African Americans in evolutionary science: where we have been, and what’s next

• Main Author: Joseph L. Graves
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2019-10-01
• Series: Evolution: Education and Outreach
• Subjects: African Americans; Evolutionary science; Institutional racism; Aversive racism; Diversity; Inclusion
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12052-019-0110-5

Abstract In 2017 National Science Foundation data revealed that in the United States the professional biological workforce was composed of ~ 69.5% “whites”, 21.3% “Asians”, and only 3% “African American or Blacks” (National Science Foundation, 2017, https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/doctoratework/2017/html/sdr2017_dst_03.html). There are problems with the categories themselves but without too deep an investigation of these, these percentages are representative of the demography of biology as a whole over the latter portion of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. However, evolutionary biologists would argue (and correctly so) that the representation of persons of African descent in our field is probably an order of magnitude lower (0.3%). This commentary focuses on the factors that are associated with underrepresentation of African Americans in evolutionary science careers.