Saying something is apolitical is like saying someone is speaking with "unaccented English". It just means it contains the politics of the status quo.
Most of the time, the accent of the person speaking is irrelevant to the topic at hand but at the same time, denying that it exists is an act of obfuscation. We should all be able to recognize the politics that come embedded with our positions and talk about how those inflections affect how they color the topic.
The problem with that simile is that to conduct science requires a commitment to an objective reality to guide progress. There is an ideal to strive towards. If English was something encoded into the very fabric of reality itself then there would be such a thing as unaccented English or at least objective standards of accent.
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Saying something is apolitical is like saying someone is speaking with "unaccented English". It just means it contains the politics of the status quo.
Most of the time, the accent of the person speaking is irrelevant to the topic at hand but at the same time, denying that it exists is an act of obfuscation. We should all be able to recognize the politics that come embedded with our positions and talk about how those inflections affect how they color the topic.
The problem with that simile is that to conduct science requires a commitment to an objective reality to guide progress. There is an ideal to strive towards. If English was something encoded into the very fabric of reality itself then there would be such a thing as unaccented English or at least objective standards of accent.