Physics Expertise as White Property: Entanglements Between Whiteness and Physics

ABSTRACT In this paper, we use case study analysis of interviews with twelve white physics faculty to claim that physics expertise functions as white property, drawing on Harris’ definition of property as “every thing to which a [person] may attach a value and have a right” (Madison, 1906, as cited in Harris 1993, p. 1726). In particular, we use quotes from interviews to illustrate that physics expertise confers benefits to its holders, is jealously guarded, and is structurally protected. Faculty treat expertise as a marker of epistemic superiority in a discipline that is rooted in ideals of objectivity and neutrality, and they enforce contingencies around who can become a physicist, drawing on narratives that rely on those ideals. This argument has implications for a more just physics—one that divests from the property interest in physics expertise and invests in what Harris has called distributive justice, which centers a right to inclusion over a right to exclude .