"As universities examine faculty diversity amid global protests against institutional racism, they might want to consider that many Black and minority-ethnic academics are routinely asked to undertake extra, uncompensated work to address the issue at their institutions.

The phenomenon is known as ‘cultural taxation’, a term coined in 1994 by Amado Padilla¹, a psychology researcher at Stanford University in California. Academics from minority ethnic groups are targeted to serve on diversity, equity and inclusivity committees, as mentors to junior colleagues from minority ethnic groups and to participate in other schemes that take time away from their research².

This burden falls disproportionately on their shoulders because there are so few of them on campus. According to 2020 data from the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency, just 140 (0.7%) of 21,000 UK academics with the rank of professor are Black, yet Black people comprise 3% of the population.

In the United States, Black academics account for 6% of all faculty members, yet Black people represent 13% of the population. Cultural taxation could be a reason why African American scientists are 10% less likely than their white colleagues to receive funding from the US National Institutes of Health. According to a 2018 study³, the most important reasons for this disparity were the number of publications to their name and the impact factors of the journals in which they publish.

Study author Donna Ginther, director of the Center for Science, Technology & Economic Policy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, found that publication gaps widen over the course of researchers’ careers, and says that this could be due to the cultural tax. “African Americans may be called on to do more service,” she says. “Institutions need to be aware of the service burdens they place on faculty members,” she adds.

Nature spoke to five researchers from minority ethnic groups about the career consequences of cultural taxation and what advice they have for overcoming it. "

Nature 583, 479-481 (2020)