- Today's video is going to be a little bit different
'cause it's pretty rare for us to sort of sit down
and talk a little more candidly but Greg was looking up
something in the day we wanted to share.
- Yeah, I looked up the top 25 science YouTubers.
This is based on subscribers.
Putting the list together was kind of striking.
- You have Vsauce, The Slow Mo Guys, Mark Rober,
In a Nutshell, The King of Random, Crazy Russian Hacker,
Crash Course, AsapScience.
- [Mitch And Greg] That's us.
- If you couldn't tell from the photo.
- [Mitch] Smarter Every Day, Veritasium, Sci Show,
Doctor Mike, Minute Physics, CGP Grey Vsauce2,
Backyard Scientist, Vsauce3, Numberphile,
It's Okay to be Smart, 3Blue1Brown, Tom Scott,
Real Engineering, Minute Earth, Simone Giertz,
and PBS Space Time.
- There's a lot to talk about here
when it comes to gender, gender non-binary people.
- The first woman on the list, solo woman at least,
is number 24.
There are no Black people.
There are no Indigenous people.
There are no people with disabilities.
- The fact that this list is all white, I was surprised,
but I also then wasn't surprised.
This is an issue that we wanna talk about today
in the STEM community.
- And specifically in science and in science communication
on YouTube because that's the bubble
that we all kind of live and work in
and engage with every day.
- And what we wanna talk about today is race
in regards to the very significant shift
in I think a lot of, especially white people's ability
to talk about institutional racism.
We wanna talk about it with some science today,
but also give a tangible goal that we can all do
to change the institution of science.
- If you took science courses,
think about the history you learned.
Whose faces were represented?
Who was even allowed to participate in science?
Were women allowed?
Were people of color allowed?
- Did queer people exist?
They did, they did. (indistinct)
- But there's that conversation if you think
the foundation of science was kind of born out of whiteness
and born out of this sort of Eurocentric view
of how people lived there.
- Early science and taxonomy led by Carl Linnaeus
incorrectly posited that humans fell
into four distinct subspecies:
homo sapiens europaeus, the people of Europe who were white,
serious, and strong;
homo sapiens asiaticus, the people of Asia who were yellow,
melancholy, and greedy;
homo sapiens americanus, the people of America who were red,
ill-tempered, and subjugated;
and homo sapiens afer, the people of Africa who were black,
and passive, and lazy.
And Carla Linnaeus even speculated privately
that they might not even be human at all.
There was a historic moment when science started
to distance itself from religion and hold its own power,
and the power was incorrect and racist.
The king of France at the time ordered this taxonomy
to be adopted as the correct classification system
of humans, and as recent as 1921,
the American Museum of Natural History held an exhibition
on eugenics which falsely claimed that Black people's brains
were smaller than white peoples.
Charles Darwin's son attended the event
and adopted the idea of racist eugenics.
The proliferation of this false science
led to the U.S. borders closing to people from Asia, Africa,
Southern and Eastern Europe
because ill-informed and racist scientists of the time
thought people from these countries were mentally defective
and biologically undesirable.
People really do have a fundamental belief
that science isn't biased.
We just have to say we disagree with that.
- Even if the idea of science in and of itself
is this pure form,
the second you introduce humans into that
you introduce bias.
- Look at the question, look at the discussion
at the end of every study,
that's when people start to fling around their feelings.
- The way that we study science
and the things that we learn about,
if they're led by a homogenous group,
we're really only learning about one lens of life.
- A good scientist takes in information
and changes their worldview.
So they are adaptable.
So I do think that as a science community, we can, you know,
fight institutionalized racism potentially more easily,
'cause we are willing to take in the facts
and to make changes based on them.
- Here are some examples of research
on anti-Black racism and STEM.
- Studies have found that white doctors are less likely
to prescribe Black patients medication for blood clots.
They believe racist myths about Black people.
For example, that they have higher pain tolerance
and thicker skin.
They themselves don't feel like they're being racist,
but within their institutions,
they are acting with institutionalized racism.
- There are even infamous scientific experiments
that have used Black bodies without their consent
for the benefit of science.
So the Tuskegee Experiment is a famous example
where they use around 600 Black men with syphilis
and told them they were getting treated,
but they actually weren't so that they could study
what happens when syphilis goes untreated for 40 years.
And this was without consent.
- The most recent "Nature" magazine,
and there's a study about how they're conglomerating
a bunch of genomic research, fascinating research
to understand humans and to understand diseases in humans.
And at the end they say there were very few Black people,
very few South Asian people.
That's an example of today
an institution finding breakthroughs and research
and very important genomic information to help
our health that is ignoring a whole population of people
due to a system.
- There's also a lot of research on research.
So minorities are less likely
to have their research published.
They're less likely to be given raises or rewards,
even when they're at the same level
as their white colleagues.
There's also something really interesting
called the Diversity Paradox.
So they found that minorities are more likely
to have innovative ideas,
they're bringing in new perspectives for science,
but they're less likely to be given academic positions.
Studies have shown that white people get
53% more callbacks than minorities,
and then even in those callbacks,
they've started to do studies of, okay,
who actually gets the job when they're equally equipped
or equally qualified for the job.
White people end up getting the job
143% more often than minorities.
Yes, we can say we just wanna hire the best person
and put the most talented person in that position,
but I think we just have to acknowledge
that we all have biases that are unintentional,
that impact what it means to be the best candidate.
And if we can't acknowledge that root problem,
then we'll never even be able to address
sort of the more surface problems.
- Now we should talk about something that we can do.
If we are in the sciences, when we enter rooms,
when we enter meetings, if everyone happens to be white,
I think that's an important time to talk about anti-racism.
I think a lot of work can be done in rooms of white people
'cause we know those meetings are happening, okay.
We are in them all the time.
A fellow science communicator and friend Dr. Esther told us,
"It is not up to marginalized people to be burdened
"with making systemic change in institutions."
- I think as creators, we can all be putting in more effort
to highlight other voices that are different from ours.
How can we as a community, including us,
look to people that have different perspectives?
- [Greg] Dr. Esther we'll teach you fascinating stories
about marginalized figures in STEM,
Jordan Harrod can teach you about
how AI preserves systemic racism,
Mike Likes Science can teach you a rap about coding,
Jabrils can show you how AI can draw
new Pokemon with math,
Jaida Elcock on TikTok is so funny
and will teach you about animal facts,
and Anna Gifty, another amazing friend on Twitter,
will blow your mind and she actually was able to make us
even like economics.
- But we also think we really need
to talk about the institutions.
So obviously we make a lot of content on YouTube,
but also Facebook and Instagram and all of these platforms
that play a role in this.
And I think as viewers and as creators,
there are ways that we can influence
and impact those groups as well.
- In 2019, Google's workforce was 54.4% white,
39.8% Asian, 5.7% Latinx, 3.3% Black,
and 0.8% Native American.
So these stats are for America.
2019 Google's leadership was 66.6% white,
28.9% Asian, 3.3% Latinx, 2.6% Black, 0.7% Native American.
And also staggering, Google's workforce is only 31.7% women
and their leadership is only 26.1% women,
assuming gender binaries.
They didn't have information
about gender nonconforming people.
In 2019, Facebook's workforce was 44.2% white,
43% Asian, 5.2% Hispanic, 3.8% Black, 3.1% mixed,
and 0.7% other.
Looking at leadership, 65.4% were white,
24.9% Asian, 3.5% Hispanic, 3.1% Black, 2.9% mixed,
0.3% other.
This shows you how the higher you go up
in all of these institutions, the whiter it gets.
So we need to talk not only about hiring diverse people,
but also creating better promotion initiatives
to get different people to the top
creating cultures where people of diverse backgrounds
actually wanna work at these companies.
Like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Silicon Valley startups
should have to openly disclose which universities
they are recruiting from.
In America, how many are they hiring
from predominantly white schools like Stanford or MIT
compared to HBCUs like Howard or Alabama A&M?
Facebook has currently been accepting
paid political advertising on their platform,
regardless of if it has false claims or hate speech.
They say they do not want to be the arbiter of truth,
but their algorithms already control our truth.
They decide what we see, what goes viral,
and what shows up on your timeline.
And 90% of hate speech on Facebook is identified by AI.
Who designs this technology is integral to it working.
What I am asking for is public information
about the breakdown of race and gender representation
in specific jobs.
'Cause I'm curious who is building these algorithms
that are controlling what we all see.
It's about arming ourselves with that information
to challenge when we're in those meetings,
to talk to people in positions of power at Facebook
or Instagram or Google.
- At large, we also see in science when you have
more diverse voices, you get different perspective.
- Yeah, so that's a really amazing study.
Over 2.5 million papers they looked at
and they studied the last names of the papers
and they found that the more diverse those last names were,
the more likely those journal articles,
scientific articles, were to be cited.
And assuming that citation actually means
that the, you know, journals are more meaningful or valid.
That's like, to me, a really tangible, fascinating study
about how diverse perspectives
make things better and flourish.
- Why does it matter at all?
Apart from the fact that we're seeing things
like expressed in police brutality against Black people,
I think even as queer people,
we know representation matters.
There's so many studies that show if you can see yourself
in a position.
So if you, as a queer young person, see other queer people
in science, it can inspire you.
If you're a young Black person
and see representation of Black people as scientists,
as science communicators, in programming that represents
like learning and education,
you're much more likely to be inspired to do that
because you see a space for yourself.
I would love to hear other people's experiences
in the comments because sometimes, I mean,
we like to quote a lot of research.
There's research that shows that focusing
on individual stories actually can change people's minds.
It's harder to acknowledge and see systemic racism,
but when you have a tangible story, it matters a lot.
And so I think it's important for people
to share their stories, no matter what your perspective,
no matter what makes you unique in this science space.
You shouldn't stop watching the people you like.
It has nothing to do with that.
A lot of people are making amazing content,
but maybe just push yourself outside
of your comfort zone sometime.
If we can stop and acknowledge our own biases,
I think that would be an amazing step forward
in just making science an even more amazing field.
- If this sparked any ideas for you,
you can write in the comments below
and we will continue to answer those questions.
We wanna keep talking about this.
The work that we have to do
to challenge institutional racism starts now.
It's about moving forward.
It's not something that we just involved ourselves in
for two weeks while the cultural zeitgeist was there.
The real work starts now.
So yeah, let us know if you want us to make a video
about affirmative action, make a video about something else.
We would love to do that,
to be motivated by you to keep going.