Microsoft Word - Lab-Pollock,Roy.docx


 
Pollock, A. and Roy, D. (2017). How do Black Lives Matter in Teaching, Lab Practices, 
and Research?. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 3(1), 1-38 
http://www.catalystjournal.org | ISSN: 2380-3312 
© Anne Pollock and Deboleena Roy, 2017| Licensed to the Catalyst Project under a 
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license 
 

 

 
 
LAB MEETING   
How do Black Lives Matter in Teaching, Lab Practices, and 
Research? 
 
  
Anne Pollock 
Georgia Tech 
apollock@gatech.edu 
 
Deboleena Roy 
Emory University 
droy2@emory.edu 
 
In this Lab Meeting, we have invited lab scientists, social scientists, and 
humanists from the Working Group on Race and Racism in Contemporary 
Biomedicine, of which we are both members, to consider the following 
question: “How do Black Lives Matter in teaching, lab practices, and 
research? 
 
- Convened by Anne Pollock and Deboleena Roy for the Working Group 
on Race and Racism in Contemporary Biomedicine <racebiomed.org 

 

Introduction 
 
The Working Group on Race and Racism in Contemporary Biomedicine 
(racebiomed.org) draws together faculty, researchers, and graduate and 
undergraduate students from Atlanta-area institutions, including Georgia 



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Institute of Technology (hereafter Georgia Tech), Emory University, 
Spelman College, Georgia State University, and Agnes Scott College.  
The Working Group was founded in 2015 with seed funding from the 
Georgia Tech Provost to spark interdisciplinary and cross‐institution 
collaborative research on race and racism in contemporary biomedical 
research, with the goal of building intellectual common ground among 
researchers coming from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Our Working 
Group has been grappling with the ways in which science is implicated in 
the racism of the society as a whole, but we are not anti-science: we 
aspire to make the work of science more inclusive of people from 
historically excluded groups, and to mobilize both our lab-based scientific 
work and our feminist STS toward intersectional antiracist ends. 

The following Lab Meeting highlights our working group’s 
multidisciplinary approach to demonstrate the value to differing 
sociological, epistemological, methodological, and institutional locations 
across academe. Together, these entries are aligned with a tradition of 
feminist work that questions who it is that gets to count as a knower in 
science, and what constitutes a proper object of inquiry in the sciences.  
The opening contributions by natural scientists, for instance, reiterates 
the long enduring separation of lab work from life experience—including 
their own lives and their community commitments. The Black Lives 
Matter movement (hereafter BLM) reminds us, as Sandra Harding has 
also suggested, that “starting from people’s lives” is an important site for 
science. 

The first of these entries is by Manu Platt, a professor of 
biomedical engineering who explores ways in which his own Black life 
matters in his lab, classroom, and beyond.  This is followed by a short but 
sharp manifesto written by biochemistry undergraduates at Spelman that 
also affirm the mattering of Black scientists, especially women. This is 
followed by an entry by two biochemistry professors at Spelman, 
Kimberly Jackson and Leyte Winfield, that can be read as a response to 
the undergraduates’ call.  

In the next entry, Lewis Wheaton, a professor of biological 



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sciences at Georgia Tech, seeks to integrate his understanding of the 
unaddressed basic needs of Black people living with disabilities, whom 
he passes on his daily commute, with the high-tech research he conducts 
in his lab.  Finally, C. Holly Lewis, a M.D./Ph.D. student, describes an 
effort to bring together research and community engagement around 
sickle cell disease.  The epistemological approaches to scientific inquiry 
relayed in these entries may be considered conventional; however, the 
experiences behind their motivation and their contextualization show how 
intersectional feminist commitments can shape science. In both entries, 
the authors suggest that social inequality leads to scientific inequality. 

The very grounds of knowledge-making practices in the sciences 
are questioned in the next three pieces.  Emily Pingel, a Ph.D. student in 
sociology, decries the ways that Black experiences are written out of 
what counts as “evidence.” Aziza Belcher Platt, a psychology practitioner 
and Ph.D. student, and Joni-Leigh Webster, a Ph.D. student in sociology, 
both argue – albeit in different ways – for the inextricably psycho/somatic 
nature of Black women’s health, resisting the mind/body dualism that 
undergirds conventional medical frames.  Each article addresses the 
question of how “race” get operationalized as a technoscientific object.  
Together, these pieces highlight the importance of the feminist concern 
regarding which bodies of knowledge and what forms of evidence are 
counted as valid, and which ones ultimately are seen as contributions to 
scientific inquiry. 

The remainder of the entries below are from academics who 
explore how the Black Lives Matter movement frames their own specific 
research, especially as centered by the experiences of Black women. 
Jennifer Singh, a professor of sociology, highlights the importance of 
developing situational analyses and reflective ethnographic practices 
through her work on autism inequalities. Renee Shelby, a Ph.D. student in 
sociology, shares her work on rape kits to demonstrate what an anti-
racist framework can do to better understand institutionalized gender 
violence. Finally, Kristen Abatsis McHenry, a professor of comparative 
women’s studies, foregrounds the sexist and racist structures that drive 



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political economies of breast cancer research. McHenry also points to the 
interventions that become possible when we think about bodies and 
technologies through queer and anti-racist art and activism. Using 
intersectional frameworks, all three of these case studies demonstrate 
that the goals of our research can be reformulated through feminist 
analyses. 

The voices presented in this Lab Meeting are heterogeneous by 
design. We find the cacophony that emerges to be a welcome reprieve 
from the narrow hermetic character of so many academic fora, and the 
dissonance generated thereby instantiates the plural registers at which 
Black Lives can Matter in biomedical research.  We have also designed 
this forum to allow for more authentic participation by natural scientists 
as well as by social scientists and humanists because the contributors 
can speak in their own terms rather than those of feminist STS 
scholarship, narrowly conceived. In this way, this Lab Meeting seeks to 
expand what counts as feminist technoscience at the same time that it 
expands what counts as science. 
 
Black Professors are also Black Bodies that Matter 
Manu O. Platt, Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech and Emory 
University 
 
As an African-American biomedical engineering professor with a 
bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College, the only all-male historically 
Black college in the United States, my educational experiences, lifetime 
experiences, and professional experiences have all shaped the way Black 
Lives Matter (BLM) in my research and teaching.  With only 4% of the 
professoriate being Black at traditionally white colleges and universities 
(Washington Post), an even lower percentage for those of us in science, 
technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, and only 5% of life 
science Ph.D.s and only 3.9% of engineering Ph.D.s going to African 
Americans according to 2015 National Science Foundation (NSF) report, 
my Black life matters as an important statistic, and this motivates me to 



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be successful in my academic position. 

When the BLM movement began, emerging out of the protests 
over Mike Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Mississippi, I was at a workshop 
in Colorado Springs for the Directors of Science and Technology Centers 
funded by the National Science Foundation.  My mind was not on the 
meeting at all because I kept stepping out to be updated and did not 
want to miss President Obama’s speech on the situation, while others 
paid it no mind. I am constantly reminded by the destruction of Black 
bodies at the hands of police that, despite my degrees and 
accomplishments, my Black Life Matters to police just as little as other 
Black Lives do. 

Yet I persist and forge onward. As a scientist, I hope to continue to 
work on questions I find important and want to solve, which are 
predominantly centered on minority health disparities and Black Lives: 
sickle cell anemia, HIV-mediated cardiovascular disease, and 
personalized medicine approaches for treating breast cancer.  Sickle cell 
anemia predominantly impacts African Americans in the U.S. but impacts 
millions globally (Piel, Hay et al. 2013); HIV has the highest numbers of 
new incidents in the Black community (CDC Fact Sheet); and although 
white women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, Black 
women are more likely to die from it (O'Keefe, Meltzer et al. 2015). 

The other reason I need to be successful is due to the scarce few 
numbers who look like me in this field.  I want to be able to provide visual 
representation to the next generation of engineers, and to recruit those 
who may not have seen this career as an opportunity for them.  Many of 
us who graduate from an HBCU with confidence, motivation, and a 
strong yearning to perform socially responsible science aimed at helping 
underserved communities and overlooked diseases, find ourselves 
arriving at predominantly white graduate schools and having to adapt to 
an entirely new set of mentors who do not have a reference of our lived 
experience in the United States.  This occurred even before the age of 
Trump.  We now have the added challenge of working in college 
campuses that are exploding with racial incidents. My Black Life matters 



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to Black Ph.D. students who I mentor through to completion, both as my 
direct research advisees or indirectly through other mentoring 
interactions, with the goal of increasing or at least maintaining that 3.9%.  

It has also been interesting, as I have moved through the tenure 
process successfully, to meet the new hurdle of the federal funding of 
science wrought by sequestration that cut the National Institutes of 
Health budget by 5%, $1.55 billion of its 2013 budget (NIH).  When I was 
in graduate school, funding rates were for the top 25-30% of grant 
proposals.  In today’s climate, most investigator-initiated grants are only 
at a 9-12% funding line. This severely limits the type of research that will 
be funded, and also limits the type of investigator that will be funded 
(Huffington Post). Sequestration as a federal budgetary policy was 
passed only two years after the seminal 2011 study in Science that 
determined, after a review of over 80,000 grant applications, that Black 
professors were 50% less likely to receive NIH investigator-initiated 
research funding compared with whites. This was even after removing 
other factors such as education, publication record, and type of 
institution (Science). So being Black Matters in decisions regarding 
whether or not I will be funded by the NIH, the largest funder of 
biomedical research in the United States. In addition to that, there is my 
research focus.  Sickle cell disease, the most common genetic disorder 
affects over 100,000 Americans, but millions more globally, receives 
substantially lower funding as a federal priority compared to cystic 
fibrosis (30,000 in U.S., 70,000 worldwide) and hemophilia (20,000 US, 
400,000 worldwide).  Perhaps this is because it predominantly affects 
Black Lives in the U.S. with 1 in 400 Black Americans having sickle cell 
anemia, and 1 in 12 being carriers (CDC Sickle Cell). It is interesting that a 
disease with 3-5 times larger population than those other genetic 
diseases, that was first identified in a hospital in 1910 (Herrick 2001), 
whose molecular nature was identified in 1949 (Pauling, Itano et al. 1949), 
and whose genetic mutation was determined in 1956 (Ingram 1956), still 
only has one drug on the market, not to mention an imperfect range of 
other medical interventions. Black Lives should matter.  They should 



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matter as research priorities to find cures, novel therapies, and physicians 
to care for these patients, and to support researchers who are 
impassioned about diseases that affect Black Lives, families, and 
communities.  
 
The Importance of Black Women Role Models in the STEM Fields 
Morgann Adams, Theophilia Dusabamoro, Chelesa Fearce, Imani Fennell, 
Ebony Gaillard, Courtney Harrison, Daphney Sihwa, and Phoenix Williams, 
undergraduate students in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at 
Spelman College, enrolled in the courses Biochemistry Laboratory (313L) 
and/or Race and Genetics (405). 
 
As students at a Black women’s college, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) 
movement impacts our day-to-day lives. Each generation can only thrive 
and excel because of the work and activism preceded by their ancestors.  
We are empowered to see distinguished Black faculty and witness the 
success of Black scientists, as this is a testament to the impact that BLM 
have on students.  By having African Americans in positions where they 
can teach and mentor, we can affirm ourselves as relevant in a world that 
often tells us that we are not. This is particularly the case of mentorship 
by Black women scientists and faculty. 

Representation matters and is vital to our success. Black women 
faculty as mentors in the STEM fields are often anomalies. These women 
are inspirations to students and others by unapologetically displaying 
their intelligence and qualifications despite the inherent obstacles due to 
their intersectionalities. This is arguably the most impactful tool for how 
Black women can pave the way for younger generations. 

As aspiring young Black scientists, many of us are concerned with 
finding new and more advanced treatments for diseases that 
disproportionately affect people of color. We recognize the disparities 
that face our communities and are committed to BLM as we continue to 
fight and speak out against discrimination and unethical practices in the 
scientific realm.  It is with pride and humility that we recognize the 



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presence of Black women scientists as leaders in the classroom and 
research laboratory.  Their presence stands as an indicator that there is 
no superior “body” regarding intellectual capabilities, therefore nullifying 
stereotypes that continues to plague our society today.  
 
Hope for a New Paradigm: Perspectives on Black Lives Matter from 
Two Black Women Scientists 
Kimberly Jackson, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Vice-Chair, Department 
of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Spelman College; and Leyte Winfield, Ph.D., 
Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, 
and Interim Provost of Research Resources, Spelman College  
 
As Black women scientists, our lived realities are often characterized by 
words such as ostracized, dehumanized, and marginalized. The ascent to 
the ivory tower escapes us even as we are encouraged to “lean in.” 
However, by negotiating and navigating a system which perpetuates our 
supposed inadequacies, we reclaim our voices by giving our students the 
tools needed to unpack a new level of consciousness, as embodied by 
the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.  As Black women faculty in the 
natural sciences, we understand the need to fully embrace the 
responsibility of training women of color to position themselves for 
success in an environment where they are typically invisible. As such, we 
are intentional about what we teach and how we train, often framing our 
coursework (whenever possible) around socially responsible and 
culturally responsive themes, while also identifying those practices that 
support the success of black women as empowered (Jackson and 
Winfield, 2014).   

BLM directly aligns with our mission to ensure that women of 
African descent are able to advance the scientific enterprise.  As faculty 
at Spelman, a Black women’s college, we train these women to impact 
the world beyond the institution’s gates.  Black women comprise less 
than 2% of all women represented in the science workforce, and the 
numbers of these women at all sectors of the STEM pipeline are 



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decreasing (Lehming et al, 2013).  However, still today, black women 
scientists are presumed incompetent and faced with systemic racism and 
gender inequities that seek to minimize their contributions.  This 
disadvantages not only the scientist, but ultimately it also impacts the 
science. Therefore, the roles we play, as teachers, mentors, and scholars, 
is critical to ensuring that the world recognizes what these women, and 
those like them, can bring to the table.   

BLM coincides with the diversity of thought that is required for 
innovation and scientific progress.  In our work to secure gender equity in 
STEM, we routinely engage in conversations with academic institutions 
and industry partners on this subject.  It has been shown that 
relationships matter when addressing difficult and sensitive dialogue.  
Establishing these relationships allows us to preempt the motives and 
concerns by our partners, increase understanding around opposing 
positions, and get to the heart of the matter, which is erasing the 
invisibility of the Black woman.  Most importantly, this level of direct 
communication ultimately enables our work as advocates.  Yes, we are 
role models and advocates for the students of Spelman College, ensuring 
that the world acknowledges their significance and realigns their 
understanding of the role of black women in research careers. 
 
Rehabilitating Rehabilitation:  How a Renewed Focus on 
Environment and Therapy May Influence Our Perspective Brain 
Function 
Lewis A. Wheaton, Ph.D., School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech 
 
Nearly every day on my commute from home to Georgia Tech, I see 
people living with disabilities.  This is because I happen to pass a small 
and visible community that has self-organized because they all have 
varying degrees of need.  And it is fascinating to see, because they live in 
a city that is otherwise thriving in biotechnology, development, and 
science.   

When I was a graduate student and postdoc in the greater 



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Washington, DC-Baltimore area, I witnessed the same thing.  There are 
so many people that need assistive support who live in a thriving 
metropolis with some of the most cutting-edge research and 
development in rehabilitative care in the country.  Why are these people 
not receiving support?   Upon a closer look, in both communities, I see a 
common frustration.  While they may get some critical care, the care is 
either insufficient or not easily integrated into the communities in which 
they live.  Even more depressing is the observation that these people are 
largely black.  This opens up a significant concern, but also a possibility. 
The concern is direct:  how is it that a group of people can be so 
resource-deficient in such a resource-rich community? The possibility is 
also encouraging for the future. Is it possible that a new understanding of 
how race, culture, and community intersect can allow us to innovate and 
improve outcomes?  

In 2016, the National Institutes of Health put forward a study 
entitled “Research Plan on Rehabilitation: Moving the Field Forward” 
(Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human 
Development and the NIH Medical Rehabilitation Coordinating 
Committee, 2016).  At its core is the concern that motor, sensory, and 
cognitive disability can significantly impact the lives of millions of 
Americans. The study’s sponsor, the National Center for Medical 
Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR), makes strong recommendations for 
implementing a five-year plan that will bring to the forefront issues that 
have been quietly known in the rehabilitation community for several 
years.  One such concern is the differential engagement of proper 
rehabilitation care in the United States.  Environmental stressors imposed 
on certain communities can complicate rehabilitation efforts.  By focusing 
attention on the role that community and family can play in rehabilitation, 
the NCMRR states that “the interplay of individuals and their contexts is a 
key priority…” This wording is pivotal as it goes beyond the typical 
construct of “access to care.” This necessarily calls attention to the role 
that socioeconomic status plays in neural, motor and cognitive processes 
related to medical rehabilitation. 



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Furthermore, this work must be treated with great care in terms of 
its use and interpretation.  It is far too easy to connect concepts of “poor” 
and “black” as the exemplar (and perhaps the rule).  This can cause 
scientists to miss how terms like “middle class,” “black/Hispanic,” or 
“poor white” add nuance our understanding.  This does not mean that 
these (and other) categories of humanity represent biological differences, 
but that these categories represent different realities for these aspects of 
humanity to engage in supportive and rehabilitative neural, behavioral, 
and physiological change. 

Causal lumping can occur in rehabilitation as well.  Stroke, and 
perhaps more precisely stroke in the southeast US, is a common symbol 
for all of neurorehabilitation. Unfortunately, by focusing on “southeastern 
US stroke”, we may miss the ubiquitous nature of socioeconomic 
concerns.  Indeed, intersectional variables of race, socioeconomic class, 
and community have been demonstrated to impact disability outcomes 
ranging spinal cord injury (Botticello,  Chen, Cao, Tulsky, 2011), traumatic 
brain injury (McQuistion, Zens, Jung, Beems, Leverson, Liepert, 
Scarborough, Agarwal, 2016) and amputation (Zhou, Bates, Kurichi, 
Kwong , Xie, Stineman, 2011). This also includes disorders that can cause 
disability, such as diabetes. (Coulon, Velasco-Gonzalez, Scribner, Park, 
Gomez, Vargas, Stender, Zabaleta, Clesi, Chalew et al, 2017). Even 
outcomes for movement disorders using technological advances of brain 
stimulation may have variable results based on socioeconomic status 
(Genc, Abboud, Oravivattanakul, Alsallom, Thompson, Cooper, 
Gostkowski, Machado, Fernandez, 2016). Yet within the field of 
rehabilitation, the influence of these variables is entirely unknown. Thus, 
while access to care tends to be the focus of rehabilitation, it is possible 
that it represents a type of “will o’ the wisp” for deeper socioeconomic 
problems.(Plug, Hoffmann, Artnik, Bopp, Borrell, Costa, Deboosere, 
Esnaola, Kalediene, Leinsalu, et al. , 2012).   The goal of making better 
technologies for rehabilitation – identified as one of the primary goals of 
the NCMRR report – must continue to consider access, support, and care 
for people who receive this technology across intersectional societal 



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constructs. 

This renewed focus must insist that members of the neuroscience 
community consider one compelling question:  to what degree do 
environmental factors influence the nervous system to such an extent that 
identical stimuli (e.g., rehabilitation) can have varying effects across 
various demographics immediately upon presentation?  While we tend to 
eschew the notion that we have inherent neurobiological differences 
across various peoples, it could be that even subtleties of environment 
form neurobiological susceptibilities across and within social strata, all of 
which can have profound and immediate clinical relevance.  This 
understanding should launch us into a new direction to really understand 
the communities that need support and provide a new perspective (at 
least to the neurorehabilitation community) on how society affects health.  
 
Sickle and Flow: Translational Science and Arts 
C. Holly Lewis, MD/Ph.D. student, Department of Immunology and 
Molecular Pathogenesis, Emory University 
 
Sickle cell disease (hereafter SCD) is an inherited disorder of red blood 
cells that is most common in people of color. In the U.S, about one of 
every 360 African-American children is diagnosed with SCD, triggering 
acute pain crises when sickle cells get trapped in blood vessels 
throughout the body (Grosse, 2009). Often, these cells block vessels in 
the brain causing strokes; 50% of pediatric sickle patients have had at 
least one stroke by the time they turn 18 (Shenoy, 2013). Treatment of 
SCD is largely supportive, including antibiotics and frequent transfusions 
of donated red cells (Shaz, 2003). Sickle cell is more than twice as 
prevalent as cystic fibrosis or hemophilia, two genetic diseases common 
in Caucasians, but suffers from drastically fewer federal dollars made 
available for research and clinical care (Arnold, 2016). The only curative 
therapy for sickle cell disease is a matched hematopoietic stem cell 
transplant (HSCT), first developed for SCD in 1984. Today, researchers 
across the globe that use HSCT are achieving cure rates that approach 



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90% (Arnold, 2016), but these numbers depend strongly upon how well 
we match the immune systems of the donor and recipient.  

Cell therapy for SCD is at a critical juncture: the science has 
advanced tremendously, but the bigger, more pressing issue is one of 
public health outreach. Primary care clinicians, patients, and would-be 
blood cell donors are often unaware that the option for a curative 
transplant exists, unaware how much we rely on blood cells donated from 
people of color to effectively treat and cure this disease. Finding a donor 
for sickle transplant is challenging, in part because African Americans are 
underrepresented on the national blood and marrow registries in which 
the average donor is a white, college-educated, heterosexual, married 
male (Shaz, 2008). There are a number of reasons why African Americans 
donate blood and participate in clinical trials at lower rates, including a 
historically well-founded mistrust of the American medical system 
(Washington, 2007). A 2013 publication conducted a focus-group of 
patients in Chicago and Atlanta, seeking to identify community 
knowledge regarding HSCT availability. The study was particularly 
interested in patients’ awareness of Be-the-Match, one of the largest 
global repositories of stem cell donors, sourced from people asked to 
provide a small cheek-swabbing at community drive locations. Yet its 
demographics reflect a paucity of those with African heritage. One 
participant noted that “There’s a booth set up I think at the state fair for 
bone marrow but everything around it says cancer or leukemia. I don’t 
see one sickle, no nothing, but it all says cancer” (Shenoy, 2013).  This 
scenario is reflective of health disparities observed for people of color 
with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), on dialysis therapy, awaiting 
curative kidney transplantation. Dr. Rachel Patzer of the Emory 
Transplant Center has shown that racially-disparate ESRD outcomes are 
compounded not only through more time on organ waitlists, but also in 
the amount of time it takes a primary care clinician to make the initial 
referrals to even consider transplant (Patzer, et al., 2017). 

Building on these lessons from the literature and the clinic, our 
team branched out into the Atlanta community, meeting local musicians, 



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artists and politicians who were interested in co-organizing a Be-the-
Match community event, centering people of color. The project truly 
blossomed when we began working with a pair of “sickle sisters,” ones 
who had donated marrow to cure the other. Both were impassioned 
activists, and each had connections to the music and arts scene in 
Atlanta.  Together we organized Sickle & Flow, a music and arts event at 
two venues in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward. Sickle warriors spoke from the 
stage to destigmatize the disease, artists painted sickle-themed graffiti, 
and musicians performed while clinicians, scientists and community 
activists mingled through intersectional discussions. The cheek-swabbing 
station was staffed by people of color, all Atlanta-area students, from 
Ph.D. engineering candidates to premed undergraduates. We all agreed 
that the persons doing direct-to-community education should be the 
ones who have been historically marginalized, and contemporarily with 
those most at-stake. In all, the event garnered over a thousand dollars in 
charity donations for the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia, and recruited 
thirty-one new stem cell registrants; a huge accomplishment when 
considering the paucity of black donors on such registries.  

Caring for patients with chronic disease requires a multidisciplinary 
team of clinicians; in sickle transplant, this team must extend to the 
African-American community writ large. By empowering these 
communities, we can better translate biological research into meaningful 
social change that improves lives. From a sustainability perspective, it is 
imperative that leadership also reflect the people of color most affected 
by the sickle cell. As organizers of Sickle & Flow, we are working with a 
team of undergraduate students who are part of the Atlanta University 
Center, a consortium of historically black academic institutions in Atlanta. 
It is our hope that these students will build upon our template of 
participatory community outreach and develop a yearly project.  
 
 
 
 



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What is the Evidence that Black Lives Matter? 
Emily Pingel, Ph.D. student, Department of Sociology, Emory University 
 
In light of this Lab Meeting’s prompt to consider how Black Lives Matter 
(BLM) in our research and teaching, I was struck by how a particular 
framing of “evidence” – most often quantitative, ahistorical, and 
statistically generalizable – has been used to dismiss the experiences of 
Black life, both within and outside of the academy. Each of the incidents 
described below illustrates how centuries of documented oppression 
paired with everyday micro-aggressions must be presented anew and 
relived time and again amidst claims of discrimination. Yet somehow 
these claims fail to meet the White threshold for evidence. For example, I 
was recently cobbling together a public health conference abstract 
exploring the issue of medical mistrust among young Black gay men. 
Some interview participants in the study detailed their own mistrust of 
doctors and medications; others conveyed how family members were 
outspokenly skeptical of biomedicine writ large. In my conclusion, I noted 
that “legacies of medical exploitation and ongoing structural racism in the 
United States inform the range of attitudes shared by participants.” To 
my surprise, my colleagues pushed back against this phrasing, warning 
that we were presenting no evidence to bolster such a claim. To be fair, 
my colleagues were likely anticipating the comments of reviewers. 
Nevertheless, this hesitation points to a broader academic discomfort 
with the acknowledgement of extant structural racism.  

As researchers and educators, are we willing to commit to the 
simple act of moving beyond the demand for singularly prescribed 
evidence that Black lives matter and instead turn our full attention 
towards imagining how our work can destabilize and dismantle structures 
of oppression? In the wake of the BLM movement, we have witnessed 
widespread student protests on college campuses across the nation. At 
several predominantly White institutions, Black students have exhibited 
courage by publicly naming new and ongoing forms of discrimination and 
demanding administrative redress. In response to such demands at my 



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own institution, a faculty member opined in the campus newspaper that 
“we currently lack some important evidence needed to assess those 
claims [of racial discrimination]. Before the administration responds to 
protester demands, it should collect and produce that evidence” 
(Lechner, 2015). The author went on to suggest that the university would 
find such evidence lacking. Yet as the work of Patricia Hill Collins 
suggests, the mere appearance of these new strains of resistance is itself 
evidence of the dialectic between subjugation and activism (Hill Collins, 
2000). 

Emory University has challenged faculty, staff, and students to 
investigate the question “What is the nature of evidence?” through its 
recently implemented Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP)—a university-
wide initiative intended to frame discussions among all members of our 
academic community. The QEP supports acts of imagination necessary 
to propel forward an academic agenda that expands the nature of 
evidence. Yet one only needs to look at the principles of BLM, which 
emphasizes a commitment to both collectivism and queerness, to see 
these acts of imagination already in practice (Black Lives Matter, 2017). 
BLM gives scholars and activists alike the tools to emerge from beneath 
positivism’s imposition of the individual as the ultimate unit of analysis by 
lending fluidity to otherwise essentialized discrete categories., the BLM 
principles also serve methodologically as a reminder to ground social 
research in empathy, affirmation, and dialogic engagement. 

What would it look like to design a survey with these principles in 
mind? Ruha Benjamin encourages us to chip away at the current 
boundaries of social research by engaging with novel methods that 
reimagine what is possible by reordering what is (Benjamin, 2016).In 
building upon these guidelines, we have the opportunity to grow our 
evidence base and loosen the chains of narrowly conceived science. 
 
 
 
 



17 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
Black Women: The Matter of their Minds, Hearts, and Wombs 
Aziza Belcher Platt, Ph.D., psychologist and mental health practitioner  
 
As a practitioner and researcher, as well as a developing activist for 
mental health issues in racial and gender minority communities, I am 
acutely aware of how little Black lives matter to many others and how 
important it is that patients’ Black lives matter to me.  

The disciplines of medicine and psychology accept that medical 
conditions impact mental well-being; the discipline of psychosomatic 
medicine asserts the interplay between mental distress manifesting in and 
as physical conditions. The importance of the mind-body connection is 
being constantly explored and strengthened across disciplines and 
diseases. My work with the patient in front of me is to understand the 
whole person and not create a false dichotomy between their medical 
health and their mental health.  My aim is to practice while also knowing 
that helping them alleviate their psychological distress has a 
complementary and possibly remedial impact on their physical distress. 
In fact, while not established yet, mental health treatment might also have 
a preventative effect on women who are treated early after the experience 
of trauma. In some of the research ahead of me, I will continue to explore 
psychosomatic gynecological issues that are particularly relevant to Black 
women. 

My work with the systemic inequality besieging we is to advocate 
for the dismantling of inequitable structures: structures that create 
disparities, which in turn create the diseases that create the 
psychological distresses that create the diseases that are created by the 
disparities. Dizzying, yes. But, on behalf of my patients and me, I declare: 
Black diseases matter. Black health disparities matter. Black women’s 
lives matter. The quality of Black women’s lives matter. Black women’s 
reproductive rights and choices matter. And Black women’s reproductive 
health and fertility matter—because Black future lives matter. 

For many diseases that are more prevalent in the Black 
community, “the disparity in prevalence is paralleled by a disparity in 



18 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
treatment of the disease as a public health issue (Flynn et al., 2006), 
access to health care information (Flynn et al., 2006) and level of health 
care treatment (Eltoukhi et al., 2013; Belcher Platt, 2014: 3). While all 
women’s rights and choices are under siege, Black women are 
disproportionately impacted as accessible health care resources, such as 
Planned Parenthood, are removed from urban areas first. Furthermore, 
medical treatment for women of color is often more invasive than it is for 
their White counterparts. Black women are traditionally treated with less 
regard for preserving their reproductive ability even when less extreme 
solutions are available (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 
2001). There is a long history of disregard for Black women’s 
reproductive rights and health evidenced by the eugenics movement, 
forced sterilizations (Davis, 2003), and the use of slave women for 
surgical experimentation (Axelsen, 1985). 

Challenges to women’s reproductive health often negatively 
impacts women’s mental health—another area where there is a disparity 
in both access and treatment. As a result, organizations such as 
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective are leading 
the larger fight for reproductive justice for Black women and other women 
of color, while mental health practitioners are helping Black women 
individually address the psychosocial component and impact, that is 
psychological (e.g. trauma) and environmental stressors (e.g. race-related 
stress) that may influence the manifestation, severity, and intensity of 
their reproductive distress. 

Given that these symptoms often impair women’s educational, 
occupational, interpersonal, and daily functioning and thus reduce the 
quality of their lives, mental health practitioners can serve to help Black 
women to reclaim the functioning and quality of their lives. Ghanaian 
scholar Dr. James Emmanuel Kwegyir-Aggrey is credited with declaring 
that "if you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a 
woman you educate a family (nation)." This sentiment extends to the 
mental and physical health of Black women: addressing Black women’s 
physical disease and mental distress has significant benefits, both for 



19 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
individuals as well as for members of the community across generations. 
 
Black Psyches Matter: Extending the Conversation of BLM from the 
Body to the Mind 
Joni-Leigh Webster, Ph.D. student, Department of Sociology, Emory 
University 
 
Since its inception, BLM has moved beyond a focus on legal 
interventions to the consummate legitimation of the Black body.  One of 
the guiding principles of this movement is “we are unapologetically Black 
in our positioning.  In affirming that Black lives matter, we need not 
qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves 
is a necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others.” This 
statement underscores the importance of acknowledging the Black 
experience as distinct and relevant.   

In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Collins introduces us to the 
confluence of multiple forms of oppressions Black persons endure 
(2002).  She discusses the experience of various “isms” (racism, classism, 
sexism) indicative of oppression and admonishes us to acknowledge their 
uniqueness and the power/right of Black women to construct and 
disseminate their realities (Collins 2002).  With this comes an 
understanding of the intersection of various forms of subjugation and how 
they negatively impact members of the Black community, leading to 
differing degrees of marginalization and adverse outcomes (Crenshaw 
1991).  

While we understand the correlation of diverse forms of oppression 
with unfavorable outcomes for Black people, which can include poverty, 
violence, and poor health (Mays, Cochran and Barnes 2007), data are 
mixed regarding the impact of various “isms” on the mental health of 
Black people.  According to current measures, Black persons have lower 
rates of mental illness despite an increased prevalence of risk factors 
attributable to poor mental health (Das et al. 2006, Baker 2001, Mouzon 
et al. 2016).  Furthermore, Black people are more likely to be diagnosed 



20 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
with psychosis than their White counterparts (Schwartz and Blankenship 
2014).  

Resilience and religiosity have been used to explain the ability of 
Black people to “flourish” notwithstanding such adverse experiences. 
Yet  these reasons appear to fall short when examined more closely 
(Mouzon 2014, Mouzon 2017).  It is likely that different explanations and 
methods are necessary to elucidate the Black-White paradox in mental 
health, including the need  to utilize Black voices in explicating the 
intersection of oppressions and their impact on Black lives. A “one size 
fits all” approach will not reveal the mechanisms linking oppression, 
adverse outcomes, and mental illness. For example, Jonathan Metzl 
depicts the effect of culture and current events on diagnostic parameters 
and their connection to increasing the rate of schizophrenia among Black 
males in his book Protest Psychosis (2010). He demonstrates how a 
history of oppression and prejudicial behaviors impact the ability of 
practitioners and measurement tools to accurately detect the expression 
of mental illness among racialized populations (Metzl 2010). Thus, finding 
distinctness in the expression, measurement, and analysis of mental 
health lends itself to extending the conversation of the BLM movement 
from honoring the Black body to appreciating the Black psyche.   

Although research exists indicating the likelihood that rates of 
mental illness may be higher among Black populations in the United 
States due to differences in the expression of symptoms, there is a 
dearth of information to explain these disparities. Data indicate that poor 
health is associated with mental illness and Black people are more likely 
to self-report poor health.  Further, Black populations are more likely to 
somaticize symptoms of mental illness and have particular personality 
archetypes associated with mental illness (Drapeau, Marchand and 
Beauie-Prevost 2012, Baker 2001). In my own work, I hope to elucidate 
the ways that the Eurocentric/Western framework of psychiatry impedes 
diagnosis of mental illness in Black populations, since I argue that 
diagnostic criteria and parameters do not consider the 
sociohistorical/political impact of such events as slavery.  Through this 



21 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
work, I hope to improve methods for accurately diagnosing mental illness 
among Black persons, bringing further attention to the relevance of 
protecting and healing the Black mind. 
 
Black Villages, Empathy, and Collective Value: Principles that Guide 
an Intersectional Understanding of Autism Inequalities 
Jennifer Singh, MPH, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology, Georgia 
Tech 
 
On October 10, 2016, I interviewed Sheila, a Black single mother and 
caregiver of 15-year-old twin daughters, one who has a diagnosis of 
autism. I met Sheila at an autism clinic located in downtown Atlanta that 
offers services to children and their families who have limited financial 
resources and who rely primarily on Medicaid state health insurance. 
Sheila had just moved to Atlanta from another state, believing that she 
would be able to get better services for her daughter. Although she had 
been living in Atlanta for several months when we met, her daughters 
were not registered in school yet and her daughter with autism was 
experiencing increased behavior issues, anger, and anxiety. The changes 
in her behavior could be explained in part to hormonal changes, but were 
more likely a result of not having access to her anxiety medication due to 
a gap in Medicaid coverage when they moved to Georgia, as well as their 
current lack of stable housing and transportation. 

My encounter with Sheila and other caregivers in equally 
challenging situations is part of an on-going ethnography I am conducting 
in an autism clinic that is designed to investigate the role of structural 
inequalities in autism diagnosis and services. The complexity of Sheila’s 
life as a single Black mother raising children on her own and negotiating 
structural barriers to autism services in Georgia reflects the complexity of 
people’s lives who come in and out of the autism clinic.  

As an academic who is socially situated through having immigrant 
grandparents from Mexico and India, who is the first in her family to get a 
college degree, and who has achieved a position in a scholarly field in 



22 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
which she is vastly underrepresented, I take my work seriously. I strive to 
investigate questions that can have an impact on people’s lives. Thus, my 
current research investigates the intersectional and structural inequities 
embedded in the stories of Black and Latino caregivers of children with 
autism. Over the past year, I have had the privilege of meeting caregivers 
who have shared with me their complicated pathways to getting an 
autism diagnosis and accessing services in an unequal society. These 
voices offer a significant alternative to the dominant face of autism 
parenting in the US, which typically portrays white, married, and upper-
middle class families who have the time, money, and resources to engage 
and fulfill various social and biomedical accountabilities to help their 
children. To aid the understanding of these multi-dimensional and 
complex narratives of autism parenting, I am using the principles of Black 
Lives Matter to serve as an epistemological framework to guide my 
analysis. Especially important are the BLM’s principles of diversity, black 
families, empathy, black women, black villages, loving engagement, 
intergenerational, restorative justice, and collective value. ( Black Lives 
Matter, 2017). For example, the narratives of caregivers who I have 
interviewed and learned from consist of alternative family structures; 
single mothers or single grandmothers who care for their children alone 
or in unison, often with limited resources of time, money, knowledge, or 
access to healthcare. The principles of Black Lives Matter help me to 
better understand the structural constraints that shape the experience of 
Black women who are navigating the labyrinth of services needed for 
children with autism. 

As evident in the narratives thus far, structural inequalities such as 
limited access to reliable transportation and safe and stable housing pose 
additional challenges for caregivers of a child with disabilities. I gained 
this insight from Sheila who shared with me her challenges of using 
public transportation with her daughter. Her story reminded me of how 
many children with autism are very sensitive to loud noises, crowed 
spaces, and particular odors—characteristics that are often associated 
with public transportation. On several occasions, Sheila told me they 



23 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
could not reach their clinic appointments because her daughter refused 
to take public transportation due to the extreme anxiety she experiences 
when having “one of her episodes.” In general, people with autism also 
function better when schedules are reliable and consistent, even in the 
specific routes they use to travel to and from particular places like school. 
Sheila’s story also brings a whole new dimension of the realities of autism 
for caregivers and their families who have neither reliable transportation 
nor housing. When I met Sheila, she was living in public housing; but she 
also told me that when they first moved to Atlanta they were kicked out of 
their first public housing accommodation because her daughter often 
screamed at night due to her anxiety.  

For a woman in Sheila’s position, the stakes of having a child with 
autism in much greater because her needs more complex. BLM’s 
principles of empathy, of learning about the multiple contexts of people’s 
lives, as well as collective value, and of recognizing that all Black lives 
matter regardless of gender, economic status, or disability, serve as 
guideposts for how we can learn from women like Sheila to identify the 
various interlocking locations of social oppressions that cut across 
gender, racial, and class lines. These intersectional inequalities shape the 
multiple dimensions of Black women’s experiences of raising a child with 
autism. And these different ways of knowing must be a part of our 
research and social justice agendas to help target fundamental causes of 
health inequalities1. The effectiveness of these approaches is in line with 
scholarship that has begun to reveal embodied inequalities that exist 
within racialized and gendered lived experiences while navigating medical 
care and illness trajectories2. 
 
How Black Lives Matter in Forensic Matter 
Renee Shelby, Ph.D. candidate, Program in the History and Sociology of 
Technology and Science, Georgia Tech  
 
Formally reporting sexual violence is an oft-overlooked site of racial 
injustice (Richie, 2012; Meiners, 2009). As an anti-racist scholar-activist 



24 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
working on gender violence, I use the Black Lives Matter guiding 
principles of diversity, black women, queer affirming, restorative justice, 
and loving engagement as praxis for dismantling white (patriarchal) 
supremacy in victim advocacy and crafting interventions that prioritize 
marginalized groups (Black Lives Matter, 2017). Often in advocacy, victim 
experiences are essentialized, which fails to attend to how race, class, 
sexuality, or social capital create tensions in the criminal justice system. 
As Hannah Giorgis notes, though being a “good” rape victim means 
reporting to the police, being a “good” Black person means avoiding the 
police—as one’s life often depends on it (Giorgis, 2013). 

In my own research, I use Black feminism to interrogate how the 
justice system responds to sexual violence, revealing stratified limitations 
of carceral solutions (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1991; Harris,1989; 
Matsuda,1987; McCall, 2005). For example, while victims of any race are 
reticent to report sexual violence due to feelings of shame, stigma, and 
fear of repercussion, Black women face additional barriers including the 
previous legal allowance of black women’s rape, negative gender 
stereotypes, a hostile criminal justice system, and a growing carceral 
nation that often arrests gender violence victims alongside their 
perpetrators (Richie, 2012). 

Since white feminism mainstreamed and institutionalized the 
gender violence movement during the 1980s and 1990s, responses to 
sexual violence progressively included justice involvement—e.g. 
increasing criminalization, developing mandatory booking policies, and 
transforming evidentiary practices. For example, the introduction of the 
rape kit in 1978—a technoscientific protocol for collecting, securing, 
testing, and materializing biological and nonbiological evidence—has 
changed forensic evidence collection. The rape kit has become 
embedded in legal and evidentiary assumptions about what constitutes a 
winnable, and thus worthwhile, court case. Like other forensic 
technologies, rape kits are perceived to make victims legible to legal 
actors, and were first developed by white “protocol feminists” in 
collaboration with the crime lab, with the intention of giving victims a 



25 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
means to materially corroborate their reports of violence amidst 
widespread acceptance of rape myths (Murphy, 2012). As of 2015, 
however, there was an estimated backlog of over 400,000 untested rape 
kits reflecting substantial stagnation in the US justice process. 

Even when kits are processed there are larger forces at play in 
determining which cases are prosecuted3. In the fall of 2016, the US 
Department of Justice released a scathing report about the raced and 
gendered discriminatory practices regularly enacted by the Baltimore 
Police Department4. The report describes police failures in systematically 
downgrading rape cases to less serious criminal charges, failing to 
investigate reports of sexual assault, and giving inadequate resources to 
process the backlog of forensic rape kits—often failing to even submit 
kits to crime laboratories for DNA testing. The report’s findings are a stark 
reminder of police’s substantial influence in investigating or suppressing a 
case and power within the criminal justice system. 

In addition to its revelations about sexual violence, the Department 
of Justice report also described the police as more disrespectful and 
slower to respond to reports of violence by individuals within African-
American communities than to individuals from neighboring white 
communities. Based on community and qualitative accounts of citizen-
police interaction, there is little reason to believe the Baltimore Police 
Department is unique in either its mishandling of sexual assault cases or 
in its discriminatory treatment towards African Americans. This is 
particularly important given broader sexist and racist attitudes towards 
women of color that make them particularly vulnerable to sexual violence 
and which also inhibit their access to support services.  

While activists have long worked to redress inequalities in policing 
and the criminal justice system, they have directed less attention toward 
better understanding the performances of the rape kit as a technology of 
power. After a rape kit is collected, sealed, and submitted to crime labs, 
the kit becomes a material record of anonymous “unraced” victim’s 
subjectivity, further suggesting the influence of color, and of power-
evasive narratives and practices, that wrongly help constitute the criminal 



26 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
justice system. Fetishization by activist communities and political figures 
alike—in the form of demands to test the backlog of rape kits—often 
detract from highly problematic gendered and raced police and 
prosecutorial practices. 

Thinking through race in terms of the rape kit reveals how forensic 
technologies are not merely a medium for neutral evidence production, 
but a mode for interpreting biological evidence within US judicial contexts 
informed by both raced and gendered rape ideologies (Datson,1991). 
There are certainly many aspects of the medico-legal apparatus that 
require remedy; however, attending to how police, prosecutors, activists 
and the broader public understand and make use of rape kits is an 
important step towards ensuring black lives matter in forensic 
criminology.  
 
Black Women in Breast Cancer Research: From Margin to Center 
Kristen Abatsis McHenry, Assistant Professor, Comparative Women’s 
Studies, Spelman College 
 
Black Lives Matter, as a social movement, does more than solicit citizens, 
researchers, and activists to call attention to police brutality. The 
movement also insists that attention is paid to survival rates between 
black and white men and women. In the context of public health research 
and particularly breast cancer advocacy and research, BLM emphasizes 
the importance of research on breast cancer disparities that lead to 
higher mortality rates for black women than white women. My research 
on breast cancer sits at the intersection of scholarship on the 
environment, political advocacy, and race and gender in biomedicine. As 
an anti-racist feminist scholar-activist, I see the BLM movement, and in 
particular, the #SayHerName campaign, as crucial to my research and 
teaching.  The #SayHerName campaign calls attention to police violence 
against black women and importantly centers the experiences of black 
women. 

Positioning myself as an anti-racist feminist scholar means 



27 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
examining the way some women’s voices and experiences have been 
privileged within the breast cancer movement. My book, The Green 
Solution to Breast Cancer: The Promise of Prevention, interrogates the 
ways that breast cancer has been framed as a wealthy, elite, white 
woman’s disease. I illustrate how the U.S. breast cancer movement has 
been tremendously successful at raising funds supporting biomedical 
research, bringing breast cancer into public discourse, and mobilizing 
women to support breast cancer survivors. Today the breast cancer 
movement has become synonymous with pink ribbons, corporate 
philanthropy, and fitness based fundraising events all centered on a 
message of early detection and a cure (Ehrenreich 2001; King 2006; 
McCormick 2010). 

Such successful campaigns obscure how the political economy of 
breast cancer functions within structures of racism and sexism, which 
impacts black women’s experiences of breast cancer (Lorde 1997). For 
instance, although mammography screening rates are quite similar 
between white and black women – 69% of non-Hispanic white women 
and 70% of no-Hispanic black women 45 and older received 
mammograms in the past two years (American Cancer Society 2013) – 
health disparities at stages of diagnosis, and access to genetic testing, 
and treatment persist for black women in the United States.  As a result, 
black women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women 
even though white women are more likely to get breast cancer (CDC 
2013).  This is due to a myriad of factors including differences in the types 
of cancer (like triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of breast 
cancer); barriers resulting from SES; unequal access to improved cancer 
treatments all of which affect Black women (Black Women’s Health 
Imperative 2016; NCI 2016).  

My work illustrates the ways that mainstream breast cancer 
advocacy groups’ insistence on early detection is simply not adequate to 
address health disparities within poor communities of color, in which 
women are vulnerable to environmental harm and therefore increasingly 
at risk for cancer. For these reasons, I am inspired by the recent work of 



28 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
Ericka Hart, a queer black woman, an agent of change who advocates for 
increased visibility of black and brown female bodies and challenges 
white supremacist patriarchy. She has put photographs of her 
mastectomy scars into the public eye with great purpose and has 
inspired many women living with breast cancer to re-examine who the 
face of breast cancer is and has been [see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2]. Ericka Hart’s 
powerful and visible resistance demonstrate the importance of 
demanding that the breast cancer movement move beyond early 
detection frames, privileging white, wealthy, women’s experiences of 
breast cancer and simplistic notions of inclusivity or “diversity.” 

 
Fig. 1: Image of Ericka Hart in Masado, Dany Isabelle. (2016). “5 Times Ericka Hart Gave Us 
#BlackGirlMagic.” The Dear Body Project. 
 



29 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 

 
Fig. 2: Image of Ericka Hart in Masado, Dany Isabelle. (2016). “5 Times Ericka Hart Gave Us 
#BlackGirlMagic.” The Dear Body Project. 
 
 
Notes 
 
1 See Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and 
Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist 
Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1:8 
(1989): 139-168. See also Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: 
Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: 
Routledge, 2002). 
 
2 See for example, Janet K. Shim, Heart-Sick: The Politics of Risk, 
Inequality, and Heart Disease (New York: New York University Press, 
2014), Ruja Benjamin, People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem 



30 
Pollock and Roy                                              Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience  3(1) 
 
Cell Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), and Celeste 
Watkins-Hayes, "Intersectionality and the Sociology of HIV/AIDS: Past, 
Present, and Future Research Directions,” Annual Review of Sociology 
Vol 40 (2014): 431-457. 
 
3 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-
office/2015/03/16/fact-sheet-investments-reduce-national-rape-kit-
backlog-and-combat-viole (last accessed June 23, 2017). 
 
4 http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/local/us-justice-
department-finds-discriminatory-practices-in-baltimore-police/2117/ (last 
accessed June 23, 2017). 
 
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