When you try to bury seeds

“what didn’t you do to bury me

but you forgot that I was a seed”

-Dinos Christianopoulos

In a recent conversation with students about my journey into STEM, I was asked what inspired me to even consider it in the first place. I genuinely wish I could say my eureka moment was watching something around me come to be, like a seed germinating in wet paper towels but my career thus far has been a shrine for my rage.

The genesis of my story began when my tenth-grade science teacher told me I would “not amount to anything”. I never really envisioned myself a scientist because scientists never looked like me and his words emphasized that further. Discouraged, I did not fathom being a scientist until a professor suggested I should consider science as a career path my junior year of college. I edited out this part of my story in talks and panels so as not to discourage students like me who aspired to be scientists. I wanted them to envision their goals without fear that institutional disdain for their identities would hinder them.

What sounded like good intentions, however, were inherently violent. Meeting Black women in my field through platforms like A WOC Space and Twitter, I learned that this is a common experience for a lot of us. What good was I doing painting this beautiful scape of scientific curiosity, when it was also frankly colored with defiance, determination and abuse?

Being the first in my family to pursue this careerpath, I shared how I thought abuse was normal in science, how I was conditioned to think this is how I became good. It was a worthy inconvenience because scientific research provided me with an unfamiliar level of agency.

Food insecurity and pollution were a childhood reality. I was told to accept them as characteristics of my community’s condition. However, during college I learned that research questions can be designed to understand how these problems occur, as well as propose solutions to address them.

To finally have a voice over something that rendered you voiceless the moment you learned about it is an empowering feeling.

This newly opened door to empowerment, however, came at a price. As I was sharing my story with these students, I realized that this was a vulnerability I had never really publicly engaged in but wanted to. I found myself pausing and taking a breath before I spoke about enduring “mentors” who openly called you a bad scientist anytime you made a mistake; presenting research in a lecture hall with individuals determined to splinter your efforts (and unashamedly admitting so); peers asking you if you were in the right room; peers and faculty telling you that you did not deserve to be there and filled a quota, just to name a few instances.      

Being the sole person in my family to pursue such a career, I shared with them how I thought abuse was normal in science, how I was conditioned to think this is how I became unwavering and statuesque. I was convinced that this was a small price to pay for the agency I felt research gave me over the problems my community faces.

When prompted to address how I feel about being an environmental scientist thus far in my career, another battle rose to the surface. Even while presently taking up space in my field, colleagues have shared that they believe that Black people do not care about the environment and if they did, I would not be the only one here (reference to being the sole Black doctoral student in my program and the first Black woman in its history).

These absolute statements erase the deliberate disconnection of Black folks from our environment as a result of our disenfranchisement, which is a function of the deliberate architecture of oppression and poverty. This erasure, in turn, justifies the inaccessible nature by which “sustainable solutions” are being designed. I find myself engaging in daily conversations with peers about how the brunt of environmental destruction is being left to the communities most affected by them, because they are not who the solutions are designed for, neither are the environmental futures they envision.

So, everyday feels like a defiant action against preconceived notions about me and my community. I told myself I am here in spite of everything, but really I am here because I deserve to be envisioning environmental futures where we all thrive. This is for us.