My Juneteenth Wish
Today marks the 155th commemoration of Emancipation Day in America. In the black community, it is a day observed to honor ancestors who made significant contributions and sacrificed their lives to achieve the point of freedom for all enslaved African Americans and future generations. It is a day of reflection. It is a day of renewal. It is a day marked to recognize the full African American experience.
As many prepare to crank up the music, pull out the good food, and risk their health to socially interact with others for a good time, I must do my own personal reflection and ask how I want to see freedom continue to flourish within the black communities world wide.
In the year 2020, I sit here and I imagine this day being a day to make a wish for what I desire to come. For most celebrations a person ends the day or night with some type of dessert and makes a wish for what they wish to come, so why can’t I do the same right?
I certainly know I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams, because I am blessed enough to hear my grandparents speak of how proud they are of me to other people. I am a female engineer with a degree in civil and environmental engineering - a profession in which approximately 4% of black females earn nationally¹. To break down the numbers even further, I am 1 of 933 black females who graduated with an US engineering degree in 2014². If you compare that to my fellow white, asian, or hispanic sisters, the numbers are horrendously low. For these three groups, the number of females who earned their engineering degree in the same year are 10,508, 2,360, and 1,954 respectively². Even after breaking through this educational barrier [not including the many other barriers] and blazing a path for the next generation to come after me, I still see room for improvement amongst the human race. So that leads me to my 2020 Juneteenth wish for the black American…
I wish we will endeavor to fight for educational advancement in various aspects of knowledge, but especially in engineering and physical sciences, and obtain access to all the many bountiful opportunities that await society. I wish more black Americans will seek to disrupt the common narrative portrayed in music videos, on movie screens, and within human resources departments. I wish for black Americans to become more collective within corporate america office spaces, within local political spaces, within financial spaces and many others. I wish for the bridge between these spaces and the ones in classrooms to be shortened. I look forward to telling my niece and nephew and the rest of America’s future children about the major achievements this movement has sparked when we took our education rights seriously and restructured a better society. On that note, I will blow out the candles and eat Anna Mae’s cake. Now cue the choir for “Oh Happy Day” and let’s get the party started!
¹According to 2015 NSF statistics -https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/digest/occupation/women.cfm
²Based on NSF’s 2019 Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering guide -https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/data