I believe that developmental science has
done a lot to really promote ethnic diversity,
and I think for future developmental scientists,
especially for people of color,
they can talk about not about others,
but about themselves and us,
and I believe that both perspectives
are really important.
Looking things from outside is important
and looking things
from inside is equally important,
and when that's balanced, that's most important.
We don't want our research to become a "me-search."
So it is good to have the balance,
but for children of color
and young people of color, moving into an
area where it's been predominated by others,
it's important to have their
presence to the field.
When I moved into the social sciences,
into developmental science,
the first study that I really became interested in
was the work by Kenneth and Mamie Clark
and their work was extremely impactful to me.
Number one, as a person of color because they were
doing research on children that was
asking questions about their exposure to
attitudes, beliefs, etc. and I found their
interpretation and the interpreters
interpretation of their science
incredibly important, interesting.
Most importantly, the findings really have
implications for how integration
happened in this country.
The human population needs to
be represented in the science.
We don't want a science that is saying,
"This is the way human beings are,"
when it's represented by white
middle-class families.
We're dealing with disparities and inequality.
We're dealing with segregation.
We're dealing with a lot of structural
issues that they're working with,
and there's an important way in which
we need to reframe the questions,
to not be always focused on problem behavior,
and this is a persistent pattern, sort of,
in the research literature,
but we need to focus more clearly
on resolving structural patterns
that produce these inequalities and
we need to focus on really figuring out
how to empower young people of color,
how to identify and
how to build on the strengths that they have.
