Over the past three months, since the release of the curriculum I helped create for the Ham radio project at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), I have been asking myself “how do STEM free us?”—paraphrasing the title of Sonia Sanchez’ play “Uh, Uh; But How Do it Free Us?”
I had to face the stark reality that the lack of diversity in both amateur radio and Radio Astronomy is desirable, because it is still firmly in place after decades of work. After equal-opportunity, affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, and DEI there still aren’t “enough” Black and brown folk in these fields because the white gate keepers not only don’t want us, but they are actively working to keep us out.
When I presented breifings about the project and DEI in STEAM at academic conferences I fielded questions that were asked 30-40 years ago. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of my hosts and fellow attendees, but at the same time I have to ask why so little progress has been made. Why are we still at the same place we were decades ago? What’s in it for Black folk and other People of Culture, as Resmaa Menekem refers to us, to continue to engage with vocations lead by people who still need to “get over themselves” when it comes their antiquated, cultural concept of race?
At least two POC learners in the project, attempting to navigate these choppy waters, asked me what jobs the amateur radio license would help them get. They were asking “How do it free us?” the old question that all of us ask over and over again in this American experiment. They wanted licensure to be a certification that could lead directly to employment, and they were not swayed by my suggestion that amateur radio could be a way of making valuable connections and contacts with potential mentors involved with wireless technology. I am afraid that my stories about how my amateur radio license helped me in wireless careers, from telecommunications to radio astronomy, were not persuasive enough to these young folk who needed a clearer return on their (or their family’s) investment in college education.
I got it. For me, a job brought money that I tried to trade for some modicum of freedom. With a salary, I was able to pay my bills, help my extended family through tough times, and have enough to enjoy my radio hobby and invest. With a “good job” and decent benefits, I was able to reduce the impact of white supremacy in my life because it gave me the privilege of living in neighborhoods that were “safe”, where the police acted to protect people and property instead of to contain the poverty and misery in one place-—or so I thought. But even that small amount of “freedom” was hard fought, and I had mixed success.
Looking back now, I can better see how racism circumscribed my salary, advancement opportunities, and ultimately my engineering career trajectory. I have had to learn that white supremacy is as pervasive and durable as it is profitable.
My father’s and mother’s generation understood that we were never meant to survive after slavery. Their Black teachers charged them with the expectation that they must excel in any field they choose—including “hard” STEM fields. They were our vanguard and pioneered spaces set aside for white men. They wielded their organized power to pry open doors, build bridges and tunnels to bring next generations of Black professionals into academia, corporations, and “safe” neighborhoods. They understood what they (we) were up against—that in the view of the white supremacists there is no place where we belong that was not a cotton or hemp field, “big house.”, or lynching tree.
So, when I think about the thinly veiled racist attacks against efforts to open STEM fields for Black folk and other people of culture, I think about The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the myriad of banal, and often stupid, reasons that white supremacists gave for terrorizing and “unaliving” our Ancestors engraved on the plaques on the memorial walls. (My all-time favorite is “the n—– refused to let the white man best him in a fight.”) When I think about the current unaliving of Black folks who were just living their lives, I had to understand that we will never have enough “merit” to overcome the glass walls and ceilings the white supremacists have built to keep us out and down. They cannot ever allow themselves to conceive of us besting them in a fair fight. Seeking a “safe place” within this system is a fool’s errand. Making a brave place is the only way forward.
We belong anywhere and everywhere in this universe that our hearts, dreams, thirsts for knowledge, and desires take us. We are not visitors or prisoners in this universe, on this planet, in this country, in our skin, or in any STEM/STEAM/STEMM field or art. We do not need anyone’s permission to exist, nor do we need to explain to anyone why we like playing with amateur radio or hacking radio telescopes. We free us.
As educators and mentors for BIPOC STEM learners, I believe we must do three things:
Use our best experience and thinking to prepare learners to thrive during the demographic shift towards a majority minority America. It is this shift that is currently driving the desperate actions of the white supremacists. We can all see the cracks in the old system. The climate emergency is both the result and accelerant of this disruption and there are no real viable solutions—-technological or otherwise—-that can keep white supremacy in place and simultaneously keep our life support system on planet Earth operational. Burning the Earth to escape to Mars is not an option.
Prepare the next generations to vision and build diverse, equitable, inclusive, humane, 7-generational, futures. This will require work beyond the current, limited vision of STEM education that is primarily focused on serving the workforce needs of the military industrial complex and the tech-bros’ dystopian, white supremacist, apartheid futures. We will need to image a world without superficialities such as race and be willing to create it.
Help students shift focus from America to the world, the universe, and beyond. For some time now, I have been advising students—particularly POCs studying engineering—to travel and consider working remotely or onsite for clients in other countries. Why continually bump your head against glass ceilings in this country when there are other places that will welcome you and your expertise. Moreover, space is the place as our Ancestor Sun Ra said. I would really love for “first contact” to be made with a diverse team of humans who truly represent this planet.
We must help learners write themselves into resilient futures. I want them to vision beyond superficial Afrofuturism—the same “us” but with funny glasses and purple hair. I want them to imagine that “us” building new worlds that look more like Martin Luther King’s beloved community. I want them to build a future that does not include homophobia, enslavement, continual war, racism, misogyny, body snatching, and land (planet) theft.
I want them to understand that humans cannot survive a scenario where there is one “brilliant” man who has all the fish from the river described in Derrick Jenson’s “Parable of the Box” in his book A Language Older Than Words. We must not only interrogate why he “needs” all the fish, we must confront the idea of helping him trap more fish than he can eat, and why we, the 99%, should sacrifice ourselves and out planet to satisfy this pathological “need.”
I want them to understand that the only freedom that can exist for them and for us, their soon to be Ancestors, will be in the brave futures we cocreate. Ashe’