Having been involved in paleo for many decades, including a fair amount of field experience, I will offer some commentary on what really happens in paleowork, and how my fellow whites react, and so forth. I also have published extensively in the academic and popular literature on societal matters (www.gspaulscienceofnon-religion.com), including ethnoracism.
Aviva comes across as the sort of person who feels they are right and there is no need for discussion with those who dare disagree with their righteous opinions, Aviva's not wanting to consider alternative views includes how she snarkily and disrespectfully instructed me to not bother to write the PreTimes article on paleoracism because it obviously would not meet her standards - actually the article is already written and accepted, although I will modify it in part based this discussion. She also did the trick of early on saying she would no longer participate in the discussion because all who oppose her are patently wrong, and then got back in. That A denounced the whole series after just watching the 1st episode is entirely inappropriate. Fair review obviously always demands considering the entire product. Had A watched episode 1, not liked it, then posted a note saying so and why that would have been one thing. Or A could have watched the entire series, perhaps realized that it was not just a bunch of white women (the gender counts show that around half or more experts were males, a few nonwhite, I am not aware of nonwhite women involved in vertpaleo in the northern plains so that is not Emily's fault, and in the last episode that apparently A is too righteous to watch there is a segment of how white paleos have been ripping off the aboriginal peoples). Instead A's post have came across as over the top, how dare any not see she is entirely right even if she did not watch the entire series, sets of rants that initially mislead readers by not mentioning not having seen the entire thing. A even seems to think that because she is dealing with C19 patients she is somehow to be taken more seriously than those who are not. A talks about properly raising her kids. It appears she is not doing so in that by example she is teaching how to be controlling and not willing to consider counterarguments, which is unscientific among other things.
All that said A has sparked a discussion concerning ethical issues of various sorts related to dinodocs that, contrary to the request this line be dropped by one person a few days back, are important and worthy of discourse.
When I heard about the show I was looking forward to it. Watching the first couple of episode I was overall pleased, but I did notice some items of import. One was the large number of females, which was a good thing. That around half the experts were women is much higher than is actually true in vert paleo, but why is that a problem when that can help inspire girls and young women to get into VP? It is hardly sexist. I was much more concerned with the scarcity of minorities, but by sticking to the shows to the end unlike A I saw that the last episode dealt with those issues better than any other dinodoc that has ever been done. In fact it may be the first to actually address the issue. Did Emily do so perfectly? No, but she should get praise for taking a shot at it, as was pertinent to the demographics of the region she was covering. But doing a doc or three is a big project that always involves compromises. Reviewers of projects of projects should always remember that it is easy to complain, harder to do.
Concerning the DL discussion I'm concerned with Fastovsky saying concerning my first message on this topic that he was "not at all comfortable with [my] statements like:
"...or various reasons African-Americans are not prone towards entering non-practical sciences like paleo, and they may remain the same for a long time. And dinosaurs are not the kind of hip item they are likely to be attracted to." "
That is an effort by F to control and limit the discussion in a manner that makes it difficult to try to assess and deal with the situation. The historical experience of Amerowhites versus minorities differ drastically, resulting in obvious major cultural and economic differences that also obviously have enormous impact on career choices that should not be ignored. Achieving maximal results when conducting outreach to minorities requires as full as possible an understanding of what is achievable and how to do it, and what may not be achievable in order to not raise false expectations.
Fact is that on average Black American culture is much more hip than is the white. That is no secret. Until the late 1800s most whites were Calvinist Puritans and that heritage alas continues to afflict us. The primary white music genres are country and swing. They have their charms, but they are rarely giddy exciting. It is blacks who had the most to do with the hip, exciting jazz, R&B, the foundations of rock & roll which grew out of R&B, and hip-hop (which I don't like but I'm a typical uptight WASP of partly LDS heritage and Mormon are real uptight -- when I visit UT I avoid them and hang out with my cool Greek Orthodox relations -- now they know have to real fun, ever been to a Greek wedding?). Blacks have made a massive contribution to American culture making it a lot more cool than it would otherwise be. Ironically that may be one factor in why there are few black paleos. That paleo is seen as nerdy may well limit their interest in the field as a career. Noting that is not racist, it is realistic. What would be racist would be to not make attempts to reach out to minorities and interest them in paleo because of such premises, but understanding the cultural difference is vital to such efforts.
On the other hand the person who got after Fastovsky for using the term "people of color" was way off base. People of color use that term all the time, I hear them do so in media and personally -- I live in a black majority city. It is a convenient and respectful term that covers all who are not of northern European origins.
When it comes to differences between the boys and girls, having been in the field a good amount almost always with white males I can attest that they rarely get as chipperly enthusiastic over new finds as did Emily. Which is too bad for the former. Emily was a breath of documentary fresh air. I would much rather watch her having fun than see yet another David Attenborough show. Like E a nonscientist, he has done great work, but he has become routine and is not as much fun. Perhaps the male science show host that was the most cheery chipper was Alan Alda when he did the Scientific American series, that he is a professional actor had a lot to do with that.
Emily did not mislead on the ease of finding fossils. For one thing she and her field host failed to turn up anything in at least one locale which she cited as an example of how field paleo is hit or more often miss -- Aviva missed or dismissed that. Sometimes things do turn up with little effort. At Como Bluff in 1978 an expedition member who had never looked for dinosaurs before found what may be WYs biggest sauropod half an hour after our arrival (hungry for dinner, I had just told him not to waste our time by going down that dang side gully). Later that summer a member returning from a field pee stumbled across a nearly complete Pteranodon skeleton in the Pierre Shale (that mode of discovery is amazingly common in vertpaleo). I have been at sites including on the east coast where splitting slabs easily reveals lots of fossils. When a kid we would visit a private beach on the Chesapeake Bay that has used to be the norm for the west shore was loaded with sharks teeth including the occasional megalodon -- public beaches have long been picked clean. Because the shoreline is rapidly eroding that beach no longer exists.
Emily did a series that was innovative and a welcome change of pace including her personality, addressed some serious subjects where none had before, promoted her underrepresented gender in the field, that was widely watched and well liked, and a few folks snarkily sniping at her is not of major import. You never can make everyone happy.
GSPaul