The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-WeinsteinVerified account

About 10 minutes before my colloquium she asked me how to pronounce my name and basic questions about my CV like where I had gone to college and it was clear that semester that the colloquium schedule was just filler to “look less racist”

That visit to Yale was the single most racist department visit experience I’ve ever had

During the visit, the chair met with me, I thought to talk about science, but actually to ask how they were doing on diversity. I said they didn’t have any URM faculty and THEY SAID THERE WAS NO MONEY AT YALE for it. The students told me they’d just spent $$$ hiring a white guy.

Reason this is now relevanthttps://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1398769309455949829 …

So btw the visit was worse than what’s in the blog entry, like a postdoc speciously told the whole department that I didn’t want to meet with white people ... because I asked for separate time with minority students. Which led to ... a segregated lunch room. Really.https://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1399013441092915202 …

Also the “safe space for white men” comment — in fairness — was actually made by a WOC faculty member at Michigan about my visit there. Another memorable experience.

So for people who were following along last night, you may have caught that the postdoc involved — whose name I had never mentioned to anyone — decided to publicly gaslight me about what happened that day — on Twitter last night. She has since apologized, but I have thoughts...https://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1399046696869535751 …

She claimed that she had never given me the impression that I was being asked by the dept to give a diversity talk. She clearly remembered things in a way that favored her. And she might have gotten away with it if I didn’t have receipts. That’s a lesson in how white memory works

Importantly, she claimed she never actually told the department I only wanted to meet with students of color. Instead she told the department — without me knowing and definitely not at my behest — that “we” would be prioritizing meetings with minorities. She felt innocent bc

In her view, she was doing me and the minority students a favor. Look folks: we don’t need your fuckin noblesse oblige. And what she effectively did was tell an almost entirely white faculty at a prestigious department that a Black postdoc wasn’t keen to talk to white people.

How do I know that this is the message that came through? Because I had a meeting with a Black student. Then lunch started. And no one would sit with us. No one would sit within 5 feet of us. Two Black people sitting alone in a communal lunch that was a sea of white. Then

some white women students came over & said “we know we aren’t supposed to speak to you but is it okay if we talk w/you for a few minutes because we really wanted to meet you.” I was *stunned.* Never in my life have I ever said I wouldn’t talk to scientists bc of their identity.

It was completely humiliating and scary, bc I had no idea why they had this impression. I was a Black woman postdoc who needed a faculty position, and this was reputational damage. They then told me about the email. And they offered to send out a correction for me, thankfully.

At dinner that night, the grad students and some other postdocs explained to me and @MrProfChanda (in front of a reporter who may have notes on this) that the email had technically said “prioritize” but the clear effect was that they felt I didn’t want to talk to white people.

The postdoc involved never once apologized or explained herself, until she decided last night to “make a public statement” because she did nothing that required an apology. I told her last night to email me but she persisted in a public gaslighting. Then I produced receipts.

She apologized after there were receipts and a whole back and forth about what happened and then deleted her tweets so the only record of this incident that exists is in the screenshots some folks took, my tweets, and our memories.

This is the way whiteness works in astronomy. In academia. A self-described “Intersectional feminist” can gaslight a Black woman in public after 5 years of silence on an incident that was deeply upsetting and feel like a couple of apology tweets and an eventual email is

I actually don’t want people harassing her and giving her a hard time. But: I have been through so much SHIT like this with white and NBPOC (woman) astronomers who say they are doing “the work” but are literally the problem. And this is why I attack the diversity complex.

The diversity complex means these white (women) and NBPOC run diversity programs while doing fuckshit to Black scholars and they get rewarded and build careers off of it and I’m just supposed to move on. I was doing science last night when this shit started. Then I wasn’t.

I want everyone to ask themselves what it means for white people to inflict this stuff on people of color and then just go on with their lives and careers while we have to nurse the wounds and keep up with and literally compete with those same white people for jobs/opportunities.

And if people magically think that this stuff doesn’t impact me because I’m well known or have a book out or whatever, ask yourself if you’d assume I had no feelings if I was white? It’s misogynoir to expect an emotionless response.