where did she say that or are you making stuff up again?
OK, I've just listened again to what she says and have typed my transcript below. She has quite a strong accent and I can't guarantee every word is right, but I think it's substantially correct. Please tell me what you think I've got wrong.
So I'm going to respond to your submissions, because I wanted to directly respond, because I 've actually been thinking about this coming here because I thought it was gonna be one of the coming [?] questions: how do we even start to decolonise science? "Science is true because it is science" - you know, what can you do - and my response to that was, if I were personally committed to enforcing decolonisation of science - science as a whole is a product of Western modernity...
[OK, that last bit is just flat-out, demonstrably untrue. Ironically, it's exactly what a
racist white historian would say. But even if
were true, it would still have no bearing whatsoever on the universality of Newton's laws, for example.]
...and the whole thing should be scratched off.
[I think I said "abandon science" - or abolish it, destroy it, whatever. I think that's a fair synonym for "the whole [of science] should be scratched off".]
So if you want a practical solution to how to decolonise science, we have to restart science from, I dunno, an African perspective, from out perspective, of how we've experienced science. For instance, I have a question for all the science people here, there is a place in [----] and they believe that, through the magic, through the black magic - we call it black magic - they call it witchcraft, others.. that you are able to send a lightning, to strike someone.
[This part is, I admit, a bit ambiguous, because at this stage she isn't saying that
she believes this is possible. But why bring it up if she doesn't believe it herself? Then finally:]
So, can you explain that scientifically? Because it is something that happens.
[So she *is* saying she believes that it's a real thing.]
Now which bit of that, exactly, have I misrepresented?
Africans have been systematically excluded from the science establishment for ever.
And you think a good way to go about including Africans in the science establishment is to indulge those who say science should be "scratched off" and that magicians can kill people with lightning? Is that going to help African people get educated in science and have careers in research and industry?
So yes i'm saying Science is inherently racist, no i'm not saying apples are racist.
Well, you're wrong. Certainly,
scientists can be racist, and
scientific institutions can be racist, but neither of those is synonymous with 'science'. An actually progressive, anti-racist approach here would be to encourage black Africans, and black people generally, to get a scientific education if they're so inclined, and pursue a career in science. Which would surely be to the general economic benefit of the continent, wouldn't it?
It's true that science as it currently stands is not primarily a product of African culture. But then neither is postmodern philosophy, which is where this whole anti-science movement comes from. I just don't understand how anyone who claims to be anti-racist can fail to be dismayed by such patently regressive attitudes that can only hold back the cultural and economic advancement of black people. How do you think black faculty staff in the UCT STEM departments feel about this?