When Gene Roddenberry’s starship Enterprise explored new frontiers
science fiction in his show Star Trek, he cast a diverse team of actors
to portray the rocket scientists of the future.
Last fall, the rocket scientists starring in the real-life drama of
the Pathfinder, a toysized space vehicle roaming the Martian terrain,
were all White men.
“Don’t you find it almost alien, in the fall of 1997, that there is
no person of color — forget about gender — no person of color [who]
was a part of this enterprise?” asks Dr. Luther S. Williams, assistant
director of Education and Human Resources at the National Science
Foundation (NSF). In this position, he is gatekeeper to approximately
$100 million in federal funds. aimed at increasing the ranks of
underrepresented groups in the sciences.
Williams’s observations are anomalous within the scientific
community. The Pathfinder mission’s monochromatic casting is
characteristic of a persistent and almost unquestioned phenomenon
throughout science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET, to
use the National Science Foundation terminology) professions —
especially among the senior ranks.
In fact, it is still quite commonplace in today’s SMET communities
to be considered a leader in one’s field and have no African American,
Latino, Native American, or female colleagues.
“[Science] is a prosperous enterprise that, by its definition, is
doing quite well without [minority] participation,” Williams says.
“Because we were not mainstays in the enterprise, the enterprise has
learned to prosper without us, … so there is no overarching incentive
to change.”
Just how scarce are African American scientists? Consider the following:
