For this week’s blog post, I am really interested in writing about the second reading for this week. The Academic article is titled “#CommunicationSoWhite” written by Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain. In their paper, the authors talk about racial inequality and White supremacy within scholarly work. For this journal, the authors analyze the humanities field for their research. This article is so powerful because the authors point out this racial inequality by measuring the number of citation rates, publication rates, and editorial rates of non-white scholars and women (Chakravartty 2018 ). They then compared the data with White males. The inequality in this representation was shocking. According to the authors, 746 of 5,262 journals were published by non- White authors between the years of 1990-2016, which is a publication rate of about fourteen percent(Chakravartty 2018). The citation rates in the same research turned out to be even lower. I found this article to be powerful due to the use of quantitative-based data. Its study showed indisputable proof that extreme inequality is rooted in many types of scholarly works.
The online article I wanted to connect to this week’s reading is called “America’s always had black inventors – even when the patent system explicitly excluded them.” When sharing the finding of the academic article with some of my close friends, we eventually talked about how inequality is present in many other fields. While it is not exactly the same idea as the original article, we ultimately got on the topic of how black inventors had been excluded in history. In the newspaper article, the author talks about how important patents, created by slaves and other black inventors of the time, were either stolen or disregarded (Johnson 2017). While I know this is not the exact same concept as the original article for the class, I think the premise is similar. Furthermore, this example also showcases deep inequality within the sciences and other aspects of scholarly work.
Chakravartty, Paula, et al. “CommunicationSoWhite.” Journal of Communication, vol. 68, no. 2, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 254–66, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003.
Johnson , Shontavia. “America's Always Had Black Inventors – Even When the Patent System Explicitly Excluded Them.” The Conversation, 13 Jan. 2021, https://theconversation.com/americas-always-had-black-inventors-even-when-the-patent-system-explicitly-excluded-them-72619.
Jacob, the conversations you had with your peers related to inequality and lack of representation in the industrial revolution is so eloquently tied to the #CommunicationSoWhite article. It's also very heartwarming to hear about the informative conversations you and your friends are able to engage in. I think it is easy to forget about or even be knowledgeable about the plethora of economic and industrial contributions BIPOC have made on our society. Continuing to converse and incorporate these communities into our daily casual conversations and educational spaces is incredibly important to the evolution of our society and the inclusion of marginalized groups.
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