“African Americans and Hispanics are underrepresented across all [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] job clusters,” according to a 2018 study by Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan fact tank. These job clusters include health-related professions, math, computer-related fields, physical science, engineering and life sciences. The latter two accounts for the lowest percentages of African American employees and professionals.
Winthrop students in various STEM fields share their perspectives on African American representation and how that influences their insights and motivations.
“It is disheartening to see the lack of people of color in this field,” Alexzondrea Harrison, a senior environmental studies major said. “I understand that there are many stigma or stereotypes about the environmental field but it is important to encourage African Americans and people of color to become more educated on this subject.”
Issues like gentrification and environmental racism continue today in people of color’s neighborhoods. Lack of education on these subjects perpetuates them, according to Harrison.
Harrison also said there is a lack of African Americans as STEM educators, calling for more professors and advisors that represent other races.
“It is important for African American students to see professionals that look like them in this area. It is a majority white, male-dominated subject but I feel as though we can shift that narrative,” Harrison said. “I would especially enjoy seeing multiple black women at the forefront.”
Chandani Mitchell, a senior biology major, said that voices from people of color are suppressed as a result of under representation. Diversity can open a lot of opportunities for perspectives.
“Diversity allows new ideas to be formulated, different skills sets to come together and allows problems to be looked at through different lens and from different backgrounds,” Mitchell said. “And by having underrepresentation of African Americans, we are not giving voice to other perspectives and experiences that may be valuable to the STEM field.”
Despite these obstacles, Mitchell said she feels empowered to perform better and exceed in her profession.
“As an African American Muslim woman I find that I will always have to work hard towards becoming a better scientist. I am constantly aiming to improve myself, learn from the challenges I am faced with, and to show others like me that it is possible to become whoever they aspire to become. I have been honored with the opportunity to do things now that I did not think I would be doing in the past, and I hope that others can see that they too are capable of studying in a hard science field. What it takes is dedication, and a lot of hard work,” Mitchell said.
Ta’Niss Robinson, senior psychology major, said it was really hard for African Americans to enter the psychology field several decades ago.
“Then a couple broke the barriers. Two black psychologists are behind the research that helped Brown v. Board of Education,” Robinson said.
These individuals were Kenneth and Mamie Clark, who created the Clark doll experiment in to illustrate the impact of segregation on African American children.
Demographics on participants in psychological studies were mostly white, unless these studies were geared toward African American populations. Robinson said trends today are improving with more diversity in sample size demographics.
“It’s getting better little by little. It wasn’t there in the beginning, but as the years have gone by, people are picking it up,” Robinson said. “People are being called out about certain samples being too generalized or unrepresentative. Researchers are having to look outside of their normal sample ranges to find more representative people.”
Robinson is also the president of the Psychology Club, a student organization for psychology majors, minors and anyone interested in the field. The organization hosted a mini-event on Feb. 7 about the contributions of African American psychologists to the field, society and even history. Before the event, Robinson looked forward to learning a lot about black history in the field.
“This is in honor of Black History Month, and it’s to bring awareness,” Robinson said. “We’ve included people like the first African American male and female to get their PhDs in psychology, the first African American president of the American Psychological Association, and others. We’ve done a lot of great things, and people just don’t know about it.”
