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Neil Degrasse Tyson on being Black, and Women in Science

D- Angel2 HN recommenders · 2014–2017
233K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2014-04-22

A short clip of Neil deGrasse Tyson answering a question about why there are not more women in science. He describes the resistance he faced as a Black kid pursuing science and the systemic barriers many people encounter.

Linked in diversity-in-tech threads as a personal, thoughtful answer on systemic barriers for minorities and women in science.

Social issues & cultureScientific method & science communication

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4 comments from Hacker News

@rflrob2014 · in “9th Grade Girls Soldering”

While it's true that women and men aren't the same, I think that there are good reasons to believe the level of inequality we have now is not due solely to natural inclination. This video of Neil deGrasse Tyson on minorities and science is apropos: [VIDEO]

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@geofft2016 · in “Slack got four of its black female engineers to accept a startup award”

> They aren't barred in no way in pursuing these kind of careers Admittedly, this is about (academic) science, not tech, but Neil deGrasse Tyson disagrees: [VIDEO]

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@some-guy2016 · in “Why Tech Degrees Are Not Putting More Blacks and Hispanics into Tech Jobs”

Medicine has many more barriers to entry: schooling, debt, etc. I'm a white high school dropout, but I got a developer position at age 27 after rushing through a CS degree later in live which took about ~3 years. I work 40 hours a week and get a very livable $100k+ salary plus stock and benefits with negligible student debt all things considered (~$30k). My point being, in a vacuum, getting on track to making a good wage as a developer has a lot fewer barriers with the lack of medical school and debt. Not to mention the free time I have outside of work and regular hours. Salary isn't everything. I cannot speak for people of color and their experience who want to go through the same process as me. There are all kinds of barriers they experience that I don't. Neil DeGrasse Tyson (I know, I know...) had a good answer to the silly question "What's with chicks in science?", and the cultural / systemic barriers he had to go through to reach that point in life [1]. 1: [VIDEO]

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@MattRix2017 · in “Brief thoughts on the “Google memo””

The problem is that there still are strong systemic biases at work. Once we get that fixed, maybe we can move on to the nitty gritty statistics of exactly what is nature/nurture etc. At this moment it's pointless. It reminds me of this: [VIDEO]

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