We Need Accomplices, Not Allies in the Fight for an Equitable Geoscience

Abstract

Since the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, I have heard repeated calls to center the voices of black, indigenous, and other people of color in discussions around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and the editors of AGU Advances make it clear that "we must learn from our colleagues who have experienced bias and barriers and listen to their ideas of what kind of change is needed for the Earth and space sciences to function as a diverse and inclusive community" (Zeitler et al., 2021). I believe that in order to elevate DEI in the geosciences, we need to find and create venues to hear, validate, and uplift the experiences of the people who do geoscience-particularly those from underrepresented and marginalized groups. So as we approach the 1-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd, I feel compelled to write about what I have learned balancing community work, diversity work, and science since May 25, 2020. Personal ReflectionI may be the geoscientist who has been most affected by the killing of George Floyd. As a mixed-race black man who has spent 25 of his 28 years in South Minneapolis, the killing of George Floyd was closer to home than any of the police-involved killings that have made headlines in recent years. In the days following May 25, 2020, I saw a video of a black man being killed on a sidewalk just a few blocks from my home by a police department funded by my tax dollars, then was among friends and neighbors met with tear gas, flash grenades, and less-lethal munitions at protests. I watched businesses that I've supported all my life burn to the ground, heard the constant buzz of helicopters above my neighborhood, and saw a movement sparked at 38th & Chicago spread around the globe. And throughout the summer, I fought hard in defense of my community; I helped board up businesses in preparation for riots, stayed up until 3 a.m. to protect my neighborhood from the threat of white supremacist violence, volunteered in emergency food relief, and came face-to-face with National Guard soldiers and SWAT teams at protests. And to be frank, I rarely saw my geoscience colleagues in the streets with me. Of course, I wasn't everywhere and I don't know what actions people took in their private lives (e.g., monetary support, political advocacy). But I saw that our city needed boots on the ground in the struggle for security and justice, and very few of the boots I saw came from my fellow geoscientists. And this led to a question that has haunted me since last

Not Enough: Efforts to Diversify Biogeosciences Benefit Limited Segment of Society

“…Acknowledging that the way we conduct research affects more than just the members of our team, but also the impact of our work, Harris et al. (2021) challenge fellow geoscientists to do place‐based, community‐based, interdisciplinary research, and Jones (2021) suggests geoscientists team up with local environmental organizations, inherently expanding what geoscience research can be. We encourage our colleagues to purposefully engage with these materials, have open, honest, and sometimes uncomfortable discussions with your colleagues, and importantly, act to implement change in your space.…”

A GeoHealth Call to Action: Moving Beyond Identifying Environmental Injustices to Co‐Creating Solutions

“…Funding agencies, scientific organizations, and academic and research institutions are well positioned to create opportunities to connect communities with researchers. A successful example of this is the AGU Thriving Earth Exchange, which has created meaningful and productive collaborations through brokered research (Faust & Esposito, 2021 ; Goodwin, 2021 ; Hammock et al., 2021 ; Harris et al., 2021 ; Jones, 2021 ; Pandya et al., 2014 ). Individuals and practitioners can and should avail themselves to being matched in this way, though, particularly for early career researchers, imposter syndrome can limit their participation if community needs are not an “exact fit” for their research specialty.…”

Whose geography do we review?

“…This can include soliciting articles about these efforts, prompting authors to explicitly address how their submissions dovetail or not with such initiatives, or—alongside some of the editorial practices detailed below—intentionally twinning our work as editors with already developed practices to foster inclusivity and work to correct socially unjust tendencies in the discipline. In addition to the everyday practices mentioned above are coordinated efforts in professional associations (e.g., the American Association of the Geographers, the American Geophysical Union, the Canadian Association of Geographers, the Royal Geographical Society, the New Zealand Geographical Society, the Institute of Australian Geographers, among others), which are meant to address multifaceted demands and needs of people racialized as non‐white or otherwise minoritized, in classrooms, in the field or in a lab, at conferences, in spaces of academic publishing, and so on (see, e.g., Esson et al., 2017; Esson & Last, 2020; Jones, 2021; McAllister et al., 2022; Radcliffe, 2017). Dovetailing our efforts with those of our professional organizations must be done with care, however, to avoid tokenism in favor of meaningful partnership and transformative inclusion 3 .…”