This is going to be controversial. Black folks in STEM who want to do a PhD, I think we have to be real. There's not a lot of us in the US. So, we need to be extremely careful about which fields to go into because some of them are straight up toxic like ... *cough* Economics...

...It goes beyond the field. Some departments have a horrible track record with black students. They take brilliant, optimistic young black people and they break them. Every time a black person drops out of STEM it breaks my heart..

...I think we need to name these places. Shaming them is optional. The main point is to make sure they don't waste any more black potential. I think black people in STEM need to be more careful than other groups...

...I knew a black master's student who was a really bright student and full of life when she entered her program. By the end of it, she was so bitter about the way she'd been excluded. She'd been given the message that the school didn't care about her or her potential...

...This is the message a lot of black students get in their programs. Whether it's the bigotry of low expectations or indifference or active exclusion, the message is the same, that you don't have anything worth investing in...

...Whether you're a black person, an ally or a person who "doesn't see color", you should want black people to do well in STEM because it's the path toward a better future where all of us can worry less about racism and focus on other things in life that matter to all of us...

...I listened to a podcast once with an early woman pioneer in business. She said she only did projects that had objective numerical measures of performance. The idea was that she didn't trust men to be fair judges of her work. I think that's part of the answer...

...It might be wise for black people in STEM to concentrate in fields that have objective numerical measures of the quality of our work...

...For non-black people who want to be allies. Please remember that there aren't a lot of black folks in STEM and it's not just about that one person you might be interacting with, it's also about the whole community so be careful...

...Academic culture is individualistic. We academics want to rate each person as an individual and only think about the benefits or harms to that one person. This works because for most successful groups in academia, their collective interests are represented within academia...

...Rugged individualism works less well for those of us who have little to no collective representation within academia. There's no one to speak for us when something is deeply offensive to us, excludes us and makes us want to leave the field...

...I've taken a lot of inspiration from women in science because women have gone from a minority to a majority in many science areas in my own lifetime. I don't want to speak to their experiences but it seems like it takes a critical mass sometimes...

...Even though white women grow up in the same homes as white men, it's taken years of directed effort to raise their participation in STEM. I think it's going to take at least that much effort to raise black participation ...

...I'll just close by saying I don't know all the answers but I'm hoping to start a conversation about how we can create an independent, self-sustaining critical mass of black people in STEM.