Getting it done in math and science
By Lou Ransom
For the NNPA
PITTSBURGH – Wasn’t it wonderful?
For three days in Pittsburgh, something truly wonderful took place. Everywhere you looked, everywhere you went, there were young, black people – smart, good looking, and well dressed young black people.
They came from Ames, Iowa and Chicago, Illinois and Atlanta, Georgia and New York City. They came to Pittsburgh and they gave a glimpse of what could be, what should be, what just might be, if they have anything to do with it.
When the National Society of Black Engineers came to town for their national convention, thousands of those present and future engineers were guests in our town. You would have known them if you saw them. The young men were clean cut, sharply dressed, with ties and suits and lots of dark, business colors. They carried their maroon and black knapsacks around like badges of honor. They were polite, and quiet (at least in public), and well behaved. The young women were confident and beautiful, the kind of beauty that is enhanced by a high IQ and SAT math scores above 500. They were dressed tastefully, lots of pantsuits and shoes designed to be worn more than 30 minutes. They were dressed for success.
They came to sit in on workshops and hear from professionals. They came to find out about scholarships and scholarship. They came to find out if the field of engineering was for them, or even ready for them. They came to Pittsburgh because for one week, for black engineers, Pittsburgh was the center of the universe.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Engineers apply the principles of science and mathematics to develop economical solutions to technical problems.” Just about every product you can name has some engineering aspect to it, chemical, mechanical, industrial, electrical, environmental, materials, civil, etc., with math and science making it work.
It is to the credit of the local chapters of the NSBE that the convention came here. The NSBE is predominantly a student organization, and Pittsburgh has a notorious reputation as a place young people, especially talented young black people, can’t wait to leave. But hopefully, these young people saw some possibilities here, in schools, in industry, in quality of life. Maybe they even saw some challenges that an engineering discipline can solve.
Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg welcomed the gathering and asked some of the young people to consider an academic career at Pitt, where, he noted, William Hunter Drummond, a civil engineer major, was the first black graduate of the university in 1893.
These black engineers presence gave the lie to the notion that our kids can’t do it, can’t tackle math, can’t achieve, can’t excel. Excellence walked our streets, en masse, for a week. Living, breathing, wonderfully Black excellence.
They coexisted for that week with the young people who think the height of fashion is a 3X white t-shirt and Timberlands to match their Dickies work clothes. They flooded the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and spilled out onto Penn Avenue and the Cultural District and Fifth Avenue. They bought burgers and fries and books and clothes and music.
Some folks will make much of the fact that these 10,000 students and professionals were expected to bring $39 million in commerce to the city… black commerce. Yes, they spent money and left it in the hands of merchants (though not enough black merchants were able to take advantage of the windfall).
But the conventioneers left much more. They left possibility. They left role models for another generation, and they left a generation that sees right-sized schools with the wrong scores and high school students shooting at each other instead of shooting for the stars, considering that all just might not be lost.
Lou Ransom is managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier.
