricted to people who don't look like 'me'!
Would you see a downside to a National Society of White Engineers targeting & encouraging White students because, after all, 'we need all the STEM workers we can get'? I suspect you would (I suspect all of us would...because, in fact, it's racially discriminatory).
But your points about 'feeling welcome' are fascinating. We'd have to ask how much of that 'feeling' is a function of an actual, real, tangible 'unwelcoming' and how much is simply the very common feeling that every 'rookie' has when entering the 'old-timer's' clubhouse. I've had that feeling; I'm sure you've had it also. That's not racism or sexism, that's just the normal sense that -- as a rookie -- your perspectives and non-experience are not particularly valued.
I had a conversation years ago with an individual who had just begun teaching at the HS level. She told me that she faced a ton of resistance & hostility from the students....because, or so she thought, she was female. I explained, as you might imagine, that everyone faces exactly the same thing when they begin. It's not a function of gender or color; it's a function of being a newbie and the inevitable of being 'tested' in any new environment. The worst crash & burn I ever witnessed was a skinny White guy with a high voice who left the school halfway through the semester. He, too, would have said he was not 'welcomed'. But his failure had nothing to do with bias and everything to do with the fact that he couldn't handle the normal rough & tumble of teaching.
Sometimes an 'unwelcoming' is truly a function of bias & discrimination....but sometimes (I'd say most of the time) it's more a function of a hard life in a big, cold, and most typically uncaring world.
The truth is, when all you have is a hammer, all you tend to see are nails. And if 63% of all Black adults believe 'racism' is "an extremely big problem" despite an utter lack of evidence of any racist policy , procedure, law, or institutional system....then it's going to be easy to see so-called 'unwelcoming' as yet another racist nail. I've had cardiologists tell me that hiring and retaining newly minted med school grads is increasingly impossible because they all want the corner office, and no weekend on-call duty (otherwise they feel 'unwelcomed!).
Great example of this phenomenon in Tim Constantine's story about Michelle, back in 2020: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/29/is-michelle-obama-a-racist/ .... and how they both reacted to a line-cutter at the airport.
Thanks for all of your comments. I enjoyed our exchanges!
My pleasure entirely. Appreciate the opportunity to stretch my thinking!