On this day remembering the life and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , I performed my annual ritual of listening to his “I Have a Dream” speech. This year, I tried for focus my attention on one of the early themes of the speech: the bad check. King wrote and said,
“In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Transcript from [1])
Dr. King goes on to talk about how “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.” In 1963, when he gave this speech, his words were cast in the movement of the time – civil rights, focused on black men and women – but they live on from generation to generation. These words are are true in every struggle, in every generation, where any minority works to gain equality in a society.
I focused on this part of the speech because there has been a terrifying thing going on in Texas of late. It started a year ago with changes to the Texas public education science standards. Texas, the second-largest textbook market in the U.S., sets standards for the nation because if companies want to sell school texts they have to sell them to Texas. It is too costly to print editions that satisfy Texas standards. Thus, the Texas State Board of Education makes decisions that affect the entire nation.
The board has been steered by many of its members toward views on science that are neither scientific nor standard [2]. Now, they are focusing on standards for social studies and history. Among the philosophies being brought to bear by members of the board are views that rights for minorities come not from the struggle of the minorities but from the graciousness of majorities [3]. This downplays the role of great men and women (such as Dr. King) and instead claims to put the victory in the hands of politicians or the voting majority. Quite apart from the myopic view of history this presents – after all, it is the struggle of the minority that leads to public outcry and pressure on populist politicians – this represents a re-writing of history, taking the success of the civil rights or labor movements out of the hands of the activist and the organizer and into the hands of the establishment, who at the time wielded the technical power.
Science is an interesting place to study the role of minorities. In almost all areas of science, women are still a minority (societal minorities, such as certain racial or ethic groups, are even moreso in science). Thinking for a moment about the struggle of women to gain equality in all parts of society, science finds itself no discipline apart from others (such as the corporate world). As a member of the scientific community who watches women and others rise up and struggle in the field, I have a duty and a responsibility to make sure that this field provides the opportunity and flexibility that each individual needs to achieve the success they are capable of pursuing. This duty is equally placed upon every member of the community.
However, the laying of a duty upon the heads of all members of a community is not sufficient for the achievement of success for each community member. Take a minority as an example. Recognition that they have unique needs is not guaranteed unless members of that minority rise up and speak out for what is needed to achieve equality. The majority cannot be expected, nor historically has it managed, to identify what the minority needs to achieve the equality needed to make possible their success. Be it ways to bring people out of poverty (e.g. scholarships), or flexibility in the expected hours or periods of work (e.g. flex-time), or ways to create more of the leadership positions hoarded by those at the top and protected from those below (e.g. terms limits on service), it is incumbent upon the minority to speak and the majority to join them in acting.
Equality in science, as in other areas of society, will not be achieved by the benevolence of the majority – certainly, it cannot be achieved by any tyranny of the majority. While majorities control resources and access, minorities have the ability to work actively to advocate for their needs in society. For a majority to part with the status quo requires many things to align, but none of them align without the struggle of the minority for equality.
The promise of equal rights lies not in the hands of the majority. It lies in the principles that define and govern society. For the U.S., those principles are encoded in the U.S. Constitution ultimately, and spiritually in the Declaration of Independence. Those principles are not the property of the majority – they are the property of all men and women. While the majority may control the means to achieve equality, they do not themselves control the truth that equality must be. In science, as in U.S. society, there are principles of equality whereby all people bring their talent and experience to the scientific method in the search for an ultimate and underlying truth. Science is a culture, but not one that is vastly apart from those controlled by self-evident truths. In serving science, we as scientists must also serve the men and women who support, promote, and perhaps become scientists.
If it is not majorities that give rights to minorities, but rather fundamental principles that apply in equal measure to both majorities and minorities, then it is the struggle of the minority to get their access that eventually ends the distinction between the two groups. The only role a majority seems to serve, then, is to separate a minority from their rights. It is a bad check, indeed, (and at the very least, self-serving to the majority) to think that the opposite is true.
[1] http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html
[2] http://steve.cooleysekula.net/blog/2009/04/03/as-goes-texas-so-goes-textbooks/
[3] http://tfninsider.org/2010/01/15/live-blogging-the-social-studies-debate-iii/#more-5302
