By Chris McManes -July '08

When Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), majority whip of the House of Representatives, was a schoolteacher in east Charleston, S.C., he witnessed firsthand the hardships many black youngsters encountered in school. As the keynote speaker at a recent event for those interested in increasing the number of African Americans working in high-tech careers, he shared some of those stories.

“I learned very early what it was like to see a child come to school and try to study, try to perform well and be hungry,” Clyburn said. “Or see them at their third- or fourth-period class, knowing full well that all they had for breakfast was a Pepsi Cola, or something of that sort that had enough caffeine in it to give them the energy they needed to get through the day. I learned that watching those young people.

“But in that school, in a number of those classes, there were young people there that I knew if they’d got the opportunity, would make significant contributions to this great world of ours.”

Clyburn’s remarks came at a Capitol Hill event organized by the Benjamin Banneker Institute for Science and Technology in the Rayburn House Office Building on 3 June. The six-hour gathering of more than 60 included engineers, scientists, college professors, military personnel, entrepreneurs, association and industry representatives, a school superintendent and two teachers from McKinley Technology High School, a Washington, D.C., public school, among others.

Like Clyburn, event organizers want to provide opportunities for black children that put them on the path to a successful career. The Banneker Institute is most interested in steering youngsters toward careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

“The Decade of Blacks in Science”

The Banneker Institute was established under congressional mandate in 2003 and receives federal funds. Its mission is to serve as a catalyst in the pursuit of increased African-American participation in STEM careers. In 2007, it declared “The Decade of Blacks in Science,” a national effort to promote STEM outreach activities at the local level.

One of the key elements of “The Decade of Blacks in Science” is its Network of Networks, through which, “Black science membership organizations will work with educators to increase the quality of science and math education available in educationally disadvantaged K-12 classrooms. In addition, it will mobilize Black scientists to add their voices, their unique perspectives and their creativity to the national conversation surrounding important science policy issues like national competitiveness, alternative energy, and global warming.”

Claudia Pharis, president of the Banneker Institute, is quick to point out that although African-American science organizations would be expected to have a natural affinity and interest in the effort, she welcomes the participation of all science and engineering associations.

“We can wait for national action on this issue, [but] what’s the possibility we’re going to have school-finance equity in the next 10 years,” Pharis said. “Or we can mobilize the 500,000 African-American STEM professionals and rescue our children ourselves.”

Reaching Out to Help Children

Clyburn, just the second African American to hold the House majority whip position, told event participants about a couple of youngsters he helped to free from the misfortune of life in east Charleston. His pride in their achievements was evident in his voice and on his face. One young man, John Brooks, whom Clyburn had just received an e-mail from that day, is now a physician in Chesapeake, Va.

“He was not supposed to succeed,” said Clyburn, adding that in the e-mail Brooks told him how proud he was of Clyburn, not for what he was doing, “but I am so proud of having been taught by you.”

Clyburn next spoke about one of Brooks’ classmates, Ralph Dawson.

“I knew when he sat in my class that this was a young man who needed the kind of assistance that would be necessary for him to be successful,” he said. “He lived in what we called in those days, ‘the projects,’ on Jackson Street on Charleston’s east side. Today, he is a very successful Wall Street lawyer.”

Dawson, who attended Yale University and was a roommate of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, is a Democratic superdelegate. Soon after he left teaching, Clyburn recalled receiving word that Dawson had been expelled from school.

“I got in my car, went to the school and I talked to the teacher,” Clyburn said. “And she told me, yes, she kicked him out. I told her I understood why and I believed she was justified. I said, ‘But we can’t lose Ralph. If he doesn’t get back in school, he’s just going to be out there with the group that calls themselves the ‘Jackson Street Panthers,’ which was a gang — and every one of them ended up in prison.”

Clyburn said the teacher told him that if he brought Dawson back to school and he apologized in front of the class, she would reinstate him. Dawson didn’t like the idea, so Clyburn had to use a little friendly persuasion

“I explained to him — and you could explain things a little differently in those days — I told him, ‘You’re going to get in this car and you’re going back to stand in front of the class and you’re going to apologize to the teacher, or else,” Clyburn recalled among laughter. “Of course, he wanted to know what ‘or else’ meant. And I splained to him — from the vernacular — what he was going to have to do if he didn’t get in the car. He didn’t want to run that risk and I’m glad he didn’t.

“We went back and he did apologize. He did finish high school, he did go on to college, he did get a scholarship to Yale University, and he is a very successful lawyer today.”

A Role for Technology

The Network of Networks’ first event was the 3 June roundtable. Attendees were split into seven groups to discuss the many aspects of increasing African-American STEM participation. Each group gave a brief summary of its vision to the larger gathering. The ideas were collected and are available as conference proceedings [1].

Other featured speakers included Vice Admiral Adam Robinson, the surgeon general of the Navy; and David Owens, an IEEE member and vice president of the Edison Electric Institute.

“If we [the United States] are to maintain our worldwide competitiveness, it’s all going to be about technology,” Owens said. “It’s going to be mobilizing our young people to get into these very significant fields.”

Owens, who served as emcee, also read a statement from Dr. John Brooks Slaughter, president and CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) and former chancellor of the University of Maryland, College Park.

Slaughter, an IEEE Life Fellow, was unable to attend because of recent surgery.

“Modern technology offers us the opportunity to pursue shared objectives in a manner that in years past would have been very difficult or nearly impossible,” Slaughter wrote. “The Internet is being used to mobilize people, resources and information in unprecedented ways, suggesting that Internet space represents the next level of social organization. The point of this gathering is to align our community in a manner that enables us to access the power of the 21st century, to pool our efforts so that there are shared benefits for ourselves and for our progeny.

“The Network of Networks is being promoted by the Banneker Institute in an effort to draw the African-American community into the Internet Age.”

African-American STEM Participation Lags Behind

While college is a virtual necessity for enjoying a STEM career, blacks continue to be under-represented in STEM degrees. In engineering, for example, statistics gathered by the American Association of Engineering Societies showing the percentages of U.S. engineering degrees awarded to U.S. citizens, point to a relatively low black achievement rate.

Although African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they earned just 5.2 percent (3,673) of the engineering degrees awarded to U.S. citizens (70,749) in 2006. Asian Americans, by contrast, make up a little more than 4 percent of the population, but received 13.7 percent (9,719) of those degrees. Hispanic Americans, representing about 14 percent of people in the United States, earned approximately 7 percent (4,957) of engineering degrees.

The Commission on Professionals in Science & Technology published an analysis of minority employment in STEM occupations from 1994 to 2004 and concluded that the percentage of blacks in STEM occupations in 2004 was 6.2 percent. This was down one percentage point from its high of 7.2 percent in 2000, but up from 1994, when it stood at 5.5 percent. Representation in engineering occupations mirrored the 2006 degree stats: 5.5 percent in 2000 and 5.1 percent in 2004.

The half a million African Americans working as scientists, engineers, mathematicians and other high-tech professionals contribute to the U.S. black community’s enormous wealth. NACME’s Slaughter said the community’s combined GDP would rank it as the 16th-largest economy in the world.

“In spite of this wealth of resources, in spite of all the brain trust that we have in this room, in spite of all the renowned African-American scientists that we have, we have problems in our community,” Slaughter wrote. “Our children languish at the bottom of the educational ladders in this society and therefore, at the bottom of the ranks of the future STEM stars.”

In addition to the Networks of Networks, “The Decade of Blacks in Science” includes five other programmatic components: opening 10 National Association of Black Engineers junior chapters around the country; holding a biennial regional strategy session to help develop local outreach programs; convening an annual strategy session with science membership organizations; launching media campaigns; and hosting an annual awards ceremony.

“We also know that we have a very long way to go before we achieve educational equity in this country,” Slaughter wrote. “Now, and this is the point of the Network of Networks, we can sit around and wait for that to happen and risk losing yet another generation of children, or we can take advantage of the technological tools available to us and step in and rescue our children for ourselves.

“I vote for the latter strategy.”

To learn more about the Benjamin Banneker Institute for Science & Technology and what you can do to promote its initiatives, go to www.thebannekerinstitute.org.

Chris McManes is IEEE-USA's public relations manager. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.