In the February 2016 issue of The Physics Teacher, we announced a call for papers on race and physics teaching. The response was muted at first, but has now grown to a respectable chorale-sized volume. As the manuscripts began to come in and the review process progressed, Geraldine Cochran graciously agreed to come on board as co-editor for this remarkable collection of papers, to be published throughout the fall of 2017 in TPT. Upon reviewing the original call and the responses from the physics community, the parallels between generating this collection and the grand call-and-response tradition became compelling. What follows is a conversation constructed by the co-editors that is intended to introduce the reader to the swell of voices that responded to the original call. The authors would like to thank Pam Aycock for providing many useful contributions to this editorial.

1.
Gary
White
, “
Race and physics teaching, and the fair: A call to all physics educators for manuscripts on a rarely discussed topic
,”
Phys. Teach.
54
,
70
(
Feb.
2016
).
2.
Gary
White
, “
Integration…by parts
,”
Phys. Teach.
51
,
328
(
Sept.
2013
).
3.
It never occurred to me to ask what “Ooh nigh neck” meant, nor am I sure I even have the words right, but it is the phrase and phonetics that I remember. Geraldine has cleverly suggested that it might be related to a colloquialism with which we are both familiar, “talking out of the side of your neck,” to mean when someone is exaggerating or flat-out lying.
4.
See also
Moses
Rifkin
, “
Addressing underrepresentation: Physics teaching for all
,”
Phys. Teach.
54
,
72
(
Feb.
2016
); this groundbreaking article about bringing diversity conversations into the high school physics classroom complements the Daane et al. article nicely. We consider it a key part of the collection.
5.
This was at the 2017 AAPT Summer Meeting workshop “
An Introduction to Race, Ethnicity, and Equity in Physics Education
” by
Vashti
Sawtelle
,
Katemari
Rosa
, and
Abhilash
Nair
.
6.
See “
Statement on Fisher v. University of Texas (2016)
” by the
AAPT Committee on Diversity in Physics
,
Phys. Teach.
54
,
326
(
Sept.
2016
). This article is also a key part of the collection.
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