In this week’s episode, both our storytellers examine the importance of diversity and representation in science – and not just in their research sample.
Part 1: While serving on a diversity panel, biologist Latasha Wright is asked if representation in STEM matters, prompting her to reflect on her experiences.
Latasha Wright, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, received her Ph.D. from NYU Langone Medical Center in cell and molecular biology. She continued her scientific training at Johns Hopkins University and Weill Cornell Medical Center. She has co-authored numerous publications, presented her work at international and national conferences. BioBus enables Latasha to share her love of science with a new generation of scientists. Latasha spearheaded the creation of the first BioBase community lab, the BioBus internship program, and our Harlem expansion. Everyday that Latasha spends teaching students about science in this transformative environment helps her remember that science is fun. She loves sharing the journey of discovery with students of all ages.
Part 2: Leah Clyburn's childhood experiences with nature – and with bigotry – come together to inform her career in environmentalism.
Leah Clyburn has been organizing in Missouri for almost 10 years now. Starting in Reproductive Justice through a faithful lens, to School to Prison Pipeline and Statewide Policy initiatives, to now Environmental Justice/ Climate Change. She believes that a call out is an invitation to be called into authentic and transformational relationships in order to obtain Environmental Justice for All.
Episode Transcript
Part 1
I'm a cisgendered African-American woman with a PhD in cellular and molecular biology. I'm academia adjacent. Because of these things, I'm always asked to serve on these diversity panels. They're all aptly named Women in Science.
And I always get asked the question does representation matter?
So I was born in rural Mississippi in a predominantly white neighborhood. I'm the youngest of five children. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and my dad was a longshoreman. None of them went to college. Neither one went to college but they really instilled in me the importance of education.
My mom would always say, “Get your education because can’t nobody take that away from you.”
And my dad would say when I came home from school, “Did you learn something new today?”
Latasha Wright shares her story with a limited audience at QED Astoria in Queens, NY in October, 2021. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And I would be like a smartass and be like, “Yeah, I learned stuff new, but I'm not sure you’ll understand.”
And he would be like, “Oh, okay. Tell me about it.”
Then I would be amazed at how much my dad knew because he was a voracious reader. Then we would have these big discussions about what I learned in school.
As you can tell by that little bit of snippet, I was kind of a precocious kid. I like to run around a lot. I like to laugh. I was kind of annoying because I asked why all the time and I really breezed through elementary school. I did get paddled maybe once or twice, but mostly I kind of breezed through.
But when I started middle school, everything changed. That was when I was first noticed by the teachers as being smart. And then I had all of these teachers debating in front of me, like, “Is she really smart? Is she kind of smart or really smart?” I just didn't know what to think of that.
One particular instance really sticks out in my mind. When I went into science class, my name was on big letters on the board and another woman's name Tricia Wages was also in big letters on the board. And our GPA down to three decimal points was written beside our names.
Underneath in this rainbow chalk, the question who would end up on top. And then students and teachers started betting and they started this whole like external rivalry that me and Tricia had no idea, we had no inputs on. It was just outside of their perception that the black kid could be the highest achiever. It just became this cloud that surrounded both of us all the way up until we graduated high school.
So, I don't know. Does representation matter?
I have this cousin her name is Loulabel but we call her Cookie, because, you know, in Mississippi everybody has a nickname. She was smart too but she lived in Alabama and she was four years older than me. My dad was kind of competitive with his brother and she graduated valedictorian of her high school.
So my dad would come to me every now and then, just kind of lean in and be like, “You know, Baby Doll, Cookie graduated valedictorian,” and walk away. It's like, “I got it. I got it.”
So I graduated valedictorian then in high school. I was the first black valedictorian to graduate from Vancleave High School In 86 years. So, does representation matter? I don't know.
After high school I went to college. I went to Tougaloo College, which is a historic black college and university in Mississippi. I was surrounded by black people and black excellence. This was my first time and I was a little bit nervous. But I was just impressed to go here because it was a great school.
I majored in Chemistry and, at the time, none of my professors, none of my science professors were African-American. At this time, 50%, fifty, 5-0 percent of the black doctors in Mississippi graduated from Tougaloo College. So why were there no African-American teachers in the science department? This really struck me as wrong and it became this itch in the back of my head. It made me wonder how would my experience at Tougaloo change if I had African‑American professors. And what would happen if I got my PhD and came back and taught at Tougaloo? I don't know. Does representation matter?
In college, I became a MARC scholar. It's Minority Access to Research Careers. It gave me an opportunity to do research, to go to Johns Hopkins and go to NIH in the summer to do research and I fell in love with science. It was so pure and honest, in my mind at this time, and I was just making discoveries. People were coming to me and asking me stuff. I was pushing boundaries that was going to change the world. It was amazing and I loved it.
And through this scholarship they had national conferences, so we got to go get in the airplane and go to these like really expensive hotels and stay there. We ordered room service and I was thinking I was a big deal.
I remember going to Chicago and they had a phone in the bathroom and I was like, “Ah! I made it!” It was just so great to be around all of these black science nerds from all over, not just in Mississippi but from all over. I just found my people. I met kindred spirits.
My best friends, Charlie and Laura, we're all like, “Let's get this PhD and change the world.” It was just amazing.
Latasha Wright shares her story with a limited audience at QED Astoria in Queens, NY in October, 2021. Photo by Zhen Qin.
Then I decided to go to get my PhD. Then I applied to all of these schools. The application process was horrible. I interviewed all over the country and finally I ended up at NYU. I ended up at NYU because I didn't feel like the minority. I felt like the minorities there were people who were born in the United States.
I was so excited. I wanted to dive into that diversity, the things I had never had in Mississippi. I was like I was ready. So, when we get to orientation, I meet with everybody and they gave us this really beautiful book with all of these professors I could work with. I'm ready to go.
There's 200 professors in this book. So I go home and I'm just looking. I'm going through. I'm deciding. I'm putting my little Post-It's, “Yeah, I want this guy. I want this guy. I'm going to go to this guy.”
Then after I get to the last page of these 200 professors, none of them are African-American. So, does representation matter?
During my graduate career I noticed, I just felt like there needed to be more African‑American people in graduate school, so I started recruiting. I went back to the MARC conferences, got people to come to NYU. Went to HBCUs. Started getting people to come to NYU. Then I realized I wasn't really increasing the number of people who were going to graduate school. It's just that I was taking those limited numbers and concentrating them at NYU and I wanted to do something more. I realized I needed to go to the K-12 space to do that.
So I started volunteering and I loved it. It was great. But at the end of my career, after I graduated, I continued on in academia even though I could never see myself as a professor. But the weight of all of my accomplishments were kind of on my shoulders. I felt like if I have endured all of this and been through so much to graduate, to give it up it's kind of irresponsible.
Because, at that time, only 5% of the PhDs that graduated were African-American. I was thinking, “Am I going to do a disservice to that student that needs a black professor? That needs to commiserate?” So I needed to stay in.
I don't know. Does representation matter?
After college, four years of college, five years of grad school, five years of post-doc, I decided I didn't want to live myself as a placeholder of the African-American PhD. I wanted to live my life for myself and I wanted to do something I felt was impactful, something that I cared about. I didn't want to think about disappointing this person that I never met because I was actively disappointing myself, so I had to stop. I had to say this is enough and I have to change.
But then leaving academia was some of the hardest things I ever did. Not only did I leave academia but I started working on a 1975 transit bus with some hippies. So you can imagine how that conversation with my parents went. There was a lot of, “What's happening?” “What did you say?” “You talk to her.”
After talking to mom, my dad, my cousins, my five brothers, they all just threw up their hands and said, “Okay. You live in New York. That must have been the problem. You became a Yankee. I don't know what happened, so okay.”
But I really had to be true to myself. I have to ask myself does representation really matter?
That was 15 years ago. And as I work on the BioBus, I can't tell you how many times little kids have come up to me and said, “You're a scientist?”
And I'm like, “Yeah, I'm a scientist.”
They're like, “Okay.”
And I'm like, “Yeah. You know, you can be one too.”
And they're like, “I don't know, Miss.”
And I'm like, “Yeah, you can.”
Then they're like, “Okay. Maybe. I don't know.”
But I'm able to plant that seed to the next generation. You don't have to be what everybody thinks you should be. You can be what you want to be.
I am amazed by my students. They have reignited my love for science. They've shown me the beauty of looking at a cauliflower under the microscope. What's all of the life in a droplet of water. And they're always questioning. They're always pushing me to know more. And I feel like I'm learning from them much more than they're learning from me. It's been an amazing journey.
So far, we've had like 300,000 kids come on our mobile labs. I have my favorites. Don't let anybody know that I have favorites. I'm just seeing them flourish. Ben and I who's this other founder of BioBus, we all say, “Oh, BioBus is our platonic baby that we've had together,” and we just love it and it's great.
I'm inspired so much by the kids who live in New York City, especially in COVID. They had to really just overcome so much, much more than we had to deal with. And they still are ready to go out and change the world for the better. I'm just happy that I can be an ally for them, that I can be a role model.
But in the back of my mind I'm always thinking I am a role model for them on this path that I'm taking, but I'm not really sure where I'm going. But I'm still trying to make an impact and change the world in my own way.
So, I'm not sure. Does representation really matter?
I just want to tell you how I feel like representation matters in my daily life right now. One of the executives of this amazing organization that I love, that I care about. I believe in and I really feel like I'm surrounded with wonderful people who are well-intentioned, we've done an equity study at our organization. And 50% of the people who work at BioBus identify as people of color, but the majority of the leadership identify as white.
Sometimes I find myself in meetings where I'm presenting an idea or a new strategy and someone will say, “You know what Latasha is really trying to say is…,” or something to that effect, and that used to make me so mad.
But I never would show my anger. As a black woman, I'm always worried about coming across as the angry black woman. So when I get angry, I think about it later and I'm like, “Was that rational? Is it irrational? If it's rational, then why is it making me so mad?”
Then I kept thinking about this for months and I was thinking, “Is it my ego? Is it that I don't like to share power? Is it that I need to be more collaborative? What is it? Why is it that this makes me so angry?”
Then one day it hit me. It's that to really understand what I'm saying, it has to be re-said by a white person. You know what I mean?
Part 2
Growing up, I was my Grandmother's travel partner. This wasn't the typical hold-the-bag, hold‑the-purse type of situation. See, this is my mother's mother. My family on my mother's side is from Jamaica so that meant every other year I got to join my partner down in Jamaica, especially during Emancipation Week. For us here, we call it like Independence Day.
It was on one of these trips when I finally realized how much I loved the environment. See, during one of these specific trips, it was the summer that I think I was probably nine years old because I was about to start school. First grade.
And the night was clear. The moon was out, the stars were bright and they were all over. You can look to your left and they were there. You could look up, they were there. You can look to your left or your right without even like totally moving your head and it was still there. It was so encapsulating. It was like a dome.
I was standing at the edge of the beach. You know that part where as the water rolls in, it just kisses the tips of your toes. Then on my back was this huge bonfire, but it was so warm. And the crackles mixed with the inter-rhythms and vibes from classic Caribbean beats. Clearly, it was my grandma and some of her friends back there just laughing.
In that moment I was like, “This is it. That if I can find this, no matter where I'm at I'll be at peace.” Because this moment, I was a part of something. I wasn't too big and I wasn't too small, but I mattered and I was a part of something bigger. I felt connected.
That winter, we were doing the same thing that children do is you prepare for lineup. First grade got out before everybody else because we had to make sure that we were ready to go onto our school bus. There's times where children had the tendency to get on the wrong school bus.
Leah Clyburn shares her story to an audience outdoors at Public Media Commons in St. Louis, MO in October, 2021. Photo by Joe Martinez.
So I was all set. I went to Bus 103. I found my buddy. My buddy's my neighbor. She lived down the street, so I knew my buddy and we stood in line. I was set. And I had my bag. My Mom was all about schools’ work, work at school, so I had this crossbody blue briefcase with the rainbow and sunshine on the side, so I was all set. I had all my stuff ready to go.
Then I felt a tug at my shirt pulling me out of line. That was my principal. She had like this whole Cruella de Vil type lingering type energy in her. No matter what I told her or my buddy who was also my neighbor told her, we couldn't win. She didn't believe that I belonged on the bus heading towards the county.
As she continued to tell me how I was getting on the wrong bus and how much of a hassle it was, she continued to let me know that she's going to call my mom and I was going to face expulsion. I'm in first grade. And you’re going to call my Mom. That's it.
So she takes me back into the school and I'm sitting there. You know, these chairs at the principal's office are always nicely directed so they can still keep their eye on you. And you can watch them doing that thing like dialing your mom's number as you sit there contemplating what just happened.
That's what was happening to me. I was trying to figure it out because I was so mad. I was like, “Wait, I did everything. I had the whole plan planned out.” I found my buddy. I knew where she was, Bus 103. I stood there. I had my bag. I had all my things. I was ready to go. I did everything that we practiced, and yet I'm still in trouble.
So, while watching her dial my Mom's number, I just contemplated on the potential outcomes that the situation was going to land with. I knew I was going to be in trouble, so much trouble.
After she hung up the phone while maintaining eye contact, I think I broke eye contact. It was very intense so I'm just trying to see what was happening. You know that sixth sense you have when your Mom is close to you or if they're close to you and they're mad, it's just like this permeating energy.
And my Mom, my Mom is everything to me. I mean she is bigger than life itself. And the idea that not only does she have to now come up to school but now take me home which is not a part of the plan.
So she comes and I'm sure my Mom gave me one of those looks like, “What did you do? Why am I here?”
But all I do really remember very clearly is that she came in. I didn't join them in that office, but door closed behind her. And as my Mom left from that office, I was still continuing to contemplate like, “I'm going to be in so much trouble. I did everything but I don't know what I'm going to do.”
Her hand reached out to me and in that moment I knew that it was not me. I was not in trouble. I knew something happened. Something was going to happen, but it wasn't me. And at that, I was tall. I was as tall as she was. We left and got in our car and journeyed home.
Now, my Mom also is one of those people that is good to always come with the lesson. There's always a lesson, so that means there's a speech. So in this speech was something probably around the lines of, “Don't let no one take advantage of you. And so you go tell everybody. You go find somebody. You go find your brother. You go find your teacher. You go find some other teacher if that teacher don't want to listen to you. You go find the principal. You go find the other principal. You go find the nurse. You go find somebody. Because if you find somebody then somebody is going to help you.”
So I took that. Check. Got it. Find somebody, everybody. Somebody's going to help me.
You know, after Mom's speeches, there always comes a call with my Grandma. Now, my Grandma was also my best friend, so I'm sure that conversation was more in depth of all the feels. But this conversation didn't really focus on my feels. She had her own directives for me too.
And they went like this. One, that I am no longer able to become friends with anybody who doesn't know where they came from. And then the second one was that, no matter what, it is my job to teach any and everyone who I am instead of who they believe me to be. And these are the smartest women I know so of course I took it to heart. I got it in my gut. I'm like I'm going to figure this out, make all this work. Because if they said it then I must be able to do it.
But the thing of it is, later on, during that cycle of my life, I started getting more directives that seemed like instructions or guidances but it was more like limits. Like if I wanted to go to the park or go to a friend's house, I had to bring my brother. If I wanted to go with friends to the park, I had to bring not my brother but also some adults. If I wanted to later start visiting public parks, the bigger ones like way out there in no man's land Missouri, I had to be a part of a church group. I had to be a part of school. And if I wanted to go camping, well, you don't do that without a guide or your friends and their family.
See, there was always a limit. There was always something in my way from getting to that point of being back at that beach, and I got pissed. People who know me know that when I get mad I go figure everything out. Because these limits were nothing but inter-woven blankets of safety but really every little intrinsic thread was in-woven with misogyny and bigotry, and I had to go tell somebody.
So that was the beginning of long conversations that I'm sure my mom had to continuously have with some kind of teacher somewhere. Let her tell it that in third grade I performed a sit-in and in this sit-in was because a teacher wanted to treat another young lady who looked like me poorly. I decided that was not okay, so therefore, I decided not to talk to anybody. That meant that that teacher had to be coached by my mother to understand the social constructs of the situation and know what to do about it.
But that was supported not just by my mother about going out and speaking up for what's right but also by the churches I grew up in, because we stood in solidarity. We stood for the people who was pushed on the margins by society alone. Because those are my brothers and sisters. And frankly, if you're going to hold them to the side then you're holding me to the side too. So together we don't have to stand by ourselves.
Then as I grew older, I started doing some more activist work that rooted myself in every issue that addressed me and my neighbor. I started in reproductive justice and moved that on into school‑to‑prison pipeline, to even immigration and then later into policy work. Each one of those had beautiful pieces and gems that I got to inherit. Each one of those I gained and enlarged my family of nothing but people all across this wonderful state and even this country.
But there was still something missing.
Leah Clyburn shares her story to an audience outdoors at Public Media Commons in St. Louis, MO in October, 2021. Photo by Joe Martinez.
So after we won the ballot initiative for democracy reform all across Missouri at the polls and later lost it in Jefferson City, that's a whole nother conversation, I was confronted by this local environmental organization here. This manager came to me from the environmental organization and offered me an opportunity to work with them. She informed me that her colleagues had worked with me during this last campaign and thought I would be a great attribute to their mission.
I was taken aback for many reasons but I took my time and said, “Let's talk later.” So we scheduled some time to be at this coffee house.
So we get to this coffee house and I had all kinds of questions to ask her at that moment. But I took my time once again. As she started opening up the conversation of all the pleasantries and we discussed about the role and what would they expect from me, just more and more questions started to come to the forefront.
And then her question to me before she can get the full sentence of, “So what do you think…” I was like, “Aren't you all a bunch of people who are white who go out in the woods hugging trees? Do you know what I do? I spend majority of my career around social justice issues. I mean I… you see me, right? I'm not as resilient as I used to be. I don't know. How is this even going to work?”
Now, she could have ran but instead she stayed and educated me about the organization's commitment to what we call the Jemez Principles. And just for understanding, the Jemez Principles is a background of information that was compiled with environmental leaders all across the United States to get a clear understanding that we are going to confront our own internal biases that we have while root leadership and understanding by the people who are highly impacted by the unlawful protection of our environment.
I was like, “All right. This checks Grandma's number one rule. All right. Great. I got half of that job already done.”
And then we continued to have more conversations. It was almost like a courtship that was happening. But as time progressed and I got to talk with my soon-to-become colleagues, I thought this job was a no-brainer, and there were specific three things that really just nailed it for me.
One was that she committed, my manager committed that if the ugly green-eyed monster of racism would show its head, that she would take care of it. Perfect.
Second was that my colleagues also said the same thing and they acknowledge that racism does exist. It is an issue within the movement but they too are committed in confronting it as well as shutting down the green-eyed monster.
And then the third was the pay. No. So the third the third was actually the connection that middle class-to-poor white members of the community were being affected by pollution was being gaslighted by legislators just the same way as middle class-to-poor African-American to indigenous and other people of color were in Missouri. I'm like, “Those are my people. I mean that's literally the community I grew up in while also I identified with. I know this conversation. I know these people.”
So I took my time. I lifted up my Grandmother's theory of change. I focused in on really connecting each person, not just to the issue but also to themselves and then encourage the curiosity of the neighbor around them, someone they didn't even know. And together, we combined our stories, our love for the environment, our love for people, our love for existence while also acknowledging the bigotry and the denial of the needs of not just our environment but the biodiversity which we all make up.
One of my most memorable events is called Air We Breathe. This is an event where we get to gather with people from all ends of Missouri to talk about not just the pollution that is perpetuated by the super polluter here in Missouri as well as lax laws that keep allowing it to keep happening, but we also got to celebrate the resilience of humanity that still can exist in each one of us.
And so we got to see each other. We got to laugh with one another. We displayed our art. We sang songs. We ate amazing food. But we also committed that we were no longer going to sit on the sidelines. Each one of us, man, woman, child, they, them, all representations was going to do better, step forward and speak out.
So when the last statement of gratitude from the last participant was given as they enter out and I could hear the background of all my colleagues laughing, joking with volunteers and our local partners as well as they were packing things up, I was transformed once again to that moment on the beach. In that moment, I felt like I was a part of something greater. I felt connected.
It's not perfect and we're definitely not where we want to be, but in there there's hope. And in hope, there's peace and I'm okay with that.