Want merit-based advancement in academia? Fight systemic racism

This month, Brock University chemistry professor Tomáš Hudlický found notoriety after publishing a paper in the German Chemical Society journal Angewandte Chemie that included his complaints about the supposed "preferential status" held by women and minorities in academia. Following an outcry online, all 16 members of the journal's international advisory board resigned, the Chemical Institute of Canada and Brock University condemned Hudlicky's statements, the paper was retracted, its two editors suspended, and the journal apologized. Before his union managed to stop him from commenting further, Hudlicky told Retraction Watch in an email, "That is frightening! We are sliding back to Calvinism and burning at stakes. This is absurd! I expressed my opinions and my words were totally taken out of context. Yet I get a lot of emails in support. … The witch hunt is on."

Hudlicky's comments, both in the paper and in his subsequent defence, reveal something simple about his condition: he doesn't understand the systemic nature of racism and sexism. Few white people do, and I consider myself to be embarrassingly early in my own educational journey about institutionalized white supremacy. But even from my own inadequate understanding, it's easy to spot the deep-seated ignorance that prevents Hudlicky — as well as his predictable advocates like Jordan Peterson and Barbara Kay — from recognizing his woeful misperception of reality.

As one of my own actions in support of #SHUTDOWNSTEM and #STRIKEFORBLACKLIVES, I read Robin Diangelo's lucid and illuminating book White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Through her work as a racial and social justice educator, Diangelo describes many encounters with white people who feel profoundly threatened by the idea that women and minorities are receiving, as Hudlicky calls it, "preferential status" — even though that fear turns out to be an illusion. In Canada, women are still significantly underrepresented among full professors and paid less, and the much-promised equity for racialized and Indigenous faculty members is far, far from being realized. And yet, women and especially BIPOC people in academia must face repeated accusations by white men that their advancement owes not to their merit but to their identities.

The basic error that white people make, according to Diangelo, is believing that racism is a very bad thing that very bad people do, rather than a defining feature of the social environment in which we all live. When white people permit themselves the belief that they are personally innocent of racism, they become automatically blind to the way that racism structures our society. Most white men are still unconsciously attached to the fantasy that they attained their position because of merit alone. When this delusion is threatened, they feel personally attacked, as if they are the object of a "witch hunt." Speaking as a white man, I can say that Diangelo's framing of white fragility is useful for understanding and interrupting this reaction.

So to Hudlicky and his fellow witches, let me say: no one wants to put an end to merit. We just want a genuinely equitable system for recognizing and rewarding it. And that's not happening yet. So if you really care about merit, you'll do everything you can to identify and counteract systemic racism in your institutions and in yourselves. The first step is to remove the blindfold of imagined innocence.

R$