An actionable anti-racism plan for geoscience organizations

PERSPECTIVE https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23936-w OPEN 1234567890():,; An actionable anti-racism plan for geoscience organizations Hendratta N. Ali 1 ✉, Sarah L. Sheffield 2, Jennifer E. Bauer3, Rocío P. Caballero-Gill4, Nicole M. Gasparini5, Julie Libarkin6, Kalynda K. Gonzales 7, Jane Willenbring8, Erika Amir-Lin9, Julia Cisneros Dipa Desai11, Maitri Erwin12, Elisabeth Gallant13, Kiara Jeannelle Gomez14, Benjamin A. Keisling15, Robert Mahon16, Erika Marín-Spiotta17, Leiaka Welcome18 & Blair Schneider19 10, Geoscience organizations shape the discipline. They influence attitudes and expectations, set standards, and provide benefits to their members. Today, racism and discrimination limit the participation of, and promote hostility towards, members of minoritized groups within these critical geoscience spaces. This is particularly harmful for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in geoscience and is further exacerbated along other axes of marginalization, including disability status and gender identity. Here we present a twenty-point anti-racism plan that organizations can implement to build an inclusive, equitable and accessible geoscience community. Enacting it will combat racism, discrimination, and the harassment of all members. R Background acism thrives in geoscience1. Geoscience organizations function alongside the same racist ideologies and practices shaping society. In North America, the historical legacy of racism —for example: the enslavement of Black people, forced migration of Indigenous peoples, the internment of Japanese Americans, and detainment of Latinx, immigrant children—is intertwined with our systems of power. The imbalance of power dictates who has access to resources like inherited wealth, clean water, adequate nutrition, healthcare, effective education, and who is policed, imprisoned, and killed. Many people around the world become confronted with these realities of racial power dynamics only when they see graphic recordings of people of color (POC) who are murdered, discriminated against, or harassed in viral internet videos. 1 Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS, USA. 2 University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA. 3 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. 4 GeoLatinas, George Mason University, Brown University, Fairfax, VA, USA. 5 Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA. 6 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA. 7 National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. 8 Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. 9 American Water Works Association, Denver, CO, USA. 10 University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA. 11 University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA. 12 Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA. 13 University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. 14 University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. 15 Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. 16 The University of New Orleans, Orleans, LA, USA. 17 University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA. 18 Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA. 19 University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA. ✉email: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | (2021)12:3794 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23936-w | www.nature.com/naturecommunications 1 PERSPECTIVE NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23936-w Summer 2020 became a unique key moment of reckoning when several viral videos of the harassment and murder of Black individuals in the US ignited global protests decrying racism. Racism has led to the geosciences becoming one of the least diverse among all science and engineering fields2. Thus, as is often the case following a national tragedy, numerous organizations— professional societies, colleges, departments, industries, labs, government agencies, and non-profits that house the geoscience community—released statements calling out societal racism and discrimination that unavoidably permeates into geoscience culture. However, these statements often fail to account for the sustained historical efforts, made by Black and other minoritized geoscientists to diversify the discipline and whose efforts in many instances have been forgotten, ignored, and erased3. We assert that these statements of support, though important first steps, are generally ineffective at assisting minoritized people (e.g., Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC), disabled people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and genderqueer (LGBTQ+) people, foreign nationals, and/or women) in fighting racism or discrimination. Certainly, the significant lack of diversity in the geosciences1,4–6 cannot be addressed without effective actions that first address racism and its effects on access, inclusion, equity, and justice. While the geosciences have unique structures that may exacerbate racism and the exclusion of minoritized communities (e.g., in field-based education, and access to remote location fieldwork), the geosciences are not unique, as a discipline, in the inherent racism within its systems. Thus we believe this plan is also applicable to other disciplines. Similarly, in addition to focusing on anti-Black racism, geoscience organizations must also consider and engage with how other historically underrepresented, marginalized, and other POC groups have been excluded from the discipline, and then take a more proactive approach to inclusion. While many people understand and acknowledge that racism exists within society, it can be more difficult to see the racism that is manifesting within spaces held dear. This is certainly true for scientific organizations, considered bastions of logic, separate from humanistic concerns. Yet, geoscientists cannot continue to be complicit in racism, discrimination, and inaction1. As Dr. Angela Y. Davis has said, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist”7—and anti-racism requires action. Essential constructs for effective anti-racism For an organization to be anti-racist and equitable, it needs to ask and answer some difficult yet important questions: Who is in the organization? Who benefits from the status quo? Who holds power, and who feels safe? Who is left out, who is powerless, and who feels unsafe? And ultimately, Why? Why do these differences exist? In considering these questions, this group—consisting of BIPOC, white, LGBTQ+, straight, disabled, abled, immigrant, non-immigrant, women, men, and genderqueer individuals— identifies 20 concrete actions that organizations must take to become anti-racist. These 20 actions are organized around six constructs—identity, values, access, inclusion, equity, and justice— vital for anti-racist thinking (Figs. 1 and 2). Identity. In considering anti-racism in the geosciences, we cannot ignore the intersecting identities of marginalized people8. We must acknowledge the added burden of inequalities and oppression experienced by people and communities with these intersectional identities, such as Black women who are subjected to both sexism and racism, or when class status, disabilit (...truncated)