BLACK in STEM

A spoken word by brianna mattis

I’m Black

Black again

Black in STEM

Blacker than the ink that flows out my pen

as I balance equations and juggle probabilities

Like what’s the possibility that you’ll see me before you have surgery? 

That I won’t be the help that you think you deserve…

“No ma’am I’m not the assistant, nurse, janitor, or scribe…I’m your doctor.”

It’s BLACK that’s holding your life.

I’m Black as Br2 in test tubes

“But bro, what do you mean? That’s BROWN!”

Well, Brown is Black too

Like rich soil that gives and takes

and helps grow u from the bottom up

It’s your roots finding nutrients in dark places 

where even the sun don’t shine

cuz it can’t compete with Black

Black is oil, crude

Spewing and sputtering and making things move 

It’s life,    and it’s also death too

It’s melanin shielding and melanin bruised

To be BLACK in STEM first meant to be subject to scientific racism

Like no, “sit here, stay still. This won’t hurt a bit. STAY STILL!”

because sometimes, many times, for a very long time, Black meant to be Red

To bleed freely on a land that was never truly free

Black is the beginning

Whether we were there or not

because “let there be light,” could only mean that there was dark first

Black is showing up and taking up space (since we matter)

in predominantly white classrooms with white boards

raising brown hands high and being called the name of the other Black kid in class.

Laughing awkwardly in unison with the professor, because Black really is beautiful even though he might not see it from up front.

Black is inventions that would leave Einstein, Edison, and Everybody astounded

It’s the invention of the search engine, ultraviolet camera, laserphaco, gas mask, blood bank, laser fuels, fire extinguishers, cellphones, urinalysis machines, toilets, peanut butter, and POTATO CHIPS… 

Need I go on?

Black is the night that only makes way for the day

Black is the depths of even the bluest of seas

Black is the space that we so long to know more of

Black are the ashes that new life sprouts from

and Black is the board upon which I write 

that what my heart and skin have demanded I declare

“Why is it that we’re always talking about Black this and Black that?

Can’t we scrap it, cap it,           or ship it back?”

Well I hear you…I do!

You sneeze out “isn’t every color important?”

And I say bless you,

but honey when you mix in every hue what else are you gonna get?

but closer to BLACK.