Eli CahanFor Earyn McGee, terminology matters.McGee, a herpetologist, studies the habitat and behavior of Yarrow’s spiny lizard, a reptile native to the southwestern United States.
The University of Arizona graduate student and her colleagues regularly pack their things—boots, pens, notebooks, trail mix—and set off into the nearby Chiricahua Mountains.
At their field site, they start an activity with a name that evokes a racist past: noosing.“Noosing” is a long-standing term used by herpetologists for catching lizards.
But for McGee, a Black scientist, the term is unnerving, calling to mind horrific lynchings of Black people by white people in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Being the only Black person out in the middle.