

When A Black Female Scientist Gets Called An 'Urban Whore' - credo
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/when-a-black-female-scientist-gets-called-an-urban-whore

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lchitnis
It's a shame that even after women have attained such lofty positions in
society, they are dogged by such damaging and carelessly thrown phrases. As a
woman of color myself, I have experienced the same sort of sexism, and at
times, racism (sexism easily prevails). I suppose the only silver to this is
that when I succeed, it will be that much sweeter.

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bonemachine
Well, it was certainly an offensive and horrifically stupid response that no
doubt will go down on "Ofek"'s permanent record. But while it's safe to assume
that he new that the person he was writing to was female, we have no evidence
that he knew she was also a person of color:

 _This offensive slur reinforces the notion that women of color should be
thrilled with the meager scraps they are thrown, and that they should smile
and nod while doing so._

Now do we?

~~~
fluxon
The circumstantial evidence that "Ofek" knew Danielle N. Lee was a person of
color is rather strong:

* He offered her the blog position based on her current blog contributions, meaning he read them.

* There's a _photo_ of Dr. Lee at her blog: [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/urban-scientist/](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/urban-scientist/) and an even clearer nice photo if you click on it, with a very complete CV, including her Doctorate in Biology.

* Her CV includes her 2009 _Black Weblog Best Science or Tech Blog Award_

* Dr. Lee's "Urban Scientist" blog title was a conscious and clever choice. "Urban" has been used as a code word for African-American for a long time. It's used by radio networks to refer to their hip-hop and rap stations, by blog networks to categorize podcasts and blogs, it's just everywhere. Very hard to miss, unless one never reads the popular press or, say, teh internets.

* The blog subtitle is "A _hip hop_ maven blogs on urban ecology, evolutionary biology & diversity in the sciences"

Conclusion: "Ofek" likely knew Dr. Lee was a person of color. IMHO "Ofek"
wouldn't have responded to a female person of caucasianity (I know, not a
word) _with a Ph.D._ with such a slur.

Anyways, whatever color "Ofek" thought Dr. Lee was, his response stinks of
petulant entitled male outrage at being turned down by a female. Yeah, the
sting of rejection hurts, but it's no excuse to engage in any sort of attack.

~~~
bonemachine
"Urban", "hip hop" \-- got it -- those are dead giveaways.

So looks like you're right, unfortunately.

