SPECIAL FEATURES The Little Red Hen and Culture Change
[Editor’s Note: David Asai spoke at Botany 2021 for the Belonging in Botany Lecture, Perspectives on DEI.]
The children’s story The Little Red Hen (Dodge, 1874) is a metaphor for inertia. In her efforts to be a change agent, the Little Red Hen collided with the barriers protecting the barnyard’s center of power. In this essay, I present some thoughts on race, culture change, and responsibility, and conclude with my version of the tale of the Little Red Hen.
“RACE MATTERS” (WEST, 1993)
Race matters to all of us, regardless of our skin color or whether we are a victim of overt discrimination. Race and racism are deeply rooted in our national identity. Racism is not a problem only for persons of color; it is an American problem.
By David J. Asai Senior Director, Science Education Howard Hughes Medical Institute
From our nation’s beginning, the racialization of people has been used by the white center of power to define who belongs and who does not—who may immigrate, become a citizen, vote, own property, and whom a person may marry (Lepore, 2018). The term “white center of power” is not about the skin color of those who are in power or those who are on the outside looking in. Instead, the “white center of power” refers to a social structure created by and for persons—almost all male—who descended from white northern European immigrants. Their perspectives became the norms of our society, our economy, our educational system, and our science.
SCIENCE IS COMPLICIT The racialization of people and how it has become weaponized is inextricably rooted in science. The leading scientists of their time wrongly claimed that there are genetically distinct human races that evolved independently (see, e.g., Gould, 1981). This idea, in turn, allowed for the racialized ranking of humans in terms of intelligence, industriousness, ingenuity, sexuality, and criminal behavior. The imprimatur of science was the authoritative cover for colonization, enslavement, and sterilization. The cells of Henrietta Lacks, the men of Tuskegee, the
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