What Manner of Black Science?
What Manner of Black Science?
The Author Gets Personal. Part Two
Somebody asked me over at Quora, that slackpool of bots, trolls and conventional wisdom, why there aren’t as many black scientists as white scientists. Yes Virginia there is such a thing as a stupid question, many of which are actually worth answering - the first time. So I offered the following which is personally illuminating and may ultimately be selected as part of whatever I call my memoir.
September 2022
In 1985, I was a national officer for the National Society of Black Engineers, (NSBE). At the time, there were about 6,000 members who would show up at the national conventions. The first one I attended was in Atlanta at the Omni Hotel. I remember another we held in Boston at the Copley Place Marriott. Another one we had in Washington DC. Every year since, the national convention is held in a major facility in a large American city. This past year (2022) it was held at the Anaheim Convention Center. If I remember correctly there were over 11,000 registered for the event.
Now those are just numbers, it tells you very little about what’s going on. What is important to me about such an organization may be different than what’s important to you, and all of that changes over time. Some years I don’t even think about NSBE, so it’s not necessarily a continuous function. Here’s what I remember.
I got to meet black astronauts. Guy Bluford. I got to know about Mae Jemison, and of course I had a crush on her. I got to meet black generals. I got to meet the black man who ran a major division of Ford Aerospace. I got to meet the black man who ran Xerox Special Information Systems and the man whose African American art collection was the biggest in the country. Ever heard of Chuck Phillips? Met him too.
Basically as an undergrad, I was put in contact with a stellar array of men and women I presumed to exist, just had no idea how to reach. I became an insider. I was able within moments, to take all of this achievement and excellence for granted. I like to tell the story of going to the library as a freshman and pulling out a thick book called Who’s Who Among Black Americans. I could pick 300 at random who were scientists whose last name started with B. Easy. That’s as many friends as I need in life.
If it were a priority for you to network and get to know black American scientists it would be easy. But if you want to make some kind of sketchy racial claim based on who knows what, what do you really know? Is that a racial conjecture backed up by real world experimentation, or just provocative rhetoric trolling for likes? I have the friends, so I don’t need the surveys. There’s a black polymath here in Quora too. I forget his name, but he has awards. If I remember correctly he started out at Caltech.
Speaking of Quora, I’ve only ever had one consistent thing to say about black Americans, whom I make very few presumptions about, which is that their actual diversity is infrequently recognized and respected
I’m lucky to have the friends I do. My besties in college, aside from my frat brothers were all extraordinary. My morning workout buddy got his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. He used to joke that whenever he wanted to buy a fur coat for his girlfriend, he had to design a new missile system. He plays bass in a reggae band. My roommate quickly mastered diff and got an internship, within a couple weeks he figured out that he was calculating nuclear yields. We thought about becoming submariners, but decided against it. He worked for Sealaunch and has made more trips to Baikonur and Diego Garcia than he can count or tell me. My best friend after college did a EE+CS at USC and graduated two years early. He must have a dozen patents. We did a couple business ventures together, threw some awesome parties. His dad was the major designer of the navigation systems for the Saab Viggen and the autopilot for the US Space Shuttle. One of my closest friends basically wrote all of the video driver kernel stuff for Android, and I stood up at the wedding of a dean at Georgia Tech.
So that’s a sample size of 6, none of whom is in the above picture of extraordinarily talented friends. What could I possibly know? But I always love this cartoon, which is about 30 years old.
November 2022
Part of the reason I feel comfortable with my distance from that which Americans sloppily place at the feet of ‘black culture’ (insert TikTok video here) is that, as I wrote, I got in touch with the people I actually like. It wasn’t easy. It’s not easy to find the kind of friends to whom you would trust your front door key, but they are obviously worth it.
Over a decade ago was when ‘nigger’ became the N-word. As Cobb, I cut a video with what I suspected communicated all that had to be said on the subject. Let me be terse in the same sense as the above paragraph. Of all the people in the world, and of all the African Americans living or dead, if the ones you envy are those who are freely expected without fear of reproach to call themselves, their friends and their enemies niggers, why hesitate to join them? It can’t be that difficult. You only need the permission of your niggers. Once you have it, suddenly you should realize that’s just you and your crew. It ain’t like Visa and Mastercard, accepted everywhere you go.
Even so, getting in where you fit in, doesn’t mean you stay there. I don’t feel particularly apostate in any regard, but I certainly recognize that although I accepted a few scholarships from the LA Council of Black Professional Engineers, I never joined that organization. I only remembered it while thinking about the context of internships and scholarships I earned back then. Scoping out their website I was rather shocked that I knew five of the eight board members. Now I have to get in touch.
At any rate, I had been the person that’s glad there are several black folks in any business situation because then I wouldn’t have to solely represent. I’m fairly sure that by my mid 30s I stopped trying and caring. But I got what I needed in my early 20s so that I didn’t feel isolated or exceptional. I got into computer science for the love of it, for my temperamental fit with it and because I understood it to be a way to know the world of non-bullshit.
My actual career in the business has been an interesting set of adventures, but back in ‘99 on I got into serious spat with a managerial superior. You see I wanted to talk about tech futures of our product on some early forum. Was it Yahoo? Anyway, hearing that I could be instantly fired for revealing product direction clammed me up. As a writer I was made for open source, alas born too soon. Still, I keep my pseud from those days, Cubegeek, and that domain. Consequently, everything that I write about my work is held rather close to the vest. I’ve signed so many NDAs and been bonded for work in multiple countries. I prefer to tell tales at bars with professional colleagues or off the cuff in actual sales pitches or classes I teach. So on the whole, there is the Cubegeek diary and not much else. I don’t think it makes for compelling writing. Which is rather the point.
You can do the work, or you can talk about doing the work. Talking about doing the work, unless it is actually part and parcel of doing the work, is a waste of time. It’s not interesting to anyone who isn’t a direct beneficiary of the work. Save it for your resume.