Friday, June 29, 2018
By:
All the interns working at the American Center for Physics agreed to divide and conquer the Astronomy on the Mall supplies. Hence, I took to the metro with a big blue Physcon tote filled with rainbow glasses, LEDs, and a big copper pipe (no one on the metro was phased by this).
I sit on a semi-full metro, with an open seat next to me. A mother and child start walking over to my area. The woman gingerly sits her child in the seat next to me, standing next to her daughter in a comfortable silence, hand on her child’s dark-haired head. I smile, and they smile back at me, the girl hugging her cotton candy blue unicorn backpack. I glance at this girl. I glance at my tote of rainbow glasses. I glance back at the girl.
I hastily grab a couple of diffraction rainbow glasses out and motion her to take one. I ask her if she’s ever worn rainbow glasses before. She says no in that shy adorable way only children can really pull off. We start both bending our glasses to put them on; she bends them inside out and timidly slides them onto her face. “Rainbows!” she says excitedly under her breath. She starts pointing at the metro signs, the floor, my phone, all the light things, with the biggest grin on her face. I ask her mom if I can take a selfie with her. She smiles and nods. This girl’s name is Alexa, and she is six years old. I couldn’t talk much to her mother because English is her second language. Alexa was the translator between the two of us. I transferred at L’Enfant Plaza, and to my surprise I see Alexa and both her parents in the same car train as me after the transfer. They come over to my empty area, so Alexa and I can play some more, with her parents in the metro seats behind me. She tells me her favorite subject is math.
I don’t really know how to digest this encounter, but my heart swells with bittersweet hope, happiness, and fierceness to fight for equality. How do we fight systematic biases and institutionalized disadvantages so Latina girls like Alexa grow up into women who feel supported to pursue and stay in STEM fields?
As tempting as it is, it is of course dangerous to seek a single flawless answer to such an intricate issue. Some of the best advice I have heard that I like to keep in mind when feeling overwhelmed: do not let perfect be the enemy of good. The most important distinction is between doing nothing and doing something.
So, let us acknowledge that unrepresented minorities exist. Let us acknowledge our own implicit biases that keep glass ceilings on those different than us. Let us be an ally, and do the marches, and learn the science, and teach the science to others, and fight for funding. Let us not alienate those who work hard every single day for privileges we do not even realize we have.
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Before signing off, I’d like to give a shout out to the whole crew of SPS interns + Brad + Danielle for making Astronomy on the Mall fabulous. It was indoors, and surprisingly well attended. Everyone collaborated getting the supplies there and made an effort to genuinely connect with the families passing by. I never feel more in my element than I do nerding out about telescopes, or walking with the SPS crew singing along to some bad song like All Star or Africa (usually spearheaded by Brad).
Amanda Williams