The science community needs to step up in acknowledging and actively fixing our complicity in Anti-Black Racism.

TW: Strong language, discussions and mentions of Anti-Black Racism and Violence

In August of 1619, 20-30 enslaved Africans landed at Point Comfort, modern day Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution would not occur for another 157 years, and yet, millions of Africans would be sold and captured from their home, forced to travel in inhumane conditions that killed many Africans in this journey, and for those that survived, enter a country that wasn’t even a country yet, to be enslaved, tortured and murdered.

On May 14th, 2022, over 403 years since the first slaves arrived in what would become the United States of America, 10 Black people in Tops Grocery Store, a grocery store that Black people had fought for years to get in the town of Buffalo, New York, were murdered by a white man; a white man, who believed in the same White Supremacy and Anti-Black racism that was used to justify the version of slavery I studied in AP United States History that was abolished in 1865. A white man, who did not cite his views from racist slave owners in the 17th -19th century, but Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) on educational attainment, a field of genetic research that started in the 2000s. Science and scientific studies, were used to inspire a man to drive almost four hours to kill Black people with an AR-15 that had the word nigger written across it, and stream the violent murder of innocent Black people to the world.

On May 25th, 2020, two years prior, George Perry Floyd Jr., was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota after being accused of using a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. A police officer had his knee on Floyd’s neck, for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, suffocating him and causing cardiac arrest due to lack of blood flow to the brain, and murdered Floyd at 46 years old.

The murder of another Black man by police brutality and anti-Black racism had occurred, and it occurred in the middle of a global pandemic that in the United States, was and still is disproportionately killing Black, Indigenous and Latinx people—and the moment that was revealed to Americans, lockdown protests and the downplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic escalated, even from fellow scientists, public health “leaders” and physicians.

The days following Floyd’s murder, for the first time in my nearly 23 years of living, I saw collective action, protests, and even institutional declarations, about the anti-Black racism that defines much of this country. Universities that I hoped to attend in the future as an MD/PhD student began to reevaluate their student and faculty diversity, held listening sessions on the racism and microaggressions that their Black colleagues had faced, and trainee led groups such as ImmunoDiverse at the University of California, San Francisco and the BlackinX Collation formed, to highlight the need to form an anti-racist environment in medicine and science, to end the health and educational disparities caused by anti-Black racism that is systemic to these institutions and the United States.

On May 14th, 2022, over 403 years since the first slaves arrived in what would become the United States of America, and almost two years since the murder of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery that caused non-Black scientists to take a pause and recognize the systemic racism of their institutions and their own racism, the murders Celestine Chaney, age 65, Roberta A. Drury, age 32, Andre Mackneil, age 53, Katherine Massey, age 72, Margus D. Morrison, age 52, Heyward Patterson, age 67, Aaron Salter Jr., age 55, Geraldine Talley, age 62, Ruth Whitfield, age 86, and Pearl Young, age 77,  has resulted in silence. No protests, no call to action, just a 218-word email and business as usual.

Even though a white man murdered 10 Black people because of the work of scientists.

Matriculation data for the 2021-2022 academic year from the AAMC reported only 60 of the 750 matriculants for MD-PhD programs were Black, 2 were Native and 32 were Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish Origin. Black trainees are still experiencing racism and microaggressions from the same people two years ago, said they were listening, learning, and committed to change.

Little has changed. Science, as it was used to justify slavery, is being used to justify anti-Blackness and White Supremacy. Science has and continues to have blood on its hands.  So, from 1619 to 2020 to 2022, very little, has changed.

So, to my fellow science community, the non-Black science community specifically, I am going to leave you with one question.

Can we really continue to allow our research, our careers, our field, to be apolitical?