Affirmative action was supposed to be short-lived. 鈥淭his is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights,鈥� said US president Lyndon Johnson in 1965, when he introduced it. The idea was that everyone should have the kind of opportunities white males had had for so long 鈥� a good education, college admission and career promotion. It would cease once there was a level playing field. Forty years on, that playing field is still not level. Science really shows the bumps: white and East Asian males over-represented in most disciplines; Blacks, Hispanics, aboriginal peoples and women mostly under-represented. 鈥淚t鈥檚 pretty unacceptable,鈥� says James Hicks at the National Science Foundation.
Numerous programmes are trying to remedy the disparity. In both higher education and the job market, great effort goes into recruitment, and there has been some success. Daryl Chubin at the American Association for the Advancement of Science believes that overall, business is doing better than academia. But he鈥檚 worried that after minority scientists are welcomed in, getting them to stay could become an even bigger problem. The reasons cited vary from outright discrimination to a hostile dominant culture to simply the vague and unsettling feeling of being an outsider.
Eric Ducharme
Civil Engineer, Wardrop Engineering, Winnipeg, Manitoba
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Eric Ducharme grew up in Kinosota, a hamlet of just a few hundred people about two-and-a-half hours鈥� drive north-west of Winnipeg. It鈥檚 a small community, with no piped municipal water, sewerage, garbage pick-up or mail delivery. Like him, the majority of people in the area are aboriginal. Ducharme is a member of the Ebb and Flow Ojibway First Nation. Bright, with good grades and a taste for maths and science, he was exactly the kind of kid the University of Manitoba was interested in recruiting for its 鈥渆ngineering access鈥� programme. A school counsellor saw an advert in the local paper and encouraged him to sign up.
That was in 1987, when the programme was still in its infancy. Everyone agreed that too few aboriginals were making their way into higher education; even today, only 2 per cent of the Ebb and Flow community ever get a university degree, compared to the Canadian national average of 22.6 per cent. The university surmised that aboriginal students needed academic support, along with financial help, when adjusting to big city life, so they hired both a social and an academic counsellor to help the students cope, and gave them a study space where they could share information and hang out. They also knew that the aboriginal students鈥� rural education needed a boost, so the university provided both tutors and remedial classes.
When Ducharme started university at age 17, he brought along his wife and four-month-old baby. The programme helped out with child day-care, tuition and books, and while he studied to become an engineer, his wife had the opportunity to get her nursing credentials. In the eight years it took to complete his degree, his wife moved back home to work and the couple had three more children. 鈥淪he pursued her career back home and I stayed at university and studied,鈥� he recalls. 鈥淚t was quite a tough programme. You couldn鈥檛 really take a day off, and that included weekends.鈥�
Straight from his degree, Ducharme was hired as a civil engineer by the Winnipeg-based firm Wardrop Engineering. He designs roads, water networks and sewer lines, and various reconstructions. 鈥淣ever give up,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd follow your dream 鈥� whatever it is鈥�.
Meg Urry
Astronomer, director of the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Meg Urry studied physics in the 1970s at Tufts University, Massachusetts, but the lack of fellow females didn鈥檛 alarm her. 鈥淚 thought it was a historical accident and, if you just waited, more would come in,鈥� she says. That didn鈥檛 happen. Instead, the few women she knew slowly quit. The question of why these talented women chose to leave has preoccupied her ever since.
According to a study published earlier this year by the American Institute of Physics, women account for only 25 per cent of the country鈥檚 physics PhDs. And only about 10 per cent of physics faculty members are women. Female undergraduates, Urry has noticed, are just as enthusiastic, ambitious and hopeful as their male counterparts. But at some point during grad school, she says, women start to doubt themselves.
鈥淔or years, I thought there was something wrong with the way I thought,鈥� she recalls. 鈥淧eople didn鈥檛 understand me.鈥� It is a feeling of alienation familiar to minority groups everywhere, she says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 an implicit discouragement from not having people ahead of you, who look like you or act like you.鈥�
The physics environment, she believes, is particularly hostile to its minorities. When one group is so dominant, certain group traits start to be mistaken for competence, she says, noting that in physics 鈥渢here鈥檚 a high premium for aggression and chest-beating鈥�. Laurie McNeil, department chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dubs it 鈥渃ombat physics鈥�. 鈥淚f you know your kids鈥� names,鈥� says McNeil, 鈥測ou must not be serious.鈥� But for Urry, it鈥檚 tragic so many women miss out on physics because not only is it as compatible as any other career with parenting, you get to do things you really enjoy. For Urry, that means observing and understanding active galaxies.
Erich Jarvis
Neurobiologist, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
ERICH JARVIS was going to be a dancer. He attended New York鈥檚 High School for Performing Arts and was being wooed by a top dance troupe. Then he suddenly decided to head to college and study science instead. He calls it 鈥渁 natural transition鈥� 鈥� the training for both is so rigorous.
By the end of his undergraduate degree, he was hooked on neuroscience and he got a place at Rockefeller University in New York city. As an African American, he also got MARC (Minority Access to Research Careers) funding, provided through the National Institutes of Health to encourage minorities to pursue health-research careers. Jarvis admits he may not have been able to swing either degree without it. Money was tight: his mother had been on welfare for a while, his father had been homeless. 鈥淲e were lower middle class,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 was not like those students who got a car when they graduated. It was the other way around. I had to help my parents.鈥�
Racism has figured more than a few times in his academic life. During an interview for a grad school, they advised him which 鈥渄angerous black neighbourhoods鈥� to avoid. Another school begged him to come because otherwise there wouldn鈥檛 be a single African American in that year. Another made it clear they felt fearful about working with him.
While being an African American in grad school is one thing, being an African American with a solid PhD is quite another. 鈥淪uddenly, the colour of my skin was an advantage,鈥� he says.
Aaron Velasco
Seismologist, University of Texas at El Paso
Aaron Velasco likes to say he is the only Hispanic American seismologist in the US. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know if it鈥檚 actually true,鈥� he jokes, 鈥渂ut it certainly feels like it.鈥�
No surprises there: according to official statistics, no other field of science has attracted fewer minorities than the geosciences. Out of some 20,000 PhDs awarded in the geosciences in the past three decades, a grand total of 263 went to Hispanic Americans. 鈥淕o to the American Geophysical Union,鈥� challenges Velasco. 鈥淭here are 10,000 people and a handful of minorities.鈥�
Still, Velasco has always seen himself as a scientist who just happens to belong to an ethnic minority. One East Coast college offered him a fully funded graduate position, but made it clear it was only because of his last name. He turned the offer down.
But in the last couple of years, he had a change of heart and has begun to speak out as a minority scientist: 鈥淓leven years after my PhD, I gave my first diversity talk.鈥�
He now believes that the voices of minority scientists need to be better heard. 鈥淢any times there鈥檚 not a full appreciation of how institutional barriers affect kids,鈥� he observes. Especially when some of the country鈥檚 most prestigious national labs have a lingering white-male culture and the administrators and academics see no sense in actively recruiting minorities of any kind.
So Velasco became a board member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and has taken positions on various outreach committees in an attempt to encourage more minority students to consider seismology as a course and a career.
He is grateful to his supervisor 鈥� a non-Hispanic 鈥� who 鈥渟howed me the way to be a scientist鈥�, but laments the lack of role models generally for young Hispanic scientists.
Young students who think they can鈥檛 survive the rigours of grad school often draw strength from people who went before them. 鈥淭hey can think: 鈥楾his person came from my neighborhood and they succeeded鈥�,鈥� says Velasco.