Let’s not use radical language carelessly
TLDR: We need to stop saying terms like “decolonization” and “intersectionality” unless we truly mean them!
I have been in activist spaces in physics long enough to witness a disturbing cycle play out many times. Radical voices call our attention to a potent new term, such as “intersectionality,” in an attempt to shift the dialogue away from incremental diversity and inclusion toward justice and to dismantle problematic frameworks from which we are (consciously or subconsciously) operating. This provokes successful change in perspective within the community for awhile. However, in the span of a year or two, well-intentioned (usually white) voices seeking to bolster their “diversity cred” adopt the term into their vernacular and defang it. Suddenly, terminology intended to subvert hegemonic power structures ends up lending a false sense of comfort to projects that in truth accomplish the opposite.
Here is just a smattering of the terms I have watched physics DEI activists defang within our community within recent years:
Intersectionality — Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 to explain how Black women’s liberation will never be achieved by Black or women’s liberation movements alone, but only from social movements that center Black women’s unique positionality at the interstices of two intersecting and interacting systems of power and domination. (Of course, similar logic applies at intersections of other axes of power, such as sexuality.) Yet I have heard way too many physicists call activist work “intersectional” simply for acknowledging that multiply-marginalized groups exist, or for merely breaking out data along multiple axes.
Anti-racism — To be anti-racist doesn’t just mean to be philosophically opposed to racism or unwilling to perpetuate it oneself. It means (particularly in the context of white wannabe-allies) becoming a turncoat willing to renounce and stand against the structures that grant oneself power and privilege on account of one’s whiteness or proximity thereto. In the wake of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests I heard this term resounding throughout the halls of our physics department as a call for radical change. Yet now it’s 2022 and the same white physicists using the word “anti-racism” to congratulate themselves for token actions , such as releasing a diversity statement, that by themselves do nothing to dismantle hegemonies.
Decolonization — In the context of the settler-colonial state, decolonization means nothing less than the unconditional surrender of land, power, and sovereignty itself to the Indigenous peoples on whose stolen lands the state is built. For the colonizer, it means renouncing one’s own resources, futurity, and even rights-based justice claims acknowledging that justice is impossible on stolen lands. Yet today I see white physicists throwing around the term “decolonization” as a synonym for diversity and inclusion — even though these projects are ultimately incommensurate*! (Not to mention the disgusting trend of misusing the term “colonizer” as if Black descendants of slavery share moral guilt with white settlers for the project of settler-colonial conquest and genocide.)
I am wholeheartedly in support of us adopting radical language — particularly that of multiply-marginalized activists and scholars — in our work if we truly take it to heart. The danger comes when we adopt such language uncritically, using it to support imperialist, colonialist projects. Language carries power, and we must be careful in how we use that power. Let’s start by making sure that when we use terms like “decolonizing physics,” we truly mean them — and mean them humbly.
*Indeed, I renamed my blog away from “Toward Decolonizing Physics” in part because white physicists like myself have done so much damage to the term “decolonization” since I began writing …
