Inclusivity in cell biology: cultural identity and the power of authenticity

Abstract

I am deeply honored to be the recipient of the 2022 ASCB Public Service Award. In addition to my research on the cytoskeleton and molecular motors, I devoted a significant part of my professional career to issues pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Diversity of the scientific workforce is essential to accomplish the mission of discovery and innovation required to advance scientific knowledge and improve human health, especially the health of Black communities. This pressing need requires new approaches to address the problem of inclusivity in science. The Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd were events that triggered people around the world to begin to reckon with structural racism and new approaches to dismantle it. It is through this momentary lens that I founded the PAIR-UP Imaging Science Program for Black Imaging Scientists. The purpose of PAIR-UP is to improve the professional work environment for Black imaging scientists at R1 institutions by building a self-reinforcing community of Black scientists across institutions committed to helping each other sustain a strong cultural identity. Reenforcing and sustaining a strong cultural identity has the potential to be transformational for the scientists participating in PAIR-UP.

INTRODUCTION

I am deeply honored to receive the 2022 ASCB Public Service Award. This award is one of the most significant honors that I have received during my scientific career. I have been in the academy for more than five decades and have had the great fortune of working with some of the most creative scientists in the field of cell biology. I trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Shinya Inoué, one of the greatest cell biologists and imaging scientists of all time (GOAT). Professor Inoué helped to revolutionize light microscopy and introduced the concept of superresolution with his invention of video enhanced contrast (VEC) or video microscopy. He was a close mentor and friend. I also had the great fortune of working with Professor Robert Day Allen, who independently invented VEC-DIC microscopy, an imaging technique that allows real-time imaging of structures in living cells smaller than the limit of resolution of the light microscope (such as microtubules).

George M. Langford

Video microscopy was the beginning of the modern era in light microscopy that is still ongoing today and has led to incredible advancements that we currently enjoy, such as laser scanning confocal microscopy, TIRF-SIM, and lattice light sheet microscopy. Using VEC-DIC microscopy, my research group was the first to provide evidence that vesicles in the squid giant axon used myosin motors (myosin5) to translocate on actin filaments (Tabb et al., 1998; Figure 1). We also showed that vesicles in axoplasm used both actin-based and microtubule-based molecular motors to translocate. This observation became the basis for the dual-filament model of vesicle movement (DePina and Langford, 1999). This research was performed over several years while I was a summer investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, an independent research station that has a special place in my heart.

FIGURE 1:

Micrographs from a movie of extruded axoplasm from the squid giant axon using VEC-DIC (left panel) and fluorescence (right panel) microscopy. Microtubules and vesicles that move on them are visible in the VEC-DIC micrograph. Actin filaments are too thin to be visible by VEC-DIC microscopy but are visible when the sample is viewed using fluorescence microscopy after rhodamine phalloidin staining (right panel).

PAIR-UP IMAGING SCIENCE PROGRAM FOR BLACK IMAGING SCIENTISTS

In addition to working in the exciting field of the cytoskeleton and molecular motors, I devoted a significant part of my professional career to issues pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). When I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in Professor Inoué’s lab, I was the only Black scientist in the Department of Biology. When I returned to my former department for a seminar this year, I noted that the diversity of the department had not changed after 50 years. The Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania is not unique in this regard. I have been the only Black faculty member in my department at all of the historically white institutions (HWCUs) at which I have held faculty positions, including the Physiology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the biology departments at Dartmouth College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Syracuse University. This worrying fact led me to develop a program to address the isolation that Black scientists experience when being the only Black scientist at HWCUs. The program I founded in 2020 is called the PAIR-UP Imaging Science Program for Black Imaging Scientists.

PAIR-UP APPROACH TO INCLUSIVITY

PAIR-UP is the response to an extensive body of social science research that shows that diversity of the scientific workforce is essential for accomplishing the mission of discovery and innovation required to advance scientific knowledge and improve human health, especially the health of Black communities (Valantine and Collins, 2015; Nielsen et al., 2017). PAIR-UP takes a unique approach to the issue of inclusivity. PAIR-UP, unlike most DEI efforts, is a “strength-based model,” not a “deficit-based model,” and uses “strength building” activities rather than remediation to advance the careers of Black scientists. PAIR-UP affords scientists access to the most powerful imaging tools available to biologists, access to collaborators who value and respect one another for who they are, and access to a community that reinforces cultural identity and whose members inspire one another.

Even though there is ample evidence that diversity of the scientific workforce is essential, efforts to increase racial/ethnic diversity of faculty at HWCUs have yielded very little progress to date. Extrapolation of more than 20 years of data on current hiring trends suggests that it will take many decades for underrepresented racial/ethnic groups to reach parity among medical school faculty (Tilghman et al., 2021). This representation gap is driven in large part by institutional cultures lacking necessary elements of inclusion and equity and sending a message to Black scientists that they do not belong in science (Price et al., 2009; Pololi et al., 2013). It is clear to anyone examining these data that institutional culture (Krupat et al., 2013) at HWCUs must change to improve the professional work environment for Black scientists and to enhance scientific workforce diversity at the faculty level.

Institutional culture change, however, is a very slow process that takes many years to achieve. Black scientists who are currently employed as faculty members at historically white institutions can’t wait for cultural transformation at these institutions and therefore need support in the near term to mitigate the effects of cultural isolation.

This pressing need cries out for new approaches to solve the problem of lack of inclusivity in science. I have approached this problem by turning inclusivity on its head. Academic institutions need to abandon old ways of thinking and adopt a new approach that addresses the fundamental needs of Black scientists at HWCUs. We can and must view the problem through a different lens and develop evidence-based approaches to this stubborn problem. The Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd provided the moment that the world began to recognize that structural racism persists and our approach to dismantling it must change.

It is in response to this moment of reckoning that I developed the PAIR-UP Imaging Science Program for Black Imaging Scientists, a program that flips the script on inclusivity. The rationale is straightforward. HWCUs approach DEI through a deficit-based mindset. This mindset has dominated the landscape and made it extremely difficult for individuals from groups underrepresented in science to be creative and productive. To work at HWCUs meant learning to endure a work environment that was suboptimal. Work twice as hard, be resilient and gritty while tolerating a toxic workplace.

PAIR-UP takes a different approach. Instead of the current deficit-based mindset that focuses on what is wrong with Blacks in science and how to fix them to fit into the system, PAIR-UP is built on a strength-based mindset. PAIR-UP builds on the unique strengths that Black scientists bring to science through their lived experiences and works to strengthen these assets to advance scientific discovery. Science becomes the beneficiary of these creative individuals who bring unique assets not currently represented in science. Therefore, the goal of PAIR-UP is not diversity for the sake of diversity but diversity to bring novel assets to science.

This model no longer requires Black scientists to leave their culture at the door but to be their authentic selves. The days of code switching, of self-silencing and smothering one’s culture, are over. We realize that we are most creative and productive when we have a strong cultural identity and when we work in environments that affirm our identity and afford psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999), the ability to be one’s authentic self without fear of penalty or punishment. I strongly urge my fellow scientists to adopt the PAIR-UP model to address the isolation experienced by other racial/ethnic groups in science, including LatinX and Native American scientists. In addition, the PAIR-UP model can be used for other disciplines that rely upon expensive equipment housed in biomolecular resource facilities. Implementing and sustaining a strong cultural identity has the potential to be transformative for scientists who participate in a program like PAIR-UP. It will help unleash the awesome power of authenticity, the creative power that derives from being one’s authentic self.

Abbreviations used:

DEI

diversity, equity, inclusion

GOAT

greatest of all time

HWCU

historically white colleges and universities

PAIR-UP

partnering to advance imaging research for underrepresented scientists program

R1

research 1

TIRF-SIM

total internal reflection fluorescence structured illumination microscopy

VEC-DIC

video enhanced contrast-differential interference contrast.