ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, KTSIMAGE
It was easy for scientists to denounce racism last March when an attacker sprayed bullets into Asian-owned spas in Atlanta and murdered eight people, mostly Asian American women. However, the scientific community’s response is starkly different when racism is used to justify a pro-science agenda. Just a few months after the scientific community released statements condemning more than a year’s worth of anti-Asian violence tied to COVID-19, that same racial prejudice fueled a landmark science funding bill—the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA), formerly known as the Endless Frontier Act. Underlying the bill’s investments in science and technology is an agenda of countering China’s influence.
We shouldn’t condemn Asian hate crimes and tweet about #StopAsianHate in one breath and then use anti-China xenophobia to support increased science funding in the next. Scapegoating China is politically expedient; it allows policymakers on both sides of ...
