Eradicating Erasure: Interrogating Anti-Blackness in STEM Education History and Amplifying Stories of Black Discovery

• In Event: The Wretched of the Earth? Interrogating Eurocentrism and Reimagining the STEM Futures of Black Learners

Abstract

Purpose
The salience of hegemony observed in the curriculum and climate seen in STEM education settings has caused a subsequent erasure and suppression of race and culture within these fields. Considering the negative history associated with STEM, the Tuskegee experiment, and the silence surrounding the historical science advancements seen across the Black Diaspora, Blackness in science education has been historically oppressed (Authors, 2024). This silent form of oppression, we theorize, has had historical implications for the STEM education success seen within Black communities.

Theoretical framework
As literature and policy have radically opposed the use of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education as of recent, this paper counters these points by exploring the historical implications of race in science and encourages the use of CRT within science and STEM education settings that Black students must occupy. We center and discuss the importance of race and culture within science education while emphasizing how Blackness has also been removed.

Methods/Materials
We utilize historical analysis techniques to interrogate Eurocentrism commonly affiliated with STEM education and present a counternarrative (Berry & Cook, 2018) of what constitutes as innovation and scientific discovery. We present the silenced stories of Black STEM Scholars and highlight the rich histories of Black innovators.

Warrants for Argument
The anti-Blackness present in STEM is diverse in its pernicious reach: from medical research to AI technology. The biological forms of racism in the form of the unethical cases of the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment that prompted ethical reviews of research within the US to the extraction and continued use of HeLa cells from Henrietta Lacks (Skloot, 2011). These unethical origins are primarily attributed to the lingering mistrust Black people have with medicine and research, in addition to the subjugation often experienced during health screenings (Scharff et al., 2010). With the exclusionary, violent, and ethnocentric history affiliated with STEM, it hardly argues for the objectivity of these respective fields and makes for a case as to why critical theories and affirming pedagogies are important when discussing how Black people are underrepresented in STEM.

Scholarly Significance
The largely absent discussion surrounding the history of Black innovation in science classrooms implies that true science is inherently white science and, arguably, there is no science outside of white science. The silence surrounding the advancements of Black people bellows this notion that Black people are not contributors of knowledge and a part of the foundation of society despite having built the U.S. along with the major empires we see on the continent of Africa and, considering the Diaspora, beyond. Centering topics that bolster the stories of innovations and empires developed from communities of African descent would support the renewing of students' views about their capabilities in STEM spaces, as they are able to visualize themselves in their predecessors. We argue that scholars must re-author and situate the advancements of Black STEM historical figures, highlighting their innovations outside Black History Month, and craft culturally relevant topics within the curriculum.

Authors

• Takeshia Pierre, Tufts University

• Theila Smith, University of Groningen