I really thought people were being dramatic when they said criticising the Ivory Tower is an involved, monumental task.

Boy was I wrong. The systemic racism and white fragility is PRESSED from all sides. Disappointing really.

It’s really sad to watch.

When your voice and your presence actually makes people all the way at the top uncomfortable that they feel the need to slander you with unsubstantiated, vague claims of “troublemaker”, “divisive” and “confrontational”

Black grad students of the experience are articulating what the issues are and what a way forward should be to address and change it. They are using their time and energy and putting their mental health on the line.

But at your big age, you think you know best.

And this is why I don’t understand when people say “let’s leave the politics out of science”. It’s such a dishonest means of silencing people. It reeks of privilege.

When y’all reply back and forth over publications and slander each other, where is this energy?

When y’all restrict access to some researchers to sites, where is this energy?

When y’all attack your nemesis’s grad students in conferences to “one up” where is this energy?

What they fail to understand is that the discipline of science is conducted by people who are product of a society. Their experience, their perceptions, their interactions crafts the scientific space they occupy.

When previously (actually, still currently) marginalised people enter this space; people of colour, women, LGBTQIA, Africans, they’re entering a space that is not designed for them and devoid of their experience.

Thus, we simply cannot just “forget the politics”. OUR VERY EXISTENCE in these spaces is political. We are physical manifestation of defiance, tenacity, endurance.

And it is cruel to subject us to violent forms of silencing.

Know and understand your privilege