Do Talent and Brilliance Have a Color?
Professor Brian Burt addresses the underrepresentation of Black men in STEM fields.
As a graduate student, Brian Burt attended social gatherings with students of color who worked in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). He heard about their struggles in classrooms where no one else looked like them. “People made an assumption that they weren’t good enough,” he says.
Now, as a professor in the UW School of Education, Burt has drawn on 10 years of research for Black Males in Engineering, a web initiative that aims to increase the number of Black men in STEM.
“Black males make up only 2 percent of graduate students in STEM, and it’s been stagnant for more than five decades,” Burt says. “So even with millions of dollars going toward changing these numbers, it isn’t working.”
What is the Black Males in Engineering project?
It’s a website that has articles based on my work with Black male graduate students, along with five short videos. With each video, there’s an interactive handout that offers context, statistics, and a series of questions for reflection. Parents, K–12 teachers, advisers, and college faculty can use them with individuals or groups.
Each video and handout targets a different audience. For example, one set talks about how to play with children and increase their curiosity. Another handout offers a question for college advisers: “What assumptions do I make about what talent, brilliance, and high achievement look like?” This asks them to reflect on whether they think talent and brilliance have a color, a race, a gender. Throughout the project, we’re asking people to interrogate their assumptions.
How can your approach lead to progress?
The website is a tool for conversation and self-reflection and also something that can be put into action with workshops, panels, and community events.
My barber was a panelist at one of our events, and it was touching to hear his response to the videos. He wondered if he might have gone into STEM if he hadn’t been disciplined as a child for breaking things and putting them back together — if somebody had helped him to think of that as an asset rather than as something bad. The videos also made him reflect on how he might have parented his sons differently. So the project is giving people hope.
What is a key takeaway from Black Males in Engineering?
Increasing the number of Black males in STEM would increase the number of brilliant thinkers who could contribute to solving the nation’s and world’s grandest challenges. Everyone — parents, siblings, peers, mentors — can play a role.