Astro Hobo

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day got me thinking about the almost complete lack of black people in Astronomy. I'm trying to remember how many African Americans I saw at the American Astronomical Society meeting a week ago. Other than two who showed up at an educational and public outreach session from a local DC college, I really can't think of any. There were probably a few, but certainly not many. While I was in graduate school there was one black professor at my University, who recently died, and I know his one black student who graduated around the time I did and is now a professor at a school in the south. The very sad thing is, using just the information in that last sentence, the school I went to and the two people I am talking about can probably be identified. It really is that bad. I think the current fraction of "visible minorities" in the AAS is something like 0.5%, and there aren't many signs of that changing in the near future. This is about 1/20 of the representation in the general populace, an amazingly low amount.

I don't think it is merely discrimination, at least not present discrimination. For example, I don't think that black people are discriminated against much worse than women are. Officially, of course, there is no explicit institutional discrimination anymore, but there is of course plenty of prejudice out there. However, even though women are systematically taken less seriously than their male counterparts, their numbers have been growing. Right now, something like 1/4 of astronomers are women, and it isn't unusual for there to be one or two female faculty in a typical physics and astronomy department. Not great, but at least something. A black astronomy professor though is still a very rare find.

Being an astrophysicist, I can, of course, put forth an hypothesis. Simply put, the descendents of slaves in this country are maintaining a sub-culture with values reflecting the values imposed by slaveowners. Slaves were supposed to be physically strong but ignorant and express themselves only through religion and song. Today, those in black leadership roles are still mostly athletes, entertainers, or religious leaders. Astronomy, however, is a purely intellectual activity with little practical or commercial purpose. It is brain candy, completely curiosity driven. There is a strong anti-intellectual strain in American society, and in the black sub-culture, it is very strong. Education for the purpose of gaining social, political or economic power is somewhat acceptable in black society. But education whose sole purpose is to satisfy intellectual curiosity? Is that acceptable? I would say the statistics of black professional astronomers suggest it isn't.

Now why is there such an anti-intellectual culture? Partly because of poverty. Such things as intellectual curiosity which may lead to a career in astronomy may seem very impractical to somebody who grew up in a household where making the rent each month is an uncertain event. Certainly most astronomers come from middle to upper-class families, but I've also met quite a few that come from very poor backgrounds. So, if we assume 1/2 underrepresentation due to prejudice in the academic community (assuming similarity with women) and another 1/2 due to lower economic status, that still is only 1/4. Now I'm not completely convinced of the importance of role models, especially in astronomy (I think most astronomers probably got interested through science fiction, where aliens are acceptable people) but it could be an important factor. There have been notable female astronomers for a century but essentially no famous black astronomers, and very few famous black scientists in general. So allow another 1/2 for lack of role models. That makes 1/8, still not enough.

Ultimately, I think a substantial portion of the blame has to be laid on religion. While some astronomers are active members of religious organizations, most astronomers are either atheists or agnostics. The existence and role of gods and spiritual beings in the universe is not really addressed by astronomy. However, the human and earth centric dogma of many religions is. Astronomy tells us we are very small, and there are possibly billions of other places in the universe where life could exist. Also, to be an astronomer, you have to be willing to question all that we think we know about the universe. Most religions, especially the variants of christianity that the American slaves were indoctrinated in, view God as being solely concerned with humans on Earth, and the creation of the Universe really just the creation of Earth and "heaven", whatever is meant by that. There is no room for billions of galaxies in such a place. Also, questioning and testing everything we think we know is not generally something that is welcome in churches which are based on faith. I'm guessing that the strong role that churches play in American black society is alot of the reason that we don't have very many black astronomers.