I remember being in a history lesson and saying to my teacher, 'How come you never talk about black scientists and inventors and pioneers?' And she looked at me and said, 'Because there aren't any.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist.
When I went to school, there were no Black philosophers, at least none that I was aware of, who were recognized by Western universities.
I did a book in 1996, an overview of black history. In that process I became more aware of a lot of the black inventors of the 19th century.
Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.
Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.
I came into my teens unaware that most Americans, blacks as well as whites, were ignorant of the main facts of Negro history. And so it was the facts of other histories that I found most intriguing. I fell into a U.S. history major by chance late in my second year at Fisk University.
Kids that I went to school with didn't know how to interact with black people like that. There were only, like, three or four black kids in the class.
I'll give you an example. Henry, the old black guy who cooks the corn bread, he worked on the railroads for about 20 years so he knows how to lay and build track.
If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist.
I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ice hockey...' - and then I used to say 'golf,' but Tiger took over golf! - 'and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades.'