A 2022 paper by Tara McAllister lists ‘50 reasons why there are no Māori’ in university science departments, giving a range of examples of Māori experience of personal and structural racism within the edifices of science and research in Aotearoa New Zealand. In support of McAllister and the larger social and intellectual project of Kaupapa Māori to which her work contributes, this commentary offers ethnic socio-economic inequality as the ‘51st reason’ and explains how it causes the permanent disparity of very few working scientists who identify as Māori.