The responsibilities of being a "Token" minority

Lauren Lyons, a Masters in Public Policy alumna of the Harvard Kennedy School, is a rocket scientist (literally, she used to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab) and a space and technology policy expert. An engineering graduate of Princeton university, Lauren serves on the UN's Space Generation Advisory Council, and conducts Space exploration public outreach.

She just wrote an absolutely stunning blog post about being a Black woman in elite academic and professional situations in America. Being even a minority in a room is a major step towards breaking glass ceilings; accordingly it can come with certain responsibilities---but also pain and frustrations.

Lauren was kind enough to let us feature that brilliant piece here. Please read the whole thing...

The Curious Conundrum of the Code-Switching Tokenized Teacher

A student raises her hand in a political science lecture, and confidently proclaims: “If people are to be treated equally under the law, then policies that single out minorities for special advantages are not only unfair and unnecessary, but are unconstitutional. President Obama is evidence that class is what determines your success in America, not race.”

People of color who have attended elite academic institutions might be able to identify with the following, oft reflexed, 3-step stream of consciousness:

Step 1: Jaw drops reactively in forming of the classic “WTF?” face.

Step 2: Calm down. Quickly straighten out the “WTF?” face, and try to appear nonplussed.

Step 3: Decision point:

a) Sit quietly and allow this person—and whomever in this room of 150 students agrees with her—to graduate from here actually believing this, be elected into Congress (because at this school, it really is a possibility), and then pass laws that curtail civil rights legislation, all while disappointing my ancestors who would have given anything for such a teaching moment on inequality and social justice, or 

 b) Take on the responsibility yet again, as the lone voice of color, to explain the “minority perspective,” subject myself to repeated Q&A, speak on behalf of every Black, Hispanic, and Native American kid who knows for certain that this country is in no way post-racial, deal with the fallout of receiving emails from classmates wanting to discuss it further a.k.a. try to prove me wrong and deny my experience, and risk now being forever marginalized at the resident thought leader on the Black experience even though my field of study is Science and Technology Policy.

Phew.

No, this is not an exaggeration. And as you can probably imagine, this thought process – although it occurs in the mere blink of an eye – is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausting. And it seems that the more I find myself within elite academic, business, and social arenas where minority perspectives are vastly underrepresented, the more I find myself facing the Curious Conundrum of the Code-Switching Token Teacher. Allow me to unpack that a little bit... 

To continue reading the full article, please visit Lauren's blog: http://www.laurly.com/post/60174788163/the-curious-conundrum-of-the-code-switching-tokenized

The Conversation Continues

In the last month, a couple of important things happened in the world of gender news:

1. U.S. Department of Defense removed the ban on women serving in combat roles.
2. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - arguably the most powerful woman in American politics - ended her tenure at the State Department, highlighting gender equality as "the unfinished business of the 21st century."
3. WAPPP Wire ran its first guest blogger series, inviting men to write about gender. 

Ok, one of these things is not quite as high-profile as the others, so if you missed #3, please take a look at the statistics in "Why Diversity Matters in Medicine" and read the story of a brave woman named Pashtana in "Providing a Voice to Afghan Women". I would like to thank Robert and Dan for taking the time to engage in this conversation. I hope that by adding their voices to the discussion, they reached a new audience of American men, like Pashtana did with Afghan women.

To continue the conversations on gender issues affecting all of us, I hope more HKS men will attend the weekly WAPPP Seminars held on Thursdays at 11:40am in the WAPPP Cason Seminar Room. This semester's line-up will range from the Olympics to the boardroom to "questionable behavior." Intrigued? Come this Thursday, February 7 (there is lunch too!).

And if you (man or woman) have an idea to contribute to this blog, please contact me at anya_malkov@hks13.harvard.edu, and let’s keep talking about gender!


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Guest Post: Why Diversity Matters in Medicine

Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity to attend the 97th Annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. It's the meeting of the bigwigs. Surgeons from across the country travel to Chicago to attend top-notch skill sessions, expert panels, and lectures on leading research. Speakers feature the premiere innovators and investigators in their specialties. As a medical student, I attended residency interview training sessions and resident panels. I also made sure I took the opportunity to take a step back and soak in the entire experience. I wrote down some of my first impressions...

#1 - There are lots of white men here.

I've written quite a bit about the importance of mentorship on my blog, specifically about how mentors have shaped my career trajectory. I'm not sure that I would've chosen General Surgery without the skilled and caring surgeons I worked with in Asheville and Linville, NC. I certainly wouldn't have considered rural surgery without briefly living the craft, getting to know surgeons who have worked in a rural area for many years and then moved back into academia. I cannot stress how important it has been that people like me are already doing what I want to do. With this knowledge, I believe I can accomplish as much as they have, and even push the boundaries.

Aspiring leaders want to know that their dreams are reachable. First, they must have access to the necessary resources (e.g. students of low socioeconomic status must have the educational and financial means to even get to medical school). Second, they want to see someone who has come from their position... and succeeded. Politics aside, it is no longer a question whether an African American can be the President of the United States. We now have a black Commander and Chief. It is no longer a distant dream of possibility; the path has been forged. Resources and mentorship: our youth need both to succeed.

So why is diversity a problem for medicine? I've focused quite a bit on rural disparities. One quarter of the US population lives in a rural area, yet only one out of every ten physicians works there. This population is in dire need of primary care physicians and general surgeons. Studies have shown that women are more likely than men to go into primary care and minority medical students are more likely to care for underserved and indigent populations. Yet only 6.3 percent of the American physician workforce is black. And women make up only a third of all physicians. 

Of course, in 1970, women made up less than one tenth of all physicians, so great strides have been made. But the progress is slow, and often the leadership lacks diversity. I guess this is to be expected, since the more experienced clinicians trained at a time when the medical profession was almost exclusively white men. And their mentors were probably white men, and their mentors were white men.  

To change this pattern we need to work on access to resources, and make sure there is an increasingly diverse group of mentors. In both regards, medicine can (and will) improve. 

Of course, I am another white man. So I guess I'm not helping the statistics. 

Robert Swendiman is an MD candidate at UNC School of Medicine and an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is also a Dubin Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership. You can read more on his blog The Language of Medicine.