By the @EEB_POC team
From Dynamic Ecology
Note from Meghan Duffy: This guest post is a revised version of one that briefly appeared last month.
Over the past few months society has once again had to face the stark inequities that disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, and other racial minorities. The senseless murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Chantel Moore highlighted police brutality against Black and Indigenous people, and ignited protests across the globe. The disproportionate impacts of COVID 19 on people of color are highlighting systemic racist structures in access to health care and other social networks.
These events have prompted renewed calls to examine systemic racism in all sectors of society, including academia and its many subdisciplines. The fields of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) are overwhelmingly white. Minorities in the biological sciences and EEB face many different types of discrimination. Personal stories shared on Twitter using hashtags such as #BlackinSTEM and #BlackinNature have highlighted the unique risks of conducting field work as a Black scientist. Within ecology we need to confront not just the current systematic bias, but also the legacies of colonialism.