Black Scientists Are Building Their Own Vital Communities (2024)

“Started from the Bottom” by Drake blared over the speakers, as more than 200 scientists turned toward the back of the room. The double doors burst open, and marine ecologist Tiara Moore danced down the aisle in a bright pink bra and blazer. She strutted to the podium and grabbed the mic, opened with a note on body positivity, and reveled in the Black community she has built.

Moore, a self-described disruptor, launched the nonprofit Black in Marine Science (BIMS) in 2020 after almost a decade of feeling frustrated, burnt-out and lonely as a Black marine ecologist. Two years earlier, she had written in an article titled “The Only Black Person in the Room”: “We want to matter, we want to make a difference, and we want to be scientists.”

She wasn’t alone in feeling this way about being a Black woman in a white field. Minorities in science are subject to the endless labor of existence: Black scientists must constantly defend both their research and their presence in the field. The “leaky pipeline” phenomenon describes underrepresented groups dropping out of STEM fields at each stage of career advancement. In 2021, 431 students received ocean science doctorates in the U.S. Three identified as Black or African American.

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Without community, scientists suffer, and so does their work. Research shows that networking across racial backgrounds adds additional social and professional challenges for scientists from underrepresented groups. And conferencing while Black is exhausting, wrote academic Kyra Sutton in 2022. That’s why dedicated, inclusive spaces such as BIMS are essential: they can help scientists persevere in a field that they might otherwise abandon.

After the racial profiling and harassment of Black birder Christian Cooper in 2020, Black naturalists and scientists began organizing campaigns like Black Birders Week, Black in Physiology Week and Black in Neuro Week. Watching these groups come together, Moore decided that if no one was carving out space for Black marine scientists, she would. She tweeted, “Where the Black in Marine Science week at?!!”

Her community answered her call and grew quickly. After the outstanding reception of the first online BIMS Week in 2020, members were itching to meet face-to-face. The group primarily gathered online until November 2023, when over 200 Black marine scientists finally gathered in Virginia for BIMS’s first in-person, week-long conference.

As attendees of the conference, we saw firsthand how the meeting focused on treating scientists as people first and emphasized inclusivity, authenticity and joy. Gone were the early wake-up times, isolated sessions, overlapping schedules and expectations of stiff decorum modeled by our predominantly white peers. During the opening night dinner cruise, the dance floor shook under the joyful feet of scientists who could finally be themselves. Attendees danced their hearts out, took time to rest, and laid the groundwork for future collaborations within a global community of Black marine scientists.

Throughout the week, every event—whether an expert panel, communication training or financial workshop—happened in the same room, one after the other, so attendees didn’t have to choose between attending talks by friends or colleagues. Each day, as the sun set, attendees wandered into sound bowl therapy and karaoke sessions.

Throughout BIMS Week, Director of Development Lynnette Adams gave attendees permission to idle, breaking another convention of most scientific gatherings. “Have you ever felt more burnt-out after a conference? Like you need a conference from the conference?” Adams asked over the microphone.

Hands all around the room shot up, and she went on. “Ancestrally, we work more and harder for less. Part of breaking that generational trauma is acknowledging that we don’t have to burn ourselves out to learn,” said Adams.

Adams introduced “The Bliss Lounge”—an adjacent conference room turned blue-light oasis. BIMS stocked a back table with crayons and colored clay. Massage therapists waited with sign-up sheets and bottles of peppermint oil. Scientists could don a pair of noise-canceling headphones, lay back on a beanbag chair, or schedule on-site therapy. The lounge offered attendees the space to look inward and take stock of their reserves without feeling left out of the conversation.

Students and early-career researchers told us they felt relief to be among peers where no one felt tokenized. Attendees wholly appreciated each other as scientists under the mutual understanding of Black identity.

The week-long retreat went miles further than a happy hour meet-and-greet. For the first time in history, Black marine scientists from Kenya to the Bahamas gathered face to face. In a room full of excellence, we saw steel sharpen steel. American students met experts and mentors from Africa and the Caribbean. Scientists who love art, dancing and writing created subcommunities of their own. Attendees created regional networks of support and collaboration that outlasted the conference. Now members of BIMS West Coast and BIMS Africa swap notes on datasets and haircare in the field. For many attendees, meeting peers and mentors at BIMS Week motivated them to keep doing the work they love.

BIMS’s keystone—treating scientists as people first—is not uniquely applicable to marine science. Diversity in any context brings a richer and deeper understanding to any science researchers conduct and any system we create. Scientists need to acknowledge that the systems we currently work in are not enough for people of color, and it will take the work of both allies and POC to create frameworks that cater to diverse communities.

BIMS is not the only example of Black scientists finding strength in community. BIMS and other organizations, such as Black Microbiologists Association; Black Women in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Science; and the Society of Black Archaeologists, provide a blueprint to build community for researchers who feel isolated in their fields. Larger organizations can look at BIMS’s success to center their members’ humanity.

For Black and brown scientists, conservationists, and environmentalists: know that there are people of color out there searching for you. The journey is long, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Black Scientists Are Building Their Own Vital Communities (2024)

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