White Supremacy Present Within the Workplace
The concepts shown in Okun’s writing about white supremacy shown in the work and the culture of physicists based off of four domains of community life as shown the weekly article, Traweek’s article to be exact. Some of these four domains include: developmental cycle, cosmology, ecology, and social organization. When it comes to ecology, this is the group’s means of subsistence, the environment that supports it, the tools and other artifacts used in getting a living from the environment. “Social organization is shown as how the group structures itself, formally and informally, in order to do work, to form factions, and to exchange goods and information” (Traweek, 7). Cosmology refers to the group’s knowledge, skills, and what is valued. Lastly, “the developmental cycle shows how the group transmits to novices the skills, values, and knowledge that constitute a sensible, competent person” (Traweek, 7).
Upon looking at the reading from Cole and remembering the Okun reading from weeks ago, there seemed to be a large amount of similarities between the reading and examples of white supremacy culture. The main goal was to create a bomb in order for us to use in the war against Germany and Hitler. The most evident characteristic I believe was shown in this article was power hoarding as a result of the atomic bomb race. The meaning behind this is many male physicists felt threatened by Hitler and his abilities, so it creates an incentive for the physicists to become famous while also helping get rid of the Nazi’s. Think about it, if they discovered the world’s first atomic bomb, they would they want other people to take credit for it or just themselves? They can leave a legacy of their work at the time and this is an instance where the white supremacy culture is present because power hoarding.
One last instance where the white supremacy culture is present in the reading from Cole is when Robert Oppenheimer told President Truman, “I feel like I have blood on my hands” (Cole, 65). The more upsetting part of this is Truman’s response, “I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office again” (Cole, 65). This shows President Truman being rude and insensitive because if he doesn’t portray himself as a powerful man he is weak in his point of view. This can be linked back to the Okun reading again, “people with power assume they have the best interests of the organization at heart and assume those wanting change are emotional, inexperienced, and stupid” (Okun, 5). This example of Robert Oppenheimer showing sympathy and disgust for the countless amount of lives ended from his creation shows he was viewed as a horrible person for feeling bad when innocent people were killed and he had a right to feel like this.
Works Cited:
Cole, K. C. (2009). Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the world he made up. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Okun, T. (n.d.). White Supremacy Culture. Retrieved from https://www.dismantlingracism.org/uploads/4/3/5/7/43579015/okun_-_white_sup_culture.pdf
Traweek, S. (1992). Chapter 1. In Beamtimes and lifetimes: The world of high energy physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
