Physical Revue says "Whiteboards are Racist"

[MigL]

Those of you who publish original research may find the following interesting, and suggesting of an 'agenda' not backed up by science
( wish BeeCee was still here; he was passionate about this sort of thing, and had great respect for L Krauss )

Lawrence Krauss: Whiteboards are racist because woke physics journal says so (msn.com)

What do you guys think; tempest in a teapot, or the unravelling of society as we know it ?

[TheVat]

Are we sure this is not a spoof paper?  If not, it is profoundly silly.  Even the teapots should continue to have calm weather.

[exchemist]

35 minutes ago, MigL said:

Those of you who publish original research may find the following interesting, and suggesting of an 'agenda' not backed up by science
( wish BeeCee was still here; he was passionate about this sort of thing, and had great respect for L Krauss )

Lawrence Krauss: Whiteboards are racist because woke physics journal says so (msn.com)

What do you guys think; tempest in a teapot, or the unravelling of society as we know it ?

How funny. I’m old enough to remember when all our teachers used a blackboard. Would that be seen now as “cultural appropriation”, perhaps?

And what about the universal prevalence of white paper for writing and printing? Pretty shocking, eh? Something Must Be Done! 🤪

[joigus]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

What do you guys think; tempest in a teapot, or the unravelling of society as we know it ?

Both. Society as we know it unravels itself as having a high content of tempestuous teapots.

"Attention wanted" seems to be the name of the game.

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

What do you guys think; tempest in a teapot, or the unravelling of society as we know it ?

Neither. Just business as usual.

Whether we are talking politics, coffee, aerobic training vs weight training, WTC collapse, moon landings, UAVs, vaccines, violence in video games, school dress codes, Apple vs Android, collecting Precious Moments figurines/beer cans/sports memorabilia, or absolutely anything else in the world where people have an opinion, you are going to find that a smattering of people take things to the extreme. Seems to be human nature and something we can generally dismiss. I'm sure soon we'll be seeing battles over whether or not people are unfairly favoring angiosperms over gymnosperms.

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

And what about the universal prevalence of white paper for writing and printing? Pretty shocking, eh? Something Must Be Done! 🤪

OTOH, I don't mind some over-sensitivity when it comes to racism. There are so many words and phrases that have inherent biases in them, or have racist origins, or help perpetuate stereotypes. Should you use white paper to blacklist someone for being the black sheep of the physics journal?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/#b39-jmla-106-527

Quote

This commentary addresses the widespread use of racist language in discussions concerning predatory publishing. Examples include terminology such as blacklists, whitelists, and black sheep. The use of such terms does not merely reflect a racist culture, but also serves to legitimize and perpetuate it.

I thought folks were being overly sensitive by correcting my use of the term "master bedroom" until I thought about how gender and racially offensive it was. It took me about three tries to learn to use "main" instead of "master". 

[CharonY]

The title at least seems to be designed to facilitate ragebait clicks. Will have to read it later. But I have noticed natural scientists venturing out into the realm of social sciences without a lit of knowledge (though there is also a fair bit of questionable methodology among social scientists).

Generally the more certain folks are (on either side of an issue) the more likely they are uninformed).

[exchemist]

37 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

OTOH, I don't mind some over-sensitivity when it comes to racism. There are so many words and phrases that have inherent biases in them, or have racist origins, or help perpetuate stereotypes. Should you use white paper to blacklist someone for being the black sheep of the physics journal?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/#b39-jmla-106-527

I thought folks were being overly sensitive by correcting my use of the term "master bedroom" until I thought about how gender and racially offensive it was. It took me about three tries to learn to use "main" instead of "master". 

I think it's pretty obvious to most people that there's nothing remotely racist about the term "blacklist". 

Black sheep is obviously not racist in origin, though one can definitely sympathise with the idea that the concept of separating sheep by colour and denigrating black ones is not a comfortable metaphor in a multiracial society. So that's a metaphor that is probably past its sell-by date.

Re master bedroom, I was actually brought up short yesterday in a Hi-Fi shop, where I was getting advice about stereo bluetooth speakers.  These are sold as a pair, with one having the bluetooth receiver and power supply and the other running from it by a wire. So I said something like "Aha I see, so it's a master and slave setup. The shop assistant slightly uncomfortably replied "Well we call them primary and secondary".  So there we are. The "master" and "slave" metaphor has been standard in engineering throughout my life (e.g. the cylinders in hydraulic brakes on a car), but no longer, it seems. I suppose that's fair enough: when I was growing up, Britain was nothing like as multiracial as it is now, so now there will be different sensitivities to step around.     

But, assuming the article is not a spoof, I am sort of intrigued as to what they would say about a blackboard. 

Edited May 15, 2023 by exchemist

[CharonY]

So before folks focus too much on the "white" in whiteboard thingy (ragebait). I had a quick break and glimpsed at the paper under discussion. The paper is a bit convoluted and is more in social science lingo, which certainly does not endear it to natural scientists. As such I really only skimmed it.

That being said, the whiteboard is not in there, because of the word white, it could have been any board, or a flip chart or similar. What the authors claimed  is that in their observatory session certain persons were using the board as a dominance tool, to focus attention on themselves as opposed to a collaborative tool with equal access for everyone involved. They reframed it in a hierarchical system prevalent in white patriarchic societies. There is a bit of a stretch (IMO) that is not uncommon in social science papers in establishing these contexts, but it definitely reads different than saying whiteboards are racist.

If someone said that they either have not read the paper or are stretching context in an arguably similar or worse way as they are accusing the authors of.

[Phi for All]

5 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I think it's pretty obvious to most people that there's nothing remotely racist about the term "blacklist". 

Except that it's use began about the same time that the US slave trade ramped up for tobacco cultivation (1610 or so), to indicate that people on the list were undesirables, troublemakers, and deserved some form of punishment for it. 

[CharonY]

It should also noted that the paper uses "whiteness" to refer to a organizational structure whereas race as itself is actually not a factor in the observation (it is only based on the observation of three students). The paper also seems to be in a fairly low impact journal focused on teaching science (rather than a science journal) so it looks to me that that the fuss is disproportionate.

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Except that it's use began about the same time that the US slave trade ramped up for tobacco cultivation (1610 or so), to indicate that people on the list were undesirables, troublemakers, and deserved some form of punishment for it. 

There is no evidence of any connection, so far as I can see. Troublemakers were logged in a black book, sure (from the 2nd link below, Henry VIII is the first documented case of someone who did this) , but there's no evidence that it had anything to do with slavery or skin colour. Black and white have been contrasted for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, due to light being associated with goodness and reason and dark with danger and evil. It probably goes right back to when we lived in caves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism.  

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting

 

 

   

[toucana]

A few years ago I took part in a public tour of the newly opened Bristol Center for Nanoscience and Quantum Information (NSQI) - a new research centre constructed by Bristol University next to the main HHW Physics building in BS6.

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/physics/facilities/nsqi//

One of the many fascinating features that caught my eye was that there was one, and only one room in the entire building equipped with old-fashioned blackboards and chalk - and those blackboards were in fact not black, but a deep emerald green !

Our guide explained that the presence of those atavistic blackboards had only been sanctioned after a prolonged argument with the theoretical physicists who insisted that they could not possibly function and perform ground-breaking research into Quantum Mechanics without the comforting squeak of a stick of chalk scratching its way across a ‘blackboard’.

Left to their own devices, the building committee would have apparently vetoed the presence of blackboards in their new research centre, because even microscopic particles of chalk dust are an unwelcome headache when creating climate-controlled, vibration free, and electromagnetically shielded laboratory spaces for nanoscale engineering research.

[exchemist]

18 minutes ago, toucana said:

A few years ago I took part in a public tour of the newly opened Bristol Center for Nanoscience and Quantum Information (NSQI) - a new research centre constructed by Bristol University next to the main HHW Physics building in BS6.

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/physics/facilities/nsqi//

One of the many fascinating features that caught my eye was that there was one, and only one room in the entire building equipped with old-fashioned blackboards and chalk - and those blackboards were in fact not black, but a deep emerald green !

Our guide explained that the presence of those atavistic blackboards had only been sanctioned after a prolonged argument with the theoretical physicists who insisted that they could not possibly function and perform ground-breaking research into Quantum Mechanics without the comforting squeak of a stick of chalk scratching its way across a ‘blackboard’.

Left to their own devices, the building committee would have apparently vetoed the presence of blackboards in their new research centre, because even microscopic particles of chalk dust are an unwelcome headache when creating climate-controlled, vibration free, and electromagnetically shielded laboratory spaces for nanoscale engineering research.

Yes we had dark green ones at both school and university, which were some kind of flexible rubber material, in a loop on rollers at top and bottom, so one could scroll them up or down. Handy for long mathematical derivations that took up more than could be written on one panel. But you still wrote on them with chalk.

[iNow]

9 hours ago, CharonY said:

it definitely reads different than saying whiteboards are racist.

If someone said that they either have not read the paper or are stretching context in an arguably similar or worse way as they are accusing the authors of.

It’s far easier to manufacture rage and get our Italian friends riled up than to properly represent what the paper actually says. 

Tucker Carlson, and right wing media more broadly, are particularly good at removing context, misrepresenting things, and generating very intentional and specific emotional responses in audiences. 

[StringJunky]

6 hours ago, exchemist said:

Yes we had dark green ones at both school and university, which were some kind of flexible rubber material, in a loop on rollers at top and bottom, so one could scroll them up or down. Handy for long mathematical derivations that took up more than could be written on one panel. But you still wrote on them with chalk.

We had green rolling blackboard screens as well. 1972-77. We did call them 'chalkboards' as well. 

Edited May 16, 2023 by StringJunky

[StringJunky]

Also: revue
noun [ C ] (also review)
UK  /rɪˈvjuː/ US  /rɪˈvjuː/
Add to word list 
a show with songs, dances, jokes, and short plays often about recent events

[exchemist]

15 hours ago, CharonY said:

It should also noted that the paper uses "whiteness" to refer to a organizational structure whereas race as itself is actually not a factor in the observation (it is only based on the observation of three students). The paper also seems to be in a fairly low impact journal focused on teaching science (rather than a science journal) so it looks to me that that the fuss is disproportionate.

Fair point. You have inspired me to look up the paper too. Here is a link: https://journals.aps.org/prper/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.010119

I have to agree the argument about whiteboards is not that they are physically white in colour, but the way a whiteboard (or potentially a blackboard, or a flipchart, I imagine)  is used in teaching, to focus discussion of a topic.

But I did find the paper shocking. I think it is worth reproducing a part of it. The authors analyse a recorded discussion about heat capacity. I quote an extract from their analysis (an "EID" is an Energy Interaction Diagram):

QUOTE

In the episode we analyzed in this paper, we observe an interaction in which Drake and the representation he is constructing are centered, and Gail and Paris’ sense making and contributions are marginalized, both in their interactions within their (small) group and in the larger-group discourse. This social organization is co-constructed and co-maintained by at least five mechanisms of control: the EID representation, physics values, the use of whiteboards, gendered social norms, and the structure of schooling. Importantly, we would suggest that these mechanisms operate mostly invisibly; actors’ participation in them is sensible and normal. At the same time, actors are (consciously or unconsciously) renegotiating their relationship to the center or expressing aspirations to change whiteness as social organization [51,53,64]. For example, Iris expresses a wish for her class to reflect nonhierarchical social structure, and has made a number of pedagogical choices that make this more possible, even if not actualized in this episode. Paris describes herself as “making sure that me and Gail had a say” in interactions with Drake, and Gail challenged Drake’s assertions and made moves toward the center. Drake seeks Gail’s approval at the end of the episode and makes discursive moves to distribute the credit for the construction of the representation (using “we” pronouns). That these aspirations and microchallenges did not fundamentally change the nature of the interaction or the social organization of the classroom in this episode points to the power and the institutionalization of whiteness. Even our notions of what collaboration means are shaped, epistemically, by whiteness.

Our goal in this paper has been to “make whiteness visible,” in the tradition of Critical Whiteness Studies. In particular, we have sought to make visible how everyday physics classroom interactions reproduce whiteness as social organization, and how physics representations, values, and pedagogical tools play a role in this reproduction. That whiteness is “ordinary” in physics classrooms is not surprising, given critical race theory’s assertion that whiteness is endemic to every aspect of U.S. society [7]. The ordinariness of whiteness’ reproduction is not surprising either, given critical scholarship’s emphasis on the invisibility and hegemony of whiteness.

UNQUOTE

This strikes me as verging on parody. The authors clearly have a preconceived ideological conviction that any form of steering of a discussion is - culturally - "white" and, ipso facto, A Bad Thing. Well, good luck with trying to keep any form of discussion on-topic, then! These people would obviously accuse the moderation on this forum of "whiteness", for a start. 

It's nuts. 

But actually, the point Krauss was objecting to was not so much the article, daft though it is, but the impossibility of responding to its claims, due to the Catch 22 attitude of the editors of the journal. There will always be contentious papers published, but refusing to accept a critique of them is more alarming, academically. 

 

 

[CharonY]

Unfortunately this falls under the more methodological questionable studies in sociology which is open to biased interpretation of observation. The main value is less in the conclusions as in natural sciences, nor even data collection but the opportunity to look at alternative perspectives.

Steering a discussion rather than creating consensus is a hierarchical structure and it is the common form of knowledge generation in science, in part because it is time effective. Whether social sciences actually use whiteness is a term for that is unusual (I came across the concept of western learning as contrasted to certain forms of indigenous learning).

Also if anything I found it more an exercise in male behavior, as men more commonly try to lead or dominate discussions regardless of their actual knowledge level.

While Krauss' point may be fair the title seemed not to be.

[exchemist]

3 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Unfortunately this falls under the more methodological questionable studies in sociology which is open to biased interpretation of observation. The main value is less in the conclusions as in natural sciences, nor even data collection but the opportunity to look at alternative perspectives.

Steering a discussion rather than creating consensus is a hierarchical structure and it is the common form of knowledge generation in science, in part because it is time effective. Whether social sciences actually use whiteness is a term for that is unusual (I came across the concept of western learning as contrasted to certain forms of indigenous learning).

Also if anything I found it more an exercise in male behavior, as men more commonly try to lead or dominate discussions regardless of their actual knowledge level.

While Krauss' point may be fair the title seemed not to be.

I agree. The title is misleading, as so often in journalism.

What occurred to me, as to you, about this case study was the tendency for men to dominate meetings, syndicate work etc. Towards the end of my time at Shell we were given training on this, to stop an "alpha male" character from seizing control of every discussion by picking up the marker pen, when there were probably more insightful and capable women present, who just were not as aggressive in putting themselves forward in a public forum. I suspect these researchers are so blinded by their ideological prejudice that they simplistically attempt to attribute everything to race, when there may be other, more obvious, factors at play.

I am reminded of the excesses of the post-structuralist movement in literature - denial of the role of the author etc. Academia can occasionally be prey to fads whereby the latest theory, which may be well-founded in its original form, is pushed way beyond the bounds of what is reasonable, before gradually settling down to a more modest place in the battery of ideas. 

[MigL]

10 hours ago, iNow said:

It’s far easier to manufacture rage and get our Italian friends riled up than to properly represent what the paper actually says. 

Tucker Carlson, and right wing media more broadly, are particularly good at removing context, misrepresenting things, and generating very intentional and specific emotional responses in audiences. 

I am nt upset about it at all.
Just thought it was interesting, and asked for others' opinions.

I only wear bow-ties with a tux, so please don't compare me to T Carlson.

Also I am not Italian, but multicultural Canadian for the past 49 years.

😀 😀

[TheVat]

Too many social science branches rely on faux-scientific analysis that can masssage data into any shape desired.  For every paper about white domination of seminars I am sure you can find one about male domination or capitalist domination or dog owner domination or whoever's silhouette is hanging up there in the ideological shooting gallery.  

 

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

Too many social science branches rely on faux-scientific analysis that can masssage data into any shape desired.  For every paper about white domination of seminars I am sure you can find one about male domination or capitalist domination or dog owner domination or whoever's silhouette is hanging up there in the ideological shooting gallery.  

That's because the culprits of most racial injustice are white male capitalists who treat their dogs better than most people.

[MigL]

Hey !  I'm a white male capitalist ( with a soft socialist underbelly ).
I think I treat my fellow humans decently and with respect.
And I don't even have a dog ...

Last I checked, W Buffet and B Gates were both white male capitalists, and each of them has donated more money to various charities than all of SFn's members combined incomes.
( although Bill did treat his wife badly )

Generalizations about people often come back to bite you in the ass.

[exchemist]

40 minutes ago, MigL said:

Hey !  I'm a white male capitalist ( with a soft socialist underbelly ).
I think I treat my fellow humans decently and with respect.
And I don't even have a dog ...

Last I checked, W Buffet and B Gates were both white male capitalists, and each of them has donated more money to various charities than all of SFn's members combined incomes.
( although Bill did treat his wife badly )

Generalizations about people often come back to bite you in the ass.

Yeah but I bet you are guilty of leading a discussion with a marker pen and whiteboard at some point in your life, you evil white supremacist. I know I have, on numerous occasions, mea culpa.