I am rather surprised to fined that my wikipedia entry about me is gone. As a Mexican American who together with my husband discovered the first example of a predator locating it’s prey by the prey item’s sexual signal. My name was included in a major paper on crickets because I did a lot of the actual research, too. My work with integrating handicapped kids into the general science classroom was brought to the attention to the National Science Teacher Association and I was a finalist for teacher of the year 1995. That was ground breaking work! During the Haitian crisis, my work fundraising for ShelterBox went viral and “broke the internet” and hammered the ShelterBox website so much with money somebody here “had to out me” to find out who TexMex was. In 2012, the State of New York honored me by choosing me as part of the Hispanic Americans exhibit at the Hall of Governors for my work as an educator. My illustrations are in a major book on insect physiology. I went on five trips to Africa with Dan Otte collecting insects for a survey of African Orthoperta.
But some how if you look at the talk pages I am just a wife and education is of low importance
Wikipedia makes it clear that they are not responsible for anything because it is created by regular people. I wonder if I was removed because of my politics and BECAUSE I am a Mexican American. I used to be linked to pages with list of notable Mexican Americans. During Hispanic month, teacher could assign kids to use that list to study Hispanic Americans and our accomplishments.
I am not bragging about me. I am just very suspicious that “not white people’ are being erased. Discloser: I wrote my husband’s wikipedia and Dan Otte’s wikipedia and mine a long time ago.
My page was fine for many many years and now it’s gone. Education is low importance, Mexican Americans are low importance. Insects are low importance. It’s right there in the talk pages. They just stuck me into William H. Cade’s page.
Looks like an attack on me because why was I removed? Something stinks. Hispanic kids now have one less person to research on. Someone who is a woman of color in with life in STEM and with impact in education. And before I was deleted I got several emails from from strangers claiming to be from Wikipedia saying they could fix it for me if I emailed them back. I was thinking they needed me to pay them to keep my page up. What other people of color are being erased because they won’t pay someone to keep it up? That really stinks.
Daily Texan highlights Alumnae in Stem