From: johnston@fys.ruu.nl (Helen Johnston)
Subject: Re: Racist/Sexist Role Models
Followup-To: soc.women
Organization: Physics Department, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 09:52:29 GMT

In article <Bxy3s7.DI2@quake.sylmar.ca.us> brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.222410.16897@nhgs.vak12ed.edu> pgolden@nhgs.vak12ed.edu (Patrick S. Golden) writes:
>>I'm sorry you find this "racist". It is certainly not our
>>intent to foster that attitude, but, rather, to present all
>>students with role models for them to emulate.
>
>But that is exactly my point.  On what basis are you suggesting that the
>students emulate these people or respect them?  If you said "Look at this
>person, he is intelligent, productive, and interesting.  He's having a great
>time doing his job.  You should try to be like him because of that."  You 
>wouldn't be sending a racist message.  On the other hand, you can say "This
>person is of your race/sex, and therefore you ought to try to emulate him."
>that is a racist/sexist premise.  

No. People are not saying "you should emulate this person because she
is a woman" [I'm going to use write about the case of women role models
here, though I think many of the arguments are applicable to the racist
case as well]. They are saying "Look, I KNOW that all your life you've
been told, implicitly or explicitly, that women can't do xxx, and I
KNOW anytime you see a woman scientist on television she's either
completely clueless or has no human feelings at all, and I KNOW there
are people who don't believe women have ever contributed anything of
worth in this field: Look! Here are some women who DID make it. It's not
true women don't have the ability; it's not true you can't be a real
person while doing science; it's not true women have never cntributed
anything!" 

And later in the same thread in article
<1992Nov20.005551.15061@leland.Stanford.EDU> stefan@leland.Stanford.EDU 
(Stefan Michalowski) writes
[on the subject of "white people have no racial pride"; I'm assuming a
similar thing can be said, that "men have no pride in the
accomplishments of their sex"]:

| Please note that I also don't
| take personal CREDIT for Dirac, Churchill, Wagner, Corot, Bramante,
| Trollope or any of the glorious heros of western civilization. I
| rejoice in the fact that they lived and created, but the fact that
| they were white does nothing for me. 

No, you think that because you have so many role models that you don't
think of them as such. But if you find yourself in a situation that is
unique, you might suddenly find yourself in need of good images or role
models.  Ask the men in soc.men why they're so upset that there are no
positive images of fatherhood in the media. Isn't it enough that there
are many positive images of parenthood, nearly all of which just
coincidentally happen to be women? Can we just say, "Look at this
person, she is intelligent, productive, and interesting.  She's having
a great time doing her job." No, it's not, and we shouldn't. It's
important not just for the fathers of today who are caring for their
kids to see good images and role models of fatherhood; it's also
important for their children, and perhaps more importantly, for the
rest of society, to realize that, yes, men can be good parents too. So
it goes with women.  It's important for the rest of society to realize
that the woman they see isn't the secretary to the minister, she IS the
minister! When that statement becomes unremarkable, then we can drop
the talk of role models.

And knowing that you're not the first person to cross hurdles is
extremely important. Just the fact of knowing that other women have
coped with some of the problems you are having can mean a great deal to
a young woman. And the ability to discuss these problems with real,
live women, as opposed to idealized images, is enormously helpful. If
you're a young woman wondering how to fit plans for a family into the
tenure-track grind, or how to deal with sexism in the workplace, or how
to go about convincing your company to set up daycare on site, or how to
cope with a nursing infant when you're going observing on Mauna Kea,
or... then it's not sexist to say "here are some women who've done this,
who've managed this, who've coped with this." It's a resource, an
example.

>You should consider more than your intent, which is probably not bad, but
>look at the implicit message you are sending to these kids.  You are saying
>"Only if people of your race/sex/whatever have done X can you be expected to be
>able or interested in X.".  

But kids pick up these messages anyway. Go to misc.kids sometime and
read about just how young children start trying to classify the world by
race and sex. Read about the 3 year old who thinks that only women can
be doctors because she's extrapolating from a sample size of 2. Read
about how five year old will refuse to believe a woman can be a bus
driver, EVEN WHEN provided with an example. Read about the bilingual four 
year old who had had a black nanny in the US, and was convinced that
white people spoke Spanish and black people spoke English! These are all
very young children, of course, and the grosser misconceptions very
quickly get ironed out, but the fact is that people innately try to
categorise people, and unless you can show them that their categories
don't allow for all the cases, they will continue to believe in them.
And how do you show them otherwise? With role models!

So I will continue to tell students of the great women astronomers
during courses I teach. I will continue to tell girls I tutor in
mathematics, "I will not accept the excuse 'I can't do mathematics, I'm
a girl'", because there are all these women who have been world class
mathematicians. I will continue to tell students that yes, it is
possible to be a scientist and have a normal life and be a woman, all
at the same time. And I hope that I myself can be a role model for a
few young women, and that just perhaps I will see the day when we don't
need role models.

[I set the followup to soc.women because I don't read the other groups]

-- 
Helen Johnston       | Astronomye is an harde thynge and yvel forto knowe.
johnston@fys.ruu.nl  |      -- William Langland, Piers the Plowman
Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.astro,sci.bio,sci.chem,sci.math,sci.physics