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Why are there so few black people in STEM?

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11–20 of 212 posts

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#11
post #7

Who is getting the rest of the undergrad science degrees if Asians, Blacks, and Whites only account for 74% of them?

Possibly Native Americans/First Peoples, Pacific Islanders, or individuals who self-identify by ethnicity rather than race on these types of reports.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#12

Why are there so few white people in pro basketball?

Pro basketball's viewership is also majority non-white, so there's probably some feedback loop effects going on with the people interested in becoming players in the first place (which then influences the audience, and so on).

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#13
post #10

For the same reason there are so few poor whites in STEM. America's dysfunctional education funding. Make education funding federal, and have a nationwide push to have small classes and well funded schools for everybody, and this would be fixed in 10 years. As it is, rich districts pay more taxes and get better schools. Funny that.

Even something as simple as having state-level funding go into a single pool that then gets divided out per student among the state's public schools would do a lot, by removing the baseline feedback loop of low local tax income with low local school funding.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#14
post #7

Who is getting the rest of the undergrad science degrees if Asians, Blacks, and Whites only account for 74% of them?

Perhaps some come from the 2nd Largest demographic group, Latinx, (about 16% of the population). As another commenter said, that leaves about 9% who don’t fall into these major groups.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#15
post #7

Who is getting the rest of the undergrad science degrees if Asians, Blacks, and Whites only account for 74% of them?

the numbers are from this source: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/digest/field-of-degree-m...

it distinguishes between white (59.3), Asian (10.8), Black or African American (3.9), Hispanic or Latino (10.4), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.3) Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (0.1) and Temporary visa holder (9.3) for Engineering

Edit: and More than one race, unknown, or other (5.9), adds up to 100

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#16
post #7

Who is getting the rest of the undergrad science degrees if Asians, Blacks, and Whites only account for 74% of them?

Possibly Native Americans/First Peoples, Pacific Islanders, or individuals who self-identify by ethnicity rather than race on these types of reports.

Also people of Indian descent, for whom it can sometimes be pretty annoying to get dumped into the 'Asian' bucket.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#17
post #7

Who is getting the rest of the undergrad science degrees if Asians, Blacks, and Whites only account for 74% of them?

the numbers are from this source: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/digest/field-of-degree-m... it distinguishes between white (59.3), Asian (10.8), Black or African American (3.9), Hispanic or Latino (10.4), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.3) Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (0.1) and Temporary visa holder (9.3) for Engineering Edit: and More than one race, unknown, or other (5.9), adds up to 100

[deleted]

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#18

Why are there so few white people in pro basketball?

Because suburbia. The four year old kids are stuck in their cardboard palace and can't go shoot hoops in the public park, even if they would like to. It's inequality baked into the system.

Re: Why are there so few black people in STEM?

#19
post #14
post #7

Who is getting the rest of the undergrad science degrees if Asians, Blacks, and Whites only account for 74% of them?

Perhaps some come from the 2nd Largest demographic group, Latinx, (about 16% of the population). As another commenter said, that leaves about 9% who don’t fall into these major groups.

On modern surveys of this sort (for example, the US Census), 'of Hispanic descent' is usually a separate question entirely from the 'White / Black / Asian / etc' one, in a clumsy attempt to capture the overlap of mixed-ethnicity groups.
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